Will the US EPA ever do its job, in Florida? (Please click, 'read more')
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: April 13, 2009
Linda Young
llyoung2@earthlink.net
(850) 222.9188
FLORIDA CLEAN WATER NETWORK SUES EPA
FOR FAILURE TO LIST FLORIDA’S POLLUTED WATERS
For the past six years, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has continued to ignore its required duties imposed by the federal Clean Water Act, and Florida’s water quality has suffered for it. But one Tallahassee environmental group, the Florida Clean Water Network, hopes to changes that with a lawsuit, filed April 8, 2009, in federal court.
The suit takes EPA to task for turning a blind eye to Florida DEP’s continued revolt against the federal Clean Water Act. The Clean Water Network of Florida and several other groups previously sued the US EPA twice for allowing Florida to thumb its nose at CWA requirements and won both of those suits. Still, Florida persists in its efforts to redefine what a polluted water is and has continued in its efforts to designate some of Florida’s most troubled waters as “just fine”.
For the past eight years, under the Bush Administration, the US EPA chose to “see no evil” like a bunch of monkeys while Florida’s waters are in a state of rapid decline and in some cases, ecological disfunction,” says Linda Young, director of the Clean Water Network of Florida. “We are very hopeful that this new suit and another one that will be filed this week, will help the Obama EPA get things back on track,” Young said.
Background
When Congress enacted the federal Clean Water Act, it did so with the specific goal to restore and maintain the chemical, physical and biological integrity of our Nation’s waters. The Act contains a number of provisions to protect water quality, including section 303, 33 U.S.C. § 1313. That section directs each state to develop and adopt water quality standards, subject to approval by the EPA. Water quality standards have three general components: (a) the designated use or uses of a water body, such as drinking water supplies, or for fishing and swimming; (b) the water quality criteria necessary to permit the designated use; and (c) an antidegradation policy, intended to protect waters which currently meet or exceed their applicable water quality criteria. Although water quality standards can be expressed in many forms, they must be designed to protect the public health and welfare, and generally enhance the quality of our water.
Water quality standards play an important role in maintaining the integrity of our state’s water bodies. They define the maximum permissible pollution levels which can exist in the water body and still support our daily uses of that water body. The Clean Water Act directs each state to develop a list, named the “303(d) List” after the section in the Act, of those water bodies which do not meet the water quality standards. This 303(d) List is crucial to the process of restoring water quality because waters listed on the 303(d) List will ultimately be subject to more stringent pollution control.
Although the primary responsibility to develop the 303(d) List for the State of Florida lies with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP), EPA is required by the Clean Water Act to remain actively involved. FDEP must submit the 303(d) List to EPA every two years for review and approval. EPA, in turn, must complete its own review of Florida’s water quality, and approve or disapprove the state’s listing decisions. It is this clear obligation which EPA has neglected to perform for nearly six years. Indeed, although FDEP has continued to adopt 303(d) Lists identifying impaired water bodies in Florida, since 2003 EPA has not reviewed, and either approved or disapproved, the lists.
What is the harm to Florida’s water quality? Every two years since 2004, Florida DEP has violated federal law by using its IWR to list and delist polluted waters from the 303(d) list. By DEP’s use of this illegal method of determining what is and is not worthy of better protection from pollution, many Florida waters have been allowed to continue their downward trends with harmful algal blooms being the most prevalent indication of serious problems. In addition to too many nutrients, many Florida waters also are contaminated with dioxin (from papermills), heavy metals, bacteria and other unnatural levels on contaminants.
If successful, the suit will require EPA to conduct its independent review of Florida’s water quality data from 2003 through the present, and make the decision of what waters to put stricter pollution limits on.
“I am hopeful that the US EPA will have its integrity returned and that we will again start seeing our environmental laws taken seriously. It is sad but true that the state of Florida has seriously compromised its ability to protect Floridians from overly polluted water to drink, fish in and swim in. We are now up to our noses in water problems and EPA must step in and get assertive about enforcing federal protections,” Young says.
For more information about the Florida Clean Water Network and its pending lawsuit, please contact Linda Young, (850) 222.9188, llyoung2@earthlink.net.
1 comment:
The goal of the Clean Water Act was (and still is) to eliminate all pollution by 1985 with a technical based regulatory program, starting by demanding ‘secondary treatment’, which was assumed to be 85% treatment. Congress specifically rejected a water quality based program, whereby sewage treatment requirements would be depending on the water quality of receiving water bodies. This, Congress felt, would be easily manipulated by local politicians to avoid better sewage treatment, since the technical based program specifically demanded best available treatment for all sewage treatment.
EPA initiated its NPDES (National Pollution Discharge Elimination System) permit system and set ‘secondary treatment’ standards only for BOD5 ( Biochemical Oxygen Demand after 5 days), TSS (Total Suspended Solids), pH and E-Coli, thereby using for BOD5 and TSS the 85% treatment requirements. Unfortunately it used the worldwide common 5 day application (BOD5) without realizing that this only represents 40% of the total BOD, which consist out of C-BOD (heterotrophic bacteria feeding carbonaceous, mostly fecal waste) and N-BOD (autotrophic bacteria feeding on nitrogenous, mostly urine and protein waste).
Since it was assumed (in 1920 when the test was developed) that the BOD5 test reading only represented the C-BOD5, many permit holders in the seventies were penalized for violating their permits, while proper testing showed that most such treatment plants were penalized for treating their sewage better than was required, since most of their exceeding BOD5 test reading represented N-BOD, which was not regulated.
In 1984, EPA acknowledged the problems with the test, but in stead of correcting the test it allowed the addition of a special chemical to test, killing only the autotrophic bacteria and while this prevented permit holder from violating their NPDES permits, EPA never explained why it not only ignored part of the C-BOD, but all the N-BOD, while nitrogenous waste not only exerts an oxygen demand, but also is a fertilizer for algae growth and thus contributes to eutrophication often resulting in red tides and dead zones.
To cover up its mistake, EPA initiate the TMDL (Total Maximum Daily Load) program, while this clearly violates the ‘technical based’ requirements of the Clean Water Act, as this would set sewage treatment requirements based on the water quality of receiving water bodies.
While it still is not possible to evaluate the real treatment performances of sewage treatment plants and what their effluent waste loadings are on receiving water bodies, it is also very likely that sewage treatment plants are designed to treat the wrong waste, as now has been tested in some locations in Illinois, California and Utah.
Sadly all this still does not seem to convince EPA that correcting this test is essential, while even the fear that this would increase the cost of sewage treatment, does not exist. Sewage treatment for both C-BOD and N-BOD and actual also nitrate and phosphorus reduction has been available since 1948 and actually is less costly than the sewage treatment process still is applied, which really only was designed mostly to combat odors.
IF in the past this essential test had been applied properly, engineers would have been able to perform the proper cost/benefit analysis and there is no doubt that Dr. Pasveer’s 1948 development of the oxidation ditch would have even been more applied than it already is now. This and the fact that the environmental industrial complex prefers the status quo, is well explained by what people at EPA’s head quarter told a water attorney of the record in a 1987 High Country News article, that this test and regulations should be corrected, but that this was impossible because it would require a re-education and even a re-tooling of an entire industry, who now is in control of all the projects.
Fortunate for this industry, EPA and State organizations, this issue appears to be too technical for the media to understand, so none of the representatives in Washington will demand that the EPA to implement the CWA as intended and promised. Even the fact that rivers still are used as urinals does not seem to bother anybody.
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