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Great Lakes
Sewage Treatment Plants Need to Improve Public Notification of
Spills, Group Reports
Wastewater treatment plant operators need to do a better job of notifying the
public of sewage spills that contaminate local waterways in the Great Lakes
region, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group said in a report released May
26.
The report, Sewage Warning! What the Public Doesn't Know about Sewage Dumping in
the Great Lakes, graded the states in the Great Lakes area based on the strength
of their public notification requirements with Michigan ranking the highest and
Ohio the lowest.
"Despite the known risks associated with sewage dumping, citizens in the Great
Lakes are often not told when sewage is being dumped," the report said.
Sewage dumping in the report refers to overflows from sanitary sewer systems and
from combined sanitary and stormwater systems. The report also defines dumping
as the blending of effluent during wet weather, where partially treated sewage
is combined with fully treated wastewater to keep the treatment plant from being
inundated.
Overflows and blending cause contaminants, especially pathogens, to be released
in the receiving waters and can possibly threaten human health, the report said.
While the report estimated 7 million cases of illness associated with waterborne
contamination, the Environmental Protection Agency has said the number of
illnesses is not known because of a lack of data. The agency, in its 2004 report
to Congress on the impacts of combined and sanitary sewer overflows, estimated
the number of illnesses at between 3,448 and 5,576 annually.
Michigan got the highest grade because state law requires all wastewater system
operators to report spills within 24 hours to a major local newspaper, county or
regional health departments, downstream communities, and the Michigan Department
of Environmental Quality, the report said.
"If the discharge poses a public health threat, the health department issues a
public health advisory to notify people of the dangers associated with water
contact," PIRG said.
Ohio Gets Lowest Grade
Ohio got the lowest grade, a D-, because the reporting requirements are variable
and do not impose mandates or penalties if the requirements are not followed,
the report said.
PIRG pointed out that the Clean Water Act calls for eliminating sewage spills or
requiring that they be permitted. For combined sewer overflows, EPA has a policy
that was codified in 2000 requiring communities to implement nine minimum
controls to reduce the frequency and magnitude of spills. One of the controls is
a public notification requirement that PIRG said treatment plants routinely
ignore.
States are charged with establishing notification requirements, state and local
officials said May 26. For communities with combined sewers, these requirements
may be imposed as part of the long-term controls plans to reduce overflows.
In Ohio, which has 100 CSO communities, 49 have plans that involve separating
the stormwater and sanitary sewer lines to curb spills, Linda Fee Oros, a
spokeswoman for Ohio EPA, told BNA. The other communities are in negotiations to
develop long-term control plans.
The state requires public notification of spills, she said, but leaves it up to
the community to decide how that is done. The state experimented with real-time
monitoring and notification, but found the process to be "very expensive" while
producing inaccurate data, she said.
Michigan, which has real-time reporting, the PIRG report said, also has
implementation problems with its program. Much of this is associated with having
the staff available to collect the data and post it, Oros said.
Ohio EPA would rather have communities use their money for upgrading treatment
plants than for monitoring systems that may not produce the best return on
investment, she said.
Notification Becoming More Prevalent
Adam Krantz, a spokesman for the National Association of Clean Water Agencies,
which represents large municipal treatment plants, said there are increasing
requirements at the state level to report overflows and that notification is
becoming more prevalent.
Regarding sanitary sewer overflows, EPA needs to issue a consistent policy on
how to address them, Krantz said. Such a policy may spell out what the public
notification requirements are.
"A consistent policy would take it out of the permit writer's and state level
hands and ensure consistency from agency to agency," he said.
The PIRG report, Sewage Warning! What the Public Doesn't Know about Sewage
Dumping in the Great Lakes, is available at
http://www.uspirg.org.