Clean Water Advocacy - Newsroom - NACWA in the News
Lack of Resources Reduces Sampling Size For Update of Wastewater Treatment Study
NEW ORLEANS--For a major study of the effectiveness of wastewater treatment processes, the Environmental Protection Agency will review fewer than half of the plants it had planned to examine a year ago because it lacks sufficient funds, an agency official said Oct. 4.
"We will sample approximately 20 [publicly owned treatment works] over multiple years " rather than 50 wastewater treatment plants when the agency updates its 25-year-old study of treatment processes, Mary Smith, director of EPA's engineering and analysis division within the Office of Water, said.
Speaking at the 2006 National Pretreatment & Pollution Prevention Workshop, Smith told participants that she did not know how much money Congress would appropriate for EPA in fiscal year 2007 and how much money will be available to conduct as extensive a review as the agency had announced at the same conference a year earlier.
At that conference, EPA had said the update would go beyond the
1982 study, which the agency has been using as a basis for developing standards
to regulate industrial discharges.
The goal of the update is still to go beyond the 1982 study of 50 publicly owned
treatment works (POTWs), which assessed the ability of secondary treatment
processes at each facility to remove 129 priority toxic pollutants, Smith told
participants at the workshop organized by the National Association of Clean
Water Agencies.
NACWA, which represents sewage treatment plants, has been pressing EPA to update
its study.
'More Manageable' Number of Chemicals
The current study not only will examine how effective existing secondary and
advanced treatment processes are at removing chemicals of interest, she said. It
also will establish a baseline for current concentrations of pollutants that
enter and exit a POTW wastewater treatment plant across various regions of the
United States, Smith explained.
A baseline of wastewater characteristics enables EPA to assess the capacity of a
POTW to handle additional pollutant levels.
EPA initially had identified roughly 680 chemicals to be reviewed as part of
this study. These chemicals included those listed as priority pollutants and
"emerging pollutants" such as medicines, detergents, endocrine-disrupting
chemicals and brominated flame retardants, as well as pesticides, herbicides,
and dioxins that are showing up in industrial discharges.
Smith said the list of chemicals in this update would be limited to a "more
manageable number now," but she could not say exactly how many chemicals would
be studied. Still, the agency will not compromise the integrity of its study,
even though it will be working with fewer than 680 chemicals of interest and
fewer sewage plants, she added.
In fiscal year 2006, which ended Sept. 30, EPA visited wastewater treatment
plants in Illinois, Wisconsin, Missouri, Illinois, and Michigan a total of eight
times, Smith said. Over the course of FY 2007, EPA will collect a variety of
samples from the 20 POTWs, ranging from single samples to those collected over a
four-day period, she said
Trade Group to Conduct Parallel Effort
During the workshop, Martie Groome, vice chairman of NACWA's pretreatment and
pollution prevention committee, likened the 1982 study data to the "polyester
fashions" of the 1970s.
"Most of us are not wearing polyester anymore, but we are still using this data
that is over 25 years old," said Groome, who also is the laboratory and
industrial waste section supervisor for the City of Greensboro, N.C.
For instance, Groome noted that the removal rates of mercury from wastewater at
one Greensboro plant was calculated to be 67 percent based on the 1982 study,
when the actual removal rate is closer to 97 percent.
On behalf of NACWA, Groome once again urged POTW representatives to voluntarily
share wastewater treatment data with EPA to ensure an accurate picture of
wastewater treatment emerges. Better still, NACWA will conduct its own study of
wastewater treatment plants based on quality controls and assurances provided by
EPA to maintain the scientific integrity of the data, he said.
NACWA's parallel efforts to study treatment plants, she said, would "complement"
EPA efforts and possibly "supplement the data" that the agency cannot obtain
because of limited funds.
During the workshop, NACWA staff members distributed a two-page questionnaire to
each participant, seeking their opinion on whether their POTW would participate
in a NACWA-initiated study of wastewater treatment processes.
By Amena H. Saiyid