Clean Water Advocacy - Newsroom - AMSA in the News
No. 176
Wednesday, September 11, 2002 Page A-9
ISSN 1521-9402
News
Water Pollution
EPA Officials Agree With Inspector General On Assessments of Sewer Overflow
Projects
Water officials at the Environmental Protection Agency are in agreement with
a recommendation by the agency's inspector general that midcourse assessments of
combined sewer overflow programs should be cooperative efforts with communities,
an official told BNA Sept. 9.
The EPA Office of Inspector General issued a final report Aug. 26, saying the
agency should work with municipalities to periodically monitor water quality to
ascertain whether CSO projects actually are having a beneficial effect. That was
a change from an earlier draft of the report calling for this midcourse
assessment to be a required aspect of the CSO control policy issued in 1994.
Because the policy was codified through the fiscal year 2001 Consolidated
Appropriations Act (P.L. 106-554), revising it would have taken a long time and
possibly required the agency to go through a rulemaking, an agency official told
BNA.
The OIG report said data on the beneficial impacts of CSO projects are limited
because communities typically only monitor for the frequency, volume, and
duration of an overflow.
EPA does not require CSO monitoring until a project is completed. Thus, the
report said, it is difficult to tell whether the project is a wise investment of
taxpayers' dollars until it is too late.
Examples of CSO control projects include construction of storage control
facilities to hold excess wastewater until it can be treated, expanded
collection systems, and flow-diversion systems.
Working With Communities
Ross Brennan, who works on wet weather issues in the EPA Office of Wastewater
Management, said the agency would like to work with individual communities on
developing CSO projects and conducting midcourse assessments and possible
adjustments to ensure that the projects are worth the investment of taxpayer
dollars. That would be preferable to a policy change requiring mandatory
midcourse reviews.
The IG report, Wastewater Management: Controlling and Abating Combined Sewer
Overflows, said the two biggest barriers to CSO projects are the astronomical
cost and occasional community opposition to the siting of certain CSO
facilities.
"An estimated $44.7 billion is needed nationwide for CSO abatement efforts, and
raising sufficient funding for often expensive projects is obviously a
significant barrier for many communities," the report said.
However, Brennan said most of the IG conclusions and recommendations were
similar to findings the EPA Office of Wastewater Management reached in a report
submitted to Congress in January (21 DEN A-1, 1/31/02 ).
Both reports said communities that have combined sewer systems vary greatly in
terms of the progress they have made in implementing elements of a policy issued
by EPA in 1994 to reduce the number and severity of overflows.
These types of sewer systems, most often found in older cities in the East and
Midwest, combine the flows of both sanitary sewage and stormwater. During wet
weather events, the flow often exceeds capacity, and the system is designed to
release the excess wastewater directly into local waterways without any
treatment to prevent the treatment facility from being overwhelmed.
Uneven Application of Policy
EPA's report to Congress said that while CSO discharges have dropped by 170
billion gallons per year since 1994, more than 1.2 trillion gallons continues to
be released annually into U.S. waters. This is due largely to the uneven
application of that policy.
The inspector general's final report sought to assess what the barriers are to
implementing the policy, provide examples of good CSO practices, and ascertain
what levels of water quality improvements or other outcomes are used to gauge
the success of a CSO project. The CSO policy lays out nine minimum controls
localities should implement along with long-term control plans to reduce
overflows.
The IG report said that despite the funding problems and other barriers, many
localities were finding creative practices to improve operations, lower costs,
and overcome some of the obstacles to implementing the CSO policy. The inspector
general recommended the agency catalogue and disseminate some of these practices
for the benefit of other states and localities.
Brennan said the agency is already working on such a clearinghouse of practices,
and that the 2001 law requires it. The project, however, "is a couple of years
in the future," he said.
Watershed Management Approach
The IG report also urged EPA to encourage states and localities to employ a
watershed management approach to meeting water quality standards. Even if CSOs
are eliminated, the report said, that will not necessarily guarantee that water
quality standards will be met because of other sources of contamination.
Greg Shaner, who works on wet weather issues for the Association of Metropolitan
Sewerage Agencies, said the report was consistent with and referenced findings
from some of that association's research.
Regarding the high cost of CSO controls, Shaner said a survey of AMSA members
showed that about 37 percent of the money spent on local capital
improvements--including roads and schools--goes to CSO controls in communities
that have combined sewer systems.
AMSA agrees with the IG's findings that addressing CSOs and water quality
benefits should be done on a watershed basis, he said.
The EPA inspector general's report can be found at http://www.epa.gov/oigearth
on the World Wide Web.
By Susan Bruninga