Clean Water Advocacy - Newsroom - AMSA in the News
Ban on Mixing Partially Treated Sewage With Treated Discharges Sought Under Bill
A bill that would prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from issuing a
policy allowing sewage treatment plants to combine partially treated wastewater
with treated flows before releasing it to the environment was introduced in the
House March 3.
Reps. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), Clay Shaw (R-Fla.), and
Mark Steven Kirk (R-Ill.) introduced the bill that would ban the practice known
as blending, whereby excess stormwater flows are routed around the secondary
treatment process and combined with treated flows before being discharged.
EPA issued for comment a draft policy in November 2003 designed to clarify under
which circumstances blending should be allowed (213 DEN A-13, 11/4/03 ).
The draft received 98,000 comments, most of them negative.
Municipalities and the operators of their treatment plants say they have used
blending for decades as a way to prevent the secondary, or biological, treatment
process from being washed out when stormwater flows exceed their capacity to
treat them. The resulting discharges still meet the secondary treatment
standards required under the Clean Water Act, officials from EPA and the
Association of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies (AMSA) have said.
Environmental organizations say the practice violates the Clean Water Act's
prohibition on bypasses and allows high levels of pathogens, metals, and other
pollutants to contaminate rivers, lakes, and estuaries when it rains. Moreover,
they said, if treatment operators did a better job of maintaining their systems
including keeping sewage pipes free of debris, they would increase their
capacity and reduce the need to blend.
Ban on Blending in Most Cases
Titled the Save Our Waters From Sewage Act of 2005, the bill, introduced at a
news conference, would ban blending except in extreme circumstances such as
heavy storms or to prevent a loss of life.
In situations where blending cannot be avoided, Stupak said, the treatment plant
would have to give notice beforehand and afterwards and then provide the
permitting authority a report on the reason blending was used, how long it
lasted, and what steps have been taken to reduce or eliminate the need for
blending in the future.
EPA's draft policy lays out the steps treatment operators must take in order to
blend. The treatment plant would have to:
meet all the conditions of the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System
permit, including secondary treatment standards and any other requirements
imposed by the permitting authority;
lay out in its permit application the treatment scheme that will be used to
manage these flows, including design capacity and application of generally
accepted practices;
ensure that flows routed around the biological treatment process be provided
with primary treatment, which essentially involves solids removal;
operate the facility in accordance to the plan laid out in the permit
application;
continue to appropriately operate and maintain the collection system; and
increase monitoring and data collection during blending events to assess the
impacts on the receiving waters.
Stupak said the draft policy would allow blending during a wet weather
occurrence.
"What is a wet weather occurrence?" he said. "EPA has gone too far with this,
and there has not been enough enforcement."
Not Just an East Coast Issue
Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.) also supports the bill and said the blending issue
is not just one that affects the East Coast. She said one of the cities in her
Northern California district strongly backs the EPA draft policy.
"My message to you is control your growth," she said. "You can't just grow,
grow, grow and not consider the impacts to the environment."
The bill sponsors were joined by environmental activists who have been vocal in
their opposition to the blending policy. They criticized the Bush administration
for proposing to cut the clean water state revolving fund from the $1.35 billion
level appropriated since fiscal year 1997 to $730 million in fiscal 2006.
However, Congress also approved cutting the fund to $1.1 billion in fiscal 2005.
AMSA officials have said that if blending were banned, cities would have to
spend billions of dollars to upgrade their treatment plants to create the needed
storage capacity. These costs would be borne by the ratepayers if the federal
government does not provide more money for infrastructure upgrades and
expansion.
Survey Shows Support for More Funding
AMSA and several environmental groups, including the Natural Resources Defense
Council, want Congress to set up a trust fund to help cover the costs of
infrastructure improvements, and AMSA drafted legislation for such a plan.
Stupak said he would support a trust fund.
Meanwhile, on March 3, AMSA released the results of a survey showing a majority
of those polled support a greater federal commitment to pay for clean water.
Of the 900 adults polled by Luntz Research Cos. and Penn, Schoen & Berland
Associates, 91 percent said that if the U.S. taxpayers "are willing to invest
over $30 billion dollars a year on highways and more than $8 billion a year on
our airways, we certainly should be willing to make the necessary investments in
our nation's rivers, lakes, and oceans."
Moreover, voters do not see the issue of clean water and the infrastructure
needed to clean it up as "a local issue," but rather a "national issue that
requires a national solution," the polling groups said.
By Susan Bruninga