Clean Water Advocacy - Newsroom - NACWA in the News
EPA
rule would allow more partially treated sewage
By JOAN LOWY
Scripps Howard News Service
12-MAY-05
WASHINGTON -- A bipartisan group of U.S. representatives is trying to block
an Environmental Protection Agency proposal that would allow sewage-treatment
plants to release partially treated sewage into waterways.
The lawmakers say they will offer an amendment to a bill containing the EPA's
fiscal 2006 budget, blocking the agency from spending any money on the proposed
policy. The House is expected to take up the bill next week.
"I think (the policy) is unhealthy for our environment and unhealthy for our
citizens," said Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., who is leading the effort. "It is,
quite frankly, a ridiculous proposal."
Recalling a 1993 outbreak in Milwaukee of cryptosporidium _ a waterborne
parasite _ that caused over 100 deaths and 400,000 intestinal illnesses, Stupak
asked: "Why would you want to go back to that?"
Under the Clean Water Act, plants are only permitted to release partially
treated sewage during extreme weather events when it's not feasible to fully
treat the sewage.
Several years ago, EPA officials in some parts of the country demanded that
sewage-treatment operators show they don't have feasible alternatives to
releasing partially treated sewage, such as building extra storage tanks,
applying new technologies and fixing or upgrading pipes.
EPA's proposed policy change would allow treatment plants to release partially
treated sewage virtually any time it rains, rather than only during extreme
weather events like hurricanes, said Nancy Stoner, clean-water director at the
Natural Resources Defense Council, a national environmental group.
Under the "blending policy," sewer operators remove solids from sewage, but
could skip secondary treatment during which bacteria, viruses and parasites are
removed. The partially treated sewage would be mixed with fully treated sewage
and released.
Operators of sewage-treatment facilities say blending is a necessary practice
common during wet weather when water washes into sewers and seeps through cracks
in pipes, overwhelming treatment plants.
Eliminating blending would place a financial burden on " thousands of
communities that blend as their way of providing the greatest treatment possible
in wet weather," said Alexandra Dunn, general counsel for the National
Association of Clean Water Agencies, a trade association for municipal
sewage-treatment operators.
The policy change would also benefit builders and developers, allowing local
governments in fast-growing areas to lift moratoriums on new sewer hookups or
lower their fees.
"Everyone lives downstream of somebody's sewage treatment," Stoner said. "So we
all face a threat to our health, economy and environment if EPA lets wastewater
plants routinely discharge largely untreated sewage into our lakes, rivers and
streams."
A study by scientists at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health found that
most illnesses from waterborne pathogens coincide with heavy rainstorms.
In addition to blending, the EPA estimates that more than 850 billion gallons of
completely untreated sewage escapes from aging and inadequate sewage pipes every
year before it even reaches treatment plants.
The EPA estimates the cost of eliminating sewage overflows and the need for
blending at about $130 billion. Sewage-treatment agencies put the cost at about
$200 billion.