Clean Water Advocacy - Newsroom - NACWA in the News
EPA Proposes to Tighten Rules on Use of Sewage 'Bypass'
By ROBERT McCLURE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
A newly proposed federal policy tightening rules on dumping of
partially treated sewage is winning support from a major national environmental
group, municipal sewage managers and federal environmental officials.
But a Seattle-based watchdog group that fights pollution of Puget Sound says the
proposal would allow too many delays in sewage-treatment improvements deemed
"not feasible" because they're too expensive.
"No matter how you roll the dice, it all seems like more sewage being allowed
into Puget Sound," said Sue Joerger, executive director of Puget Soundkeeper
Alliance. "My biggest problem is it doesn't provide incentives for communities
to truly treat their sewage, to increase their sewage-treatment capacity."
An Environmental Protection Agency official in Washington, D.C., said the intent
behind the proposed policy is to improve the current situation and reduce
dumping of partially treated sewage.
"I get enthusiastic when groups with widely different perspectives can work
together and advance a policy that we think will add certainty and environmental
protection," said Benjamin Grumbles, EPA's assistant administrator for water.
"It maximizes treatment. It's a triumph of treatment over dilution and
collaboration over confrontation."
At issue is a step in the treatment process in which bacteria digest and help
neutralize sewage. It's the bottleneck in the process because the waste must be
kept in contact with the bacteria long enough for the microscopic bugs to work.
But when a huge rain hits and water leaks into sewage pipes by the millions of
gallons, it can overwhelm the process. The answer has been to bypass the
bacteria step for part of the flow. All the waste still goes through the other
parts of the process: screening out large solids and disinfecting the waste.
The bypassing practice has long been in place. However, conditions on it have
never been set at the national level. The EPA proposed in 2003 to establish
federal standards, but those were attacked by environmentalists, surfers, oyster
growers and others.
The Washington Department of Ecology called the proposal "environmental
backsliding." About 98,000 Americans wrote to the EPA, many critical.
That's when Grumbles asked two groups leading the charge on either side to
negotiate.
The Natural Resources Defense Council and the National Association of Clean
Water Agencies hammered out a proposal that formed the basis of the rules the
EPA has now put forth.
"This should be more stringent," said Nancy Stoner, the main negotiator for the
NRDC.
She said the new proposal provides an important safeguard because it will give
the public a formal time to get involved in commenting on the bypass whenever a
sewage-treatment plant's permit is renewed.
It also will require utilities to notify the public when the practice is
employed.
The rules would make utilities that want to use the bypass procedure satisfy 23
conditions such as showing the utility is "maximizing its ability to reduce"
infiltration of rainwater into sewer pipes, a leading reason sewage plants are
overloaded.
"You would have to demonstrate you have a very, very tight system," said Don
Theiler, head of King County's Wastewater Treatment Division. "They have
tightened up the policy significantly."
The policy would affect the county's three treatment facilities differently.
Officials say they probably won't seek permission to do the bypass at the East
Treatment Plant in Renton.
The West Treatment Plant in Magnolia would continue to use the practice, because
it takes in more than sewage. Rainwater is collected in many parts of Seattle
and treated, reducing pollution on an everyday basis. However, a big rainfall
can send as much as 400 million gallons to the plant, which has a daily capacity
of 300 million gallons.
At the Brightwater plant scheduled to come on line in southern Snohomish County
in 2010, the new rules would allow the practice, Theiler said.