Clean Water Advocacy - Newsroom - NACWA in the News
Enviros, Wastewater Agencies Agree on Sewage-Laden Storm Water
WASHINGTON, DC, October 27, 2005 (ENS) - Wastewater facilities must upgrade
and repair their leaky sewage systems to protect public health, under a new plan
announced jointly today by a U.S. environmental group and a national wastewater
utility trade association.
The plan is aimed at protecting the public from exposure to inadequately treated
sewage when storms dump large amounts of water into wastewater systems.
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the National Association of
Clean Water Agencies (NACWA) drafted the plan as an alternative to an
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposal that would have allowed
wastewater facilities to discharge untreated sewage into waterways whenever it
rains.
The agency’s so-called "blending" proposal would have let sewer operators
routinely mix incompletely treated sewage with fully treated sewage before
discharging it downstream.
The Clean Water Act allows facilities to release partially treated sewage only
during extreme weather events when it is not possible for a system to fully
treat the entire flow. But the EPA’s proposal would have allowed sewage dumping
even if full treatment were feasible.
The EPA’s proposal only would have required primary treatment, which screens out
solids from sewage.
Environmentalists and citizens groups objected that blending would allow
facilities to bypass the secondary treatment step that removes most of the
viruses, parasites and other pathogens, as well as toxic chemicals, from sewage.
Last April, the EPA encouraged NRDC and NACWA to work together to solve the
problem.
In May, EPA withdrew the proposal just hours before Congress prohibited the
agency from finalizing it, setting the stage for the two groups to devise a
better approach.
“We put our heads together and came up with a workable plan that will protect
public health,” said Nancy Stoner, director of NRDC’s Clean Water Project. “Now
the EPA should endorse it and put it in place.”
Health experts estimate that there are 7.1 million mild-to-moderate cases and
560,000 moderate-to-severe cases of infectious waterborne disease in the United
States every year, some caused by exposure to sewage.
Untreated sewage contains bacteria such as E coli, viruses such as hepatitis A,
protozoa such as cryptosporidium and giardia, and helminth worms.
The pathogens in sewage can cause illnesses ranging from diarrhea and vomiting
and respiratory infections to hepatitis and dysentery. Small children, the
elderly, cancer patients, and others with impaired immune systems are the most
likely to get sick.
Besides the obvious health threat, EPA’s original proposal would have had
serious long-term environmental and economic consequences, said Stoner. More
sewage in waterways would close beaches, kill fish and destroy shellfish beds.
The plan that NRDC and NACWA negotiated would require wastewater facilities to
upgrade and repair their leaky sewage systems to protect public health.
It would require facilities to fully treat sewage unless the EPA and a state
environmental agency determine there is no feasible way to do so.
It also will require facilities to notify the public and environmental agencies
every time they discharge inadequately treated sewage.
“The public must be warned when treatment facilities dump sewage into their
local waterways,” said Stoner. “This plan will make sure that happens.”
The plan also would require EPA to take enforcement actions, including levying
fines and penalties, against sewer authorities that fail to fix their leaky
systems or upgrades their facilities.