Clean Water Advocacy - Newsroom - AMSA in the News
Blending is a respected way to safeguard health
Letter to the Editor
Ken Kirk
Washington, D.C.
Your Feb. 18 editorial "Flush this plan down the drain," calling into question
the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's stance on blending (routing overflow
at wastewater treatment plants around secondary treatment while still meeting
permit limits), missed the mark on this key practice.
Blending has been an accepted, environmentally beneficial practice for
wastewater treatment plants nationwide for decades. A reading of the
Environmental Protection Agency's Nov. 7 guidance on this issue would have
revealed that, according to the EPA, blending is a critical environmental and
public health safeguard.
As EPA states, blending ensures that peak flows during periods of heavy rain receive basic treatment in full compliance with a treatment plant's Clean Water Act permit requirements. Blending protects a plant's secondary treatment unit from wash-out, which would cause severe environmental and public health consequences. Blending also protects homes and businesses from sewer backups, which would directly threaten public health.
The Association of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies urges responsible newspapers like The Times and groups like the Lake Michigan Federation and Save the Dunes Council to review the reasons behind the need for blending peak flows as well as the dangerous consequences that could ensue without blending.
Ken Kirk
Executive director, Association of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies, Washington,
D.C.
Flush this plan down the drain
Northwest Indiana Times, 2-18-04
The issue: Proposed EPA policy on sewage treatment
Our opinion: The agency needs to back-pedal fast and focus on expanding plants'
capacity instead.
Perhaps the U.S. EPA has forgotten it is supposed to be the Environmental
Protection Agency. How else can its proposal to allow wastewater to bypass the
secondary treatment process be explained?
The way it's supposed to work, water from a kitchen sink, bathtub or toilet is
sent to the sewage treatment plant, where it undergoes a series of processes to
make the water drinkable again.
The first state, known as primary treatment, aims to collect the solids for
disposal. If that's all the plant does, the water then is chlorinated and
released into streams and rivers.
Secondary treatment removes organic materials and nutrients. Tertiary treatment
can be done to clean the water even more, removing things like phosphorous and
nitrogen. Chlorine then kills any remaining bacteria.
That's how it's supposed to work. But sewage treatment plants often can't keep
pace with all the water sent their way. Rain and melting snow can add to the
plant's volume in areas -- and there are many here in the region -- where storm
sewers and the oddly named sanitary sewers aren't separated.
It has long been a dream of environmentalists to separate these sewers or expand
treatment plants so untreated water isn't released into the streams -- and thus
ultimately back into our drinking water supply. Congress even is considering
legislation that would help this cause.
But now the Bush administration is proposing to let sewage treatment plants
divert sewage from the secondary treatment process if the plant's capacity is
exceeded during wet weather.
Perhaps the EPA has forgotten about all the beach closings that result from
polluted water in Lake Michigan. Perhaps it doesn't realize, as the Lake
Michigan Federation, Save the Dunes Council, Grand Calumet River Task Force and
a number of other environmental organizations do, that not all sewage treatment
plants disinfect water. Chicago's plants, for example, do not.
What's the incentive to increase plants' capacity if the operators get an
automatic pass from the EPA to bypass the regulations whenever it rains or even
when snow melts?
The EPA proposal stinks. The agency needs to back-pedal fast and focus on
expanding plants' capacity instead.
Your opinion, please
What do you think of the U.S. EPA proposal to allow sewage treatment plants to
release excess water into rivers and lakes before the plant finishes its
treatment process?