Clean Water Advocacy - Newsroom - AMSA in the News
Dischargers Advised to Provide Regulators
With Technical Help in Developing Criteria
OSTON--Municipal and industrial dischargers should work with state and
federal regulators to contribute technical resources in order to ensure that
water quality criteria for nutrients are more technically sound, wastewater
treatment officials said July 18.
Most states are experiencing severe financial difficulties, meaning budgets for
water quality programs are being cut, David Taylor, director of special projects
for the Madison, Wis., Metropolitan Sewerage District, said. While 30 states
have developed nutrient criteria plans, others are still in the process, he
said.
He spoke at an Association of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies conference that
focused on emerging pollutants.
States must develop nutrient criteria and incorporate them into their water
quality standards by the end of 2004, according to EPA.
Several treatment officials questioned the scientific bases being used by some
states and interstate groups to develop nutrient criteria and said not all the
factors affecting the watershed are being considered.
For example, Norman LeBlanc, director of technical services for the Hampton
Roads Sanitation District, said the Environmental Protection Agency is focusing
too much on nutrient control in the Chesapeake Bay as a way to address water
quality problems. Other important factors affecting the water quality are the
declining oyster population, which LeBlanc said has been poorly managed, and the
decreasing numbers of menhaden, a fish that, like the oyster, is a good filter
feeder.
He has been a frequent critic of the efforts to control nutrients in the
Chesapeake Bay, saying recently the science used by EPA to develop "reference
conditions" upon which the criteria documents are based is "abhorrent."
Some advocacy groups argue that the shellfish population is hurting because of
declining amounts of submerged aquatic vegetation, a result of excess nutrient
loads.
In 2000, the Chesapeake Executive Council, consisting of the states in the bay's
watershed, EPA, and the Chesapeake Bay Commission, signed an agreement outlining
how it will restore the bay by 2010. The primary strategy of achieving the water
quality goals is to reduce loadings of nutrients and sediments, according to
information from the EPA Chesapeake Bay Program. Under the strategy, the states
surrounding the bay agree to cut nitrogen pollution by 110 million pounds per
year by 2010.
Clyde Wilbur, a principal engineer with the firm Greeley and Hanson, in Upper
Marlboro, Md., who works with POTWs, said the 2010 goal would be difficult to
meet because "it will take 10 to 20 years to address sediment transport," one of
the major problems affecting the bay.
The Chesapeake Bay Foundation, an environmental group, said agriculture
contributes the largest amount of nutrients to the bay and must reduce its
loadings by half 50 percent to meet the 2010 goal. Wastewater treatment plants
are another significant contributor, the group said.
EPA issued nutrient criteria guidance in 2001 pertaining to estuaries and
coastal waters. Guidance was also published for other types of waterbodies and
for different "ecoregions." The guidance for estuaries and coastal waters set
numeric limits for total phosphorus and total nitrogen as well as response
variables that consider algal biomass and water clarity.
Oxygen Levels, Water Clarity
Clifton Bell, an engineer with the firm Malcolm Pirnie in Newport News, Va.,
said nitrogen and phosphorus are "the wrong causal variables" to use to gauge
restoration efforts. Better indicators, he said, are dissolved oxygen levels and
water clarity, two variables the EPA guidance said could be considered. EPA also
wanted to add measures of chlorophyll a as another variable for the bay, Bell
said.
Criteria were originally developed for dissolved oxygen that Bell said were
unachievable, as originally set. Wastewater utility groups in Maryland and
Virginia began working with the states and EPA to come up with a set of four
designated uses for the bay that vary according to location and depth. The uses
are migratory spawning areas, shallow water habitat, open water habitat, and
deep water habitat, all of which address different types of aquatic life and
require different acceptable levels of dissolved oxygen.
Dissolved oxygen levels in the deepest channel of the bay have historically been
low and can never be brought to the higher levels in the shallower waters, Bell
said.
"The waters John Smith sailed over were pretty low in oxygen," he said.
Criteria were also set for clarity at levels to protect aquatic grasses, he
said. These criteria establish different percentages of light that must be
available depending on whether the area is in freshwater or salt water. Setting
criteria for chlorophyll a is more difficult, Bell said, because of the
difficulty in linking levels of chlorophyll a to a designated use. One problem,
he said, was that as levels of chlorophyll a increase, so do the harmful algae,
such as the blue and green algae. However, increasing chlorophyll a further will
then produce a decline in these algae.
EPA and the states decided it would be more prudent to establish a narrative
criteria for chlorophyll a that was tied to clarity and dissolved oxygen levels,
Bell said.
The water quality criteria developed for the bay were set at more reasonable
levels, he said, in part because of the technical assistance provided by the
dischargers.
Chesapeake Bay Compact
Wilbur said a restoration plan agreed upon in June by the Chesapeake Bay
Compact, composed of officials from the surrounding states, is expected to cost
$1.3 billion annually. The pollution reductions will come from a mix of controls
affecting both nonpoint and point sources with the greatest amount of reductions
needed from the tributaries at top of the bay, including those flowing in from
New York and Pennsylvania.
Different tiers representing varying levels of control on multiple types of
sources were proposed. For example, different levels of control would be imposed
on septic systems. In one scenario, it would be required that 15 percent of the
septic systems would have to be hooked up to a wastewater treatment plant,
Wilbur said.
Wilbur referred to the most stringent tier of controls as "E3," meaning
"everybody everywhere does everything," an option so expensive that an estimate
was not even developed. Most of the implementation of any of the options would
most likely be borne by local governments, he said.
One of the options that would achieve the pollutant reduction goals would have
cost $800 million and involved a "mixed control scenario." However, an option
that generated 1 percent more in benefit and costing 50 percent more was
selected, Wilbur said. This option puts more emphasis on controlling runoff from
nonpoint sources, mostly through the implementation of best management
practices, but also requires additional measures by point sources, he said.