Clean Water Advocacy - Newsroom - NACWA in the News
Lawsuit Alleges EPA Using 'Obsolete' Criteria For Water Quality, Violating Beach Act
The Natural Resources Defense Council sued the Environmental Protection Agency Aug. 3 for allegedly failing to comply with a federal law to protect beach-goers from waterborne disease by continuing to recommend that states use "obsolete" water quality criteria to set standards (Natural Resources Defense Council v. EPA, C.D. Cal., docket number not available, 8/03/06).
The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central
District of California the same day the NRDC released its annual beach survey,
Testing the Waters 2006: A Guide to Water Quality at Vacation Beaches.
Based on EPA's 2005 data from 29 coastal and Great Lakes states and four
territories, the survey found one in four water samples at 200 beaches in 24 of
these states exceeded water quality criteria that EPA set in 1996. In most of
those cases, the beachwater indicated presence of fecal bacteria. States use the
1996 criteria to decide whether to issue an advisory or to close down a beach
due to unsafe pollution levels.
Responding to the lawsuit and survey, Benjamin Grumbles, EPA's assistant
administrator for water, told BNA, "EPA's first priority is to protect public
health and the environment."
"Because of EPA's efforts, the number of beaches monitored has tripled over the
last decade," Grumbles said, alluding to a note in the NRDC survey that
increased detection in beach water pollution was due to increased monitoring.
"EPA is focused on using the best science, as it evolves, to deliver the best
protection possible for beach-goers."
EPA was required under the Beaches Environmental Assessment, Cleanup, and Health
Act of 2000 (BEACH Act; Pub. L. No. 106-284) to study human illnesses caused by
polluted beach water by October 2003 and to promulgate revised water quality
standards by October 2005.
NRDC had filed a notice of intent to sue in May (101 DEN A-13, 5/25/06) .
Revisions 'Decades Away,' Group Says
"The deadline was October 2005 and now it's the summer of 2006 and EPA is
decades away" from revising its criteria, Nancy Stoner, NRDC's clean water
project director, told reporters at an Aug. 3 news conference. "We are now
asking a federal court to order EPA to meet its obligations."
In 1996, EPA established water quality criteria that use a geometric mean
standard (a measure based on a number of samples taken over 30 days) of 35
enterococcus bacteria per 100 milliliters (ml) of water and an instantaneous
(single sample) standard of 104 enterococcus bacteria per 100 ml of water. The
agency-recommended criteria for Great Lakes (fresh) water is a geometric mean of
33 enterococcus bacteria per 100 ml of water and an instantaneous standard of 61
enterococcus bacteria per 100 ml of water.
Some states use both methods to decide whether to issue advisories or closings,
while others use one or the other.
In its lawsuit, NRDC said Congress recognized that these criteria were
"insufficient" to make informed beach decisions because they require beach
managers to use "antiquated" test methods that take 24 to 48 hours to provide
results and do not measure all the risks of waterborne illnesses, including
cryptosporidium and giardia and various other parasites.
Responding to the allegations of outdated test methods, Grumbles said EPA is
working "diligently" in partnership with states to increase public awareness and
improve water quality to make beaches safer for swimming. Also, Grumbles said,
"EPA is developing new technologies to yield faster test results. With the new
tests, local health agencies will be able to act more quickly to provide
important information to protect the health of beach-goers."
Most Sources of Pollution Unknown
Stoner said the current test results take too much time. Meanwhile, swimmers are
exposed to contaminated water that frequently has high levels of fecal bacteria
of unknown origin.
"Two-thirds of the beach closings and advisories were attributed to unknown
reasons," because these communities do not track the sources of contamination,
said Mark Dorfman, NRDC consultant and principal author of the survey. NRDC
called it a disturbing trend.
In the communities that do track sources of beachwater pollution, Stoner said
the most frequent source of beachwater contamination was dirty runoff and
stormwater, which led to 5,334 beach closings and health advisory days in 2005.
Sewage spills and overflows accounted for 898 closing and advisory days during
the same period.
Adam Krantz, managing director for the National Association of Clean Water
Agencies (NACWA), said the survey highlights that "EPA needs to focus on
nonpoint pollution arising from stormwater."
In defense of the wastewater treatment community, Krantz said, "We are the one
community that is regulated with the purpose of making our waters fishable and
swimmable. We are not the cause of the pollution, but the guardians against
pollution."
Krantz also noted that NRDC has worked with NACWA to craft a policy for dealing
with sewage overflows during heavy rainfall.
Stoner acknowledged this in her comments, but she said EPA needs to act quickly
to finalize the "peak-weather" policy, which would allow blending of treated and
partially treated wastewater during heavy rains only when no other alternatives
for dealing with heavy flows of wastewater are available (139 DEN A-11,
07/20/06) .
NRDC's Testing the Waters 2006: A Guide to Water Quality at Vacation Beaches is available at http://www.nrdc.org/water/oceans/ttw/titinx.asp.
By Amena H. Saiyi