[House Hearing, 109 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
WASTEWATER BLENDING
=======================================================================
(109-10)
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON
WATER RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON
TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
APRIL 13, 2005
__________
Printed for the use of the
Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure
____
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21-631 WASHINGTON : 2005
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COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE
DON YOUNG, Alaska, Chairman
THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin, Vice- JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota
Chair NICK J. RAHALL, II, West Virginia
SHERWOOD L. BOEHLERT, New York PETER A. DeFAZIO, Oregon
HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
WAYNE T. GILCHREST, Maryland Columbia
JOHN L. MICA, Florida JERROLD NADLER, New York
PETER HOEKSTRA, Michigan ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey
VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan CORRINE BROWN, Florida
SPENCER BACHUS, Alabama BOB FILNER, California
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
SUE W. KELLY, New York GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi
RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana JUANITA MILLENDER-McDONALD,
ROBERT W. NEY, Ohio California
FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
JERRY MORAN, Kansas EARL BLUMENAUER, Oregon
GARY G. MILLER, California ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California
ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina BILL PASCRELL, Jr., New Jersey
ROB SIMMONS, Connecticut LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa
HENRY E. BROWN, Jr., South Carolina TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania
TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois BRIAN BAIRD, Washington
TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania SHELLEY BERKLEY, Nevada
SAM GRAVES, Missouri JIM MATHESON, Utah
MARK R. KENNEDY, Minnesota MICHAEL M. HONDA, California
BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania RICK LARSEN, Washington
JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts
JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania ANTHONY D. WEINER, New York
MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida JULIA CARSON, Indiana
JON C. PORTER, Nevada TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York
TOM OSBORNE, Nebraska MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine
KENNY MARCHANT, Texas LINCOLN DAVIS, Tennessee
MICHAEL E. SODREL, Indiana BEN CHANDLER, Kentucky
CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
TED POE, Texas RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri
DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington ALLYSON Y. SCHWARTZ, Pennsylvania
CONNIE MACK, Florida JOHN T. SALAZAR, Colorado
JOHN R. `RANDY' KUHL, Jr., New York
LUIS G. FORTUNO, Puerto Rico
LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia
CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, Jr., Louisiana
VACANCY
(ii)
Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee, Chairman
SHERWOOD L. BOEHLERT, New York EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
WAYNE T. GILCHREST, Maryland ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey
VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan JOHN T. SALAZAR, Colorado
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois
SUE W. KELLY, New York GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi
RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana BRIAN BAIRD, Washington
ROBERT W. NEY, Ohio TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York
GARY G. MILLER, California BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
HENRY E. BROWN, Jr., South Carolina ALLYSON Y. SCHWARTZ, Pennsylvania
BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania EARL BLUMENAUER, Oregon
JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California
JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania BILL PASCRELL, Jr., New Jersey
TOM OSBORNE, Nebraska RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri
TED POE, Texas NICK J. RAHALL, II, West Virginia
CONNIE MACK, Florida ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
LUIS G. FORTUNO, Puerto Rico Columbia
CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, Jr., JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota
Louisiana, Vice-Chair (Ex Officio)
VACANCY
DON YOUNG, Alaska
(Ex Officio)
(iii)
CONTENTS
TESTIMONY
Page
Graham, John H., Jr., Assistant Director, Water Quality Control
Department, Maryville, Tennessee............................... 12
Hall, John C., President, Hall and Associates................... 12
Olivieri, Dr. Adam W., Principal Engineer, Vice President, EOA,
Inc............................................................ 12
Rose, Dr. Joan B., Homer Nowlin Chair in Water Research,
Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Michigan State University 12
Stoner, Nancy, Director, Clean Water Project, Natural Resources
Defense Council................................................ 12
Stupak, Hon. Bart, a Member of Congress from Michigan........... 1
Vicory, Alan H., Jr., Executive Director and Chief Engineer, Ohio
River Valley Water Sanitation Commission....................... 12
PREPARED STATEMENT SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Costello, Hon. Jerry F., of Illinois............................. 38
Kelly, Hon. Sue, of New York..................................... 84
Miller, Hon. Gary G., of California.............................. 85
Stupak, Hon. Bart, of Michigan.................................. 112
PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY WITNESSES
Graham, John H., Jr............................................. 40
Hall, John C.................................................... 44
Olivieri, Dr. Adam W............................................ 86
Rose, Dr. Joan B................................................ 98
Stoner, Nancy................................................... 104
Vicory, Alan H., Jr.............................................. 115
SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD
American Public Works Association, Peter B. King, Executive
Director, letter, April 12, 2005............................... 120
Arkansas Municipal League, Don A. Zimmerman, Executive Director,
letter, April 12, 2005......................................... 121
Arkansas Water Environment Association, Roy Reed, Chair, letter,
April 8, 2005.................................................. 123
Association of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies, Ken Kirk,
Executive Director, April 8, 2005.............................. 125
Association of Ohio Metropolitan Wastewater Agencies, Michael L.
