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Lawmakers Balk At Sewer-discharge Rules
Friday, March 04, 2005
By Sarah Kellogg
Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON -- The dumping of partially treated wastewater into lakes and
rivers should never happen, least of all with the blessings of the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency, says a Michigan congressman trying to stop the
proposed change.
Legislation to ban "sewage blending," where treated water is mixed with
partially treated water during sewer system overflows, was introduced Thursday
by a 40-member bipartisan congressional coalition.
"Our bill says stop the blending," said U.S. Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Menominee, the
main sponsor. "The only way they would be allowed to do it is to save life,
property or the whole sewage facility. This bill tries to aggressively protect
our rivers, lakes and streams."
The EPA proposed changing the Clean Water Act's sewage discharge guidelines in
November 2003. Its proposal would allow states to issue permits and regulate
treatment facilities that already are discharging partially treated wastewater
during system overflows due to heavy rains or snowmelts. The EPA has yet to
issue its final guidelines, although they're expected soon.
The EPA did not respond to requests for comment on the bill.
Opponents of sewage blending say the practice threatens human health, noting
that some of the partially treated wastewater might contain pathogenic viruses
such as meningitis. They would like the federal government to instead spend more
money to improve treatment facilities to upgrade their capacity for handling
overflows.
"The Clean Water Act says you need to fully treat all sewage unless there are
extreme circumstances," said Mike Shriberg, a spokesman for the Public Interest
Research Group in Michigan or PIRGIM, a consumer advocacy group. "This would
lower the bar for treatment of wastewater across the country."
The Stupak legislation also requires treatment facilities to inform the public
about the size and location of wastewater discharges before they occur.
Representatives for treatment facilities say sewage blending occurs now when
their systems are swamped by runoff from major rainstorms or snowmelts. They
have little choice but to blend or risk accidentally dumping totally untreated
sewage.
"This has been a practice that's gone on for the last three decades," said Adam
Krantz, a spokesman for the Association of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies, which
represents city treatment facilities. "The EPA decided it was time to provide
some consistency to the practice and add a degree of oversight through the state
permit process."
Typically sewage goes through two types of treatment. The primary treatment
removes solids from the wastewater, and the secondary treatment uses
microorganisms to remove pathogens.
During sewage blending, wastewater that has gone through both processes is
merged with discharge that has only gone through primary treatment and been
doused with a disinfectant.
Without the blending process, Krantz said, facilities might not be able to treat
all the sewage traveling through their systems because overflows could swamp the
secondary treatment process and permanently damage it.
But environmentalists say summer beach closings in the Midwest are due, in part,
to facility discharges. Knowing that, city officials should be wary of backing
sewage blending proposals, they say. National associations representing mayors
and cities have backed the EPA's tentative plan.
"(The bill) does not require anyone to do the impossible, just to provide full
treatment whenever it is feasible to do so by investing in solutions that work,
such as cleaning out sewers and reducing infiltration and inflow," said Nancy
Stoner of the Natural Resources Defense Fund, a national environmental group.
The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality objected to the proposed rules
when they were released by the EPA, saying the rules needed to be tougher by
limiting the duration of discharges and allowing them only during severe storm
situations.