Clean Water Advocacy - Newsroom - NACWA in the News
Aging Sewer Systems Fouling Great Lakes
10:00 PM EST May 17, 2005
Associated Press
Sewage is fouling the Great Lakes and other waters in the region because many
municipal waste treatment systems are failing to stop overflows, environmental
groups said in a report Tuesday.
Most municipal systems in six Great Lakes states that combine stormwater with
domestic and industrial sewage haven't met minimum federal standards for
preventing such discharges, nor have they received approval for long-term plans
to control overflows, the report said.
The situation poses a health hazard that could get worse under Bush
administration proposals to slash funding for wastewater system upgrades and to
let sewage plants skip some stages of treatment during heavy rains or melting
snow, environmentalists said.
"Combined sewer overflows are a major threat to water quality in the Great Lakes
states," said Michele Merkel, counsel to the Environmental Integrity Project, a
nonprofit research and advocacy organization in Washington, D.C., that conducted
the study.
The findings were based on data compiled by the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency and state agencies in Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and
Wisconsin.
Together, they have 358 municipalities with federal permits for combined sewers,
which use the same collection system for moving stormwater and raw sewage to
treatment plants. When the systems overflow during storms, contaminated water is
dumped into lakes, rivers and oceans - about 850 billion gallons nationwide each
year.
The pollution ranges from bacteria, viruses and parasites to metals such as
mercury and lead, said Cheryl Nenn of the group Friends of Milwaukee's Rivers.
The Great Lakes region has nearly half of the nation's 828 combined sewage
systems, which tend to be located in older cities. Most newer systems keep
sewage and stormwater separate.
The federal Clean Water Act required communities with combined sewers to take
nine steps by 1997, including upgrading maintenance and operations, improving
storage capacity and doing better at notifying the public about overflows.
Also required were long-term plans for reducing overflows by doing things such
as upgrading infrastructure to separate collection systems.
About 62 percent of the communities have failed to take the nine steps, which
the report describes as minimum efforts. About 54 percent haven't secured state
approval of long-term plans and 22 percent have yet to submit plans to their
states, the report said.
Only Michigan and Indiana require immediate reporting of overflows, and
government agencies across the region do poorly at inspecting combined sewer
systems and punishing violations of federal rules, it said.
Lack of money is the biggest reason cities haven't moved more quickly on sewer
upgrades, said Joe Fivas, transportation and environmental affairs manager for
the Michigan Municipal League.
"The reality is they are underfunded and don't have the resources to have
Cadillac systems," Fivas said.
In a telephone news conference, environmentalists said some of the required
steps wouldn't be very costly. But they criticized the Bush administration's
proposal to cut a federal loan program for upgrading treatment plants from $1.09
billion this year to $730 million in fiscal 2006.
They also urged the EPA not to give municipalities greater freedom to blend
fully and partially treated sewage during peak flow periods. The agency has been
considering a blending policy since 2003 but has made no decision, EPA spokesman
Dale Kemery said.
"Blending lowers the bar for wastewater treatment," said Mike Sriberg, Great
Lakes advocate for the Public Interest Research Group. "What we need is full
treatment of waste."
The National Association of Clean Water Agencies, which represents metropolitan
sewage treatment facilities, says blending is "an accepted, environmentally
sound practice used by the nation's public treatment utilities for over 30
years."
U.S. Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Menominee, Mich., will offer an amendment to a spending
bill this week that would block the EPA from allowing blending except during
extreme weather conditions, a spokeswoman said.