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Water Pollution
Members of Congress Consider Legislation
If Policy on Blending of Sewage Is Adopted
Several members of Congress are considering legislative action if the
Environmental Protection Agency issues a final policy allowing wastewater
treatment plants to release partially treated sewage that has been combined with
treated effluent, the spokeswoman for one member said Feb. 24.
A bipartisan group of 135 members of the House of Representatives, led by Reps.
Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), Clay Shaw (R-Fla.), and Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), sent a
letter to Acting EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson Feb. 22, urging the agency to
shelve the draft policy because they said it would "worsen the nation's water
quality."
EPA released a draft policy in November 2003 intended to clarify a policy on
when publicly owned treatment works may employ "blending" during storms.
Blending involves routing stormwater around the secondary or biological
treatment system and recombining it with treated effluents before releasing it
into the environment (68 Fed. Reg. 63,042; 213 DEN A-13, 11/4/03 ).
The Clean Water Act requires wastewater discharges from sewage treatment plants
to be treated to secondary standards, which involves a biological treatment
process to remove biochemical oxygen demand compounds.
EPA received 98,000 comments, most of them opposed to the draft policy.
The letter from the members of Congress said the blending policy would violate
the Clean Water Act prohibition against bypassing any part of the treatment
process.
"We understand the nature of the problem of excessive solids and disruption of
the biological treatment stage during periods of heavy inflow of water into the
collection system," the letter said. "It is unacceptable, however, to use sewage
blending during rain events as a bandage to cover these infrastructure
shortfalls."
Pallone's spokeswoman told BNA several members have discussed a possible
legislative fix to reverse the policy depending on what EPA releases in final
form. However, she said it was too early to say what the legislation would look
like since EPA has not decided whether to move forward with the policy.
Funding for Wastewater Infrastructure
The Feb. 22 letter further recommended increased funding to pay for water and
wastewater infrastructure upgrades.
"We also urge the EPA to ask the Office of Management and Budget to provide
substantial additional funding for sewage treatment upgrades through the Clean
Water State Revolving Fund, as recommended by the U.S. Commission on Ocean
Policy," the lawmakers wrote in their letter. "These upgrades include the
construction of additional capacity and short-term storage until the sewage can
be fully treated."
The Association of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies, which represents large
publicly owned treatment works, has said EPA needs to clarify when blending is
allowed because the agency does not have a consistent policy. The association
has said treatment plants have used blending for decades as a way to prevent
excess flows from overwhelming the secondary, or biological, treatment system. A
prohibition on blending could result in treatment plants releasing untreated
sewage into rivers and streams if the biological system is overwhelmed (29 DEN
A-2, 2/13/04 ).
The Association of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies also has called on Congress to
establish a trust fund to help pay for infrastructure upgrades (26 DEN A-2,
2/9/05 ).