Clean Water Advocacy - Newsroom - AMSA in the News
County Backs Partially Treated Sewage Policy
02/20/04
KATHERINE BOUMA
News staff writer
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is considering a policy that would make
it legal to discharge partially treated sewage at times, and Jefferson County is
supporting it.
The policy could help ease Jefferson County's court-ordered and enormously
expensive requirement to clean up area rivers and streams.
A new report by a scientific-environmental group Thursday said the new policy
could lead to sickness, beach closings, increased cost of drinking water
treatment and death.
"Sewage treatment bypasses put the community at risk of potential exposure to
high levels of parasites and other pathogens," the Natural Resources Defense
Council wrote in its report "Swimming in Sewage."
The EPA is considering allowing sewage treatment plants overwhelmed by rainwater
to skip part of their treatment process. The sewage would be chlorinated and
screened to keep out the large masses.
However, requirements would be dropped for dechlorinating it or biologically
treating it to remove bacteria and pathogens, said EPA spokeswoman Cathy
Milbourn.
Then the sewage would be diluted with fully treated waste and poured into a
river or lake. Milbourn said it would meet water pollution permit requirements.
EPA does not require tests for an array of pathogens or bacteria. Instead, it
uses indicators and assumes if those are safe all others are also.
The "Swimming in Sewage" report states that one risk assessment found 1,000-fold
increased risk for the parasitic disease giardiasis, while a sample in Milwaukee
found several spikes in the bacteria E. coli when such "blended" treatment went
on last year.
Tricia Sheets, the Cahaba River Society point person on sewage, said Jefferson
County is depending on the change. "It's what they've hired Washington lobbying
firms to do," she said.
In November, Jefferson County hired Washington lawyer Gary Baise, who is former
chief of staff to the director of the EPA, to try to ease requirements imposed
on the county by the U.S. Clean Water Act. County Commissioner Gary White said
Thursday that Baise was hired to help the county with new requirements that are
coming into effect soon, not to loosen existing rules.
He said he and other county commissioners were unaware of a 13-page January
letter written by two other Washington lawyers on behalf of Jefferson County
asking EPA to consider blending.
The letter was approved by the county attorney and Environmental Services
Director Jack Swann, White later said, at the request of the Association of
Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies.
`Blending made sense'
"It was Jack's opinion that blending made sense and was in the best interest of
the county, and he went forward and did it," said White, who is the commissioner
responsible for overseeing Swann's department.
Across the country, cities and counties have been fighting to end years of
faulty sewage pipes and plants that pollute local water. In Birmingham, a suit
by the Cahaba River Society and others in 1996 required Jefferson County to fix
its pipes and stop raw sewage from overflowing into area rivers and streams.
The "Swimming in Sewage" report states that the blending proposal essentially
would legalize currently illegal practices.
But Milbourn said communities across the country are now unable to meet the
standards and are putting raw sewage into waterways. "We believe this policy
will provide practical solutions while maintaining and improving water quality,"
she said.
Sheets said federal approval of blending would not solve all of Jefferson
County's sewer overflow problems, since most of them occur during dry weather
and the blending proposal applies to overflows during rains.
From January to October of last year, Jefferson County's sewer pipes overflowed
236 times, 131 of them during dry weather, Sheets said. Nearly 1.2 billion
gallons of sewage flowed raw or partially treated into area waterways, according
to her tally of numbers provided by the county.