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EPA To Ease Sewage Treatment Rules
By Peter Eisler, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration is shifting policy so cities and towns can skip a required treatment procedure for sewage they pump into rivers, lakes and coastal waters during high rains.
The change aims to settle years of disputes over how municipal sewage plants
handle the increased flow of waste — mainly storm runoff — that comes during wet
weather. At issue is whether local governments should have to spend billions of
tax dollars upgrading those plants so peak flows of sewage can get all the
sanitary treatment that federal law demands in normal conditions.
The administration's plan would let hundreds of communities big and small escape
that expense by partially treating sewage surges in big storms. Environmental
groups and some federal regulators say those flows should be treated completely
to keep disease-carrying microbes out of recreational waters.
The Environmental Protection Agency plans to propose the policy change this
week, and there will be 60 days for public comment before it can be finalized.
USA TODAY obtained a copy of the initiative.
"We've been pushing hard for a national policy on this," says Ken Kirk of the
Association of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies, which represents public treatment
plants. There has been "a lot of confusion" over how much treatment is required
for sewage surges in wet weather, he says. If the EPA required full treatment,
"it would have been very costly for a lot of communities."
Federal law normally requires that sewage treatment plants send waste through a
series of cleaning steps. First, solids are separated and removed. The sewage
then goes through "biological treatment," where living organisms break down
remaining solids and kill bacteria. Typically, the waste also is treated with
disinfectants to meet sanitary standards before it is discharged, usually into
waterways.
But the heavy flows of wastewater that come in wet weather often exceed the
capacity of plants' biological treatment. Many plants divert peak flows around
the second treatment step. After some disinfection, the diverted waste is
blended with fully treated sewage before it is released.
The EPA's new policy would permit blending and say that blended waste still must
meet normal discharge standards, including limits on bacterial content and
clarity.
But "those standards don't cover viruses or parasites ... and those are the
contaminants that don't get removed if you skip biological treatment," says
Nancy Stoner of the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group
that wants more federal aid to help communities increase sewage plant capacity.
Blending "will put more of those contaminants in water supplies."
Industry surveys suggest 20%-50% of the nation's 19,000 public sewage plants
blend waste in wet weather. Some of the EPA's 10 regional offices allow
blending, but several have fined communities for doing it.