Clean Water Advocacy - Newsroom - NACWA in the News
62 Percent of Large Treatment Facilities Violated Discharge Permits, U.S. PIRG Says
Nearly 62 percent of all U.S. major industrial and municipal facilities violated the Clean Water Act at least once during an 18-month period, according to a report released by a public interest group March 23.
The average facility in violation discharged pollution in excess
of its permit limit by almost four times the legal limit, according to Troubled
Waters, a report from the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG)
analyzing Clean Water Act compliance from July 2003 through December 2004.
"Polluters are using America's waters as their dumping ground," Christy Leavitt,
clean water advocate for U.S. PIRG, said in a statement.
The report analyzes all major facilities that allegedly violated their Clean
Water Act permits between July 1, 2003, and Dec. 31, 2004, using data gathered
in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.
The report also reveals the types of pollutants that are discharged into
waterways, and it details the extent to which each of these utilities is
exceeding its permit levels.
The 3,700 major facilities exceeding their permit limits reported more than
29,000 exceedances of their National Pollution Discharge Elimination System
permits under the Clean Water Act, according to the report.
The 10 states that allowed the most exceedances of Clean Water Act permits
between July 1, 2003, and Dec. 31, 2004, are Ohio, Texas, New York,
Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Tennessee, Indiana, West Virginia, Massachusetts, and
Illinois, the report said.
The states that allowed exceedances of at least 500 percent are Ohio, Indiana,
Pennsylvania, New York, Tennessee, Texas, and Massachusetts, according to U.S.
PIRG.
The report recommended increased funding for the Environmental Protection Agency
and to allow the agency to "put more environmental cops on the beat to identify
and punish polluters." It also recommended full funding of the Clean Water Act
State Revolving Fund to help communities upgrade their sewer systems.
Leavitt told BNA that PIRG did not look at federal enforcement actions in its
study. However, a 2003 Knight Ridder analysis of 15 years of environmental
enforcement records found that in its first three years, the Bush administration
caught and punished far fewer polluters than the two previous administrations,
she said.
PIRG issued its last Troubled Waters report on Clean Water Act compliance in
2004, but that report and the most recent one cannot be compared for
observations or trends because PIRG looked at different state data in the two
reports, Leavitt said. Additionally, the 2004 report looked at data on
concentrated minimum limits, whereas the 2006 report did not, she said.
Finger-Pointing Not Productive
Adam Krantz, managing director of government and public affairs for the National
Association of Clean Water Agencies, told BNA that although he had not read the
report, "from looking at the press release, it looks like the same repackaged,
updated report they do every year or so."
"Utilities have done an incredible amount of work over the past 30 years to
clean up the nation's waters," he said. "There remains work to be done--there's
no doubt about it."
As the "prime movers actually doing the work under the Clean Water Act,"
utilities are spending billions of dollars every year to address issues such as
wet weather flows and overflows, Krantz said. Water quality is improving every
year through consent decrees and voluntary initiatives taken by utilities, he
said.
"Instead of pointing fingers at each other, we need to work with the 'activist
community' to develop meaningful solutions to clean up the nation's waters," he
said.
A prime example of what can be accomplished through such cooperation is joint
guidance on peak wet weather flow management developed jointly by NACWA and the
Natural Resources Defense Council in October 2005, he said (208 DEN A-1,
10/28/05 ).
Working together, the two organizations managed to find an acceptable solution
for utilities to blend treated and partially treated wastewater during heavy
rains, he said. EPA had been unable to find a solution acceptable to utilities
and environmental groups and was forced to withdraw it previous draft policy (97
DEN A-1, 05/20/05 ).
EPA reproposed a rule based on the joint guidance Dec. 15, 2005, and is expected
to finalize the rule this year, Krantz said.
Although wastewater utilities and environmental, conservation, and public
interest groups all agree on the need for more federal funding for water
projects, "we still need to find common ground on how to get the federal
government back involved to where it was in the initial years of the Clean Water
Act," he said.
EPA Says Enforcement Strong
"Strong enforcement of the Clean Water Act continues to be a priority for EPA,"
agency spokesman Dave Ryan told BNA in response to the report. "Our recent
record of Clean Water Act cases reflects a strong and vigorous enforcement
effort. As a result of EPA enforcement actions in 2004 and 2005, over 7 million
pounds of water pollution were reduced or treated," he said.
Ryan said companies will invest an estimated $8 billion over an unspecified
period of time in pollution control measures as a result of EPA's enforcement
actions.
The report, Troubled Waters, is available at
http://uspirg.org/reports/troubledwaters06.pdf.