Clean Water Advocacy - Newsroom - AMSA in the News
EPA DATA SUGGEST DECLINE IN FREQUENCY OF SANITARY SEWER OVERFLOWS
Date: February 9, 2004 -
SANTA MONICA, CA -- EPA is indicating to wastewater treatment officials that new
data show a recent decline in sanitary sewer overflows (SSOs), which makes it
more unlikely the data will be used to advocate strict regulations governing
SSOs, a publicly owned treatment works (POTW) source says.
News of the data showing a decline in the number of SSOs is coming as the
Association of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies (AMSA) is preparing a response to
an upcoming EPA report to Congress on combined sewer overflows (CSOs) and SSOs
that will emphasize the group's view that sewer overflows are localized events
that do not require strict federal regulation. Sanitary sewers are designed to
handle only sewage and wastewater discharges, whereas combined sewers also
handle stormwater discharges.
An AMSA official says the group is currently working on its report, which it
plans to release this spring to coincide with the release of EPA's Report to
Congress on the Impacts and Controls of Combined Sewer Overflows and Sanitary
Sewer Overflows. At least one environmental group
-- the Environmental Integrity Project -- also is preparing a report to
accompany the EPA and AMSA reports.
EPA is preparing a CSO/SSO report in response to a congressional request for
information on overflows that occur at POTWs around the country. The request
from EPA came at the beginning of the Bush administration, shortly after a
Clinton-era rule prohibiting SSOs was proposed. EPA never moved forward with the
regulation, and now the agency is collecting information on SSOs to determine if
a rule is needed.
Some wastewater systems argue that a lack of scientific evidence connecting SSOs
with significant human health effects, which EPA indicated was true this summer
when it presented preliminary findings of its report, should result in a less
stringent rule than would have been promulgated if EPA could draw clearer
conclusions, the AMSA official says.
The SSO rule, which has drawn criticism from both environmentalists and POTWs,
is aimed at reducing overflows that occur during wet weather events from
overtaxed sanitary sewer systems. An SSO rule would include a comprehensive set
of regulations to prevent raw sewage spillage, which occurs when old pipelines
break or overflow in rainy weather, causing untreated sewage to spill into
nearby surface waters.
The SSO rule is a key Clean Water Act issue for wastewater officials and
environmentalists. Activists contend that SSOs can harm public health, but
treatment officials believe an overly stringent rule could impose unacceptable
costs on aging municipal systems for conditions that often cannot be predicted
or avoided.
EPA and AMSA officials say the agency's report will not contain policy
recommendations on a rule, but instead data that could later be used to develop
policy. The AMSA official says EPA is collecting information from at least 18
states that have compiled SSO event records electronically that could be used to
develop national estimates.
Initially AMSA feared that EPA's data from the states on local SSO events would
be used to make unfair national predictions, which could result in a strict SSO
rule. However, an AMSA source says EPA has indicated recently that newer data
have shown that SSO events have decreased over the past few years, which the
source says makes it more unlikely the data would be used to advocate a strict
regulation.
AMSA is preparing its accompanying report, in part, to dispel the idea of using
the data EPA obtained from the states to extrapolate a national policy
recommendation, which an AMSA official says could lead to a rule as strict as
Clinton's "zero-tolerance" policy for SSOs.
Municipal wastewater treatment plant officials say a national SSO policy that
mandates no discharges would impose financial burdens because it would force
them to install costly treatment technology or upgrade their plants to prevent
SSOs. Officials representing POTWs argue that overflows, even outside of extreme
weather, are sometimes inevitable and should be regulated through a permitting
system, rather than an outright ban.
Environmentalists, however, have generally insisted that SSOs should be
prohibited because they can harm human health.
EPA already has a CSO control policy in place, which is why stakeholders are
focusing more closely on the SSO issue in EPA’s upcoming report. EPA adopted a
CSO policy in 1994 to help POTWs establish best management practices for
addressing wet weather events in which wastewater treatment plants received more
effluent than they could treat at one time, causing some of it to overflow.
Treatment plans are in compliance with the CSO policy as long as their overflows
do not violate water quality standards.
The CSO policy is based on a “capacity management operation maintenance�
strategy, which emphasizes a host of short-term goals and suggests a long-term
control plan that POTWs can implement to cut down on CSOs. An AMSA source says
the group hopes Congress and other stakeholders will look to the CSO approach
and make similar recommendations for SSOs when considering a rule.