McGlinchy, President, April 11, 2005........................... 129
California Water Environment Association, Steven Agor, President,
April 8, 2005.................................................. 130
Central States Water Environment Association, Inc., James P.
Roth, letter, April 12, 2005................................... 131
Carneys Point Township Sewerage Authority, Paul Reed, Chairman,
letter, April 12, 2005......................................... 132
City of Cheboygan, Gary Good, Superintendent, Cheyboygan, MI,
letter, April 12, 2005......................................... 134
City of Dayton, Frank Welch, City Manager, Dayton, TN, letter,
April 7, 2005.................................................. 135
City of Dayton Wastewater Treatment Plant, Glenn A. Fraley,
Superintendent, Dayton, TN, letter, April 7, 2005.............. 137
City of Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, Victor M. Mercado,
Director, fact sheet and letter, April 8, 2005................. 139
City of Hohenwald, Bob Burklow, Mayor, Hohenwald, TN, letter,
April 7, 2005.................................................. 00142
City of Independence, Water Pollution Control Department, Dick
Champion, Jr., Director, April 11, 2005........................ 144
City of Lewisburg, Larry E. Jones, Superintendent, letter, April
7, 2005........................................................ 145
City of Pulaski, Daniel M. Speer, Mayor, Pulaski, TN, letter,
April 6, 2005.................................................. 147
City of San Leandro, Dean Wilson, Plant Manager, Water Pollution
Control Division, San Leandro, CA, letter, April 8, 2005....... 149
City of Vancouver, Brian K. Carlson, Public Works Director,
letter, April 15, 2005......................................... 150
Coalition for Clean Water, Edwin A. Thorpe, Executive Director,
letter, April 8, 2005.......................................... 151
East Bay Dischargers Authority, Jennifer Toy, Chair, letter,
April 8, 2006.................................................. 152
First Utility District of Knox County, TN, Ralph McCarter,
General Manger, letter, April 12, 2005......................... 153
Florida Water Environment Association Utility Council, Raymond E.
Hanson, President, letter, April 7, 2005....................... 154
Genesee County Drain Commissioner's Office, Joseph M. Goergen,
Plant Manager, letter, April 12, 2005.......................... 155
Greater Lawrence Sanitary District, Richard Hogan, Executive
Director, letter, April 11, 2005............................... 156
Indiana Association of Cities and Towns, Matthew C. Greller,
Executive Director, letter..................................... 158
Indiana Water Environment Association, Herbert L. Corn,
President, April 12, 2005...................................... 159
Iowa Water Pollution Control Association, Carla J. Schumacher,
President, letter, April 12, 2005.............................. 160
Joint Meeting of Essex and Union Counties, Samuel T. McGhee,
Executive Director, letter, April 8, 2005...................... 161
Kansas Water Environment Association, Martha Tasker, President,
letter, April 11, 2005......................................... 163
Knoxville Utilites Board, Bill R. Elmore, Senior Vice President
and Chief Operating Officer, letter, April 6, 2005 and letter,
Mintha E. Roach, Acting President and CEO, January 8, 2004..... 166
Maryland Association of Municipal Wastewater Agencies, Inc.,
Julie Pippel, President, letter, April 12, 2005................ 00171
Michigan Water Environment Association, William Gramlich,
President, letter, April 13, 2005.............................. 172
Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District, Kevin L. Shafer,
Executive Director, letters, April 12, 2005, and February 9,
2004........................................................... 173
Minnesota Environemntal Science and Economic Review Board, Bruce
A, Nelson, President, April 11, 2005........................... 181
National Fisheries Institute, John Connelly, President, letter,
April 27, 2005................................................. 183
Natural Resources Defense Council Advocacy Center, statement..... 185
Nemura, Adrienne Denise, P.E., Technical Review of the Katonak-
Rose Report on Public Health Risks Associated with Wastewater
Blending, and Errors and Inappropriate Inferences Associated
between Waterbourne Disease Outbreaks and Blended Effluent in
the Katonak-Rose Report........................................ 195
New Jersey Water Environment Association, Henry Penley,
President, letter, April 8, 2005............................... 206
New York Water Environment Association, Inc., John R. Amend,
President, letter, April 12, 2005.............................. 208
North Carolina American Water Works Association, Mike E.
Richardson, Chairman, letter, April 12, 2005................... 209
Pennsylvania Municipal Authorities Association, John W. Brosious,
Deputy Director, letter........................................ 210
Pennsylvania Water Environment Association, letter, April 11,
2005........................................................... 212
Reply Brief of Intervenor Association of Metropolitan Sewerage
Agencies, Case No. 04-5073..................................... 213
San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, Thomas J. Franza,
Assistant General Manager, Wastewater Enterprise, letter, April
12, 2005....................................................... 225
Somerset Raritan Valley Sewerage Authority, Glen D. Petrauski,
Executive Director, letter, April 4, 2005...................... 226
South Carolina Water Quality Association, Inc., Andy Fairey,
President, letter, April 12, 2005.............................. 228
Texas Association of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies, Sharon
Hayes, President, Letter, April 12, 2005....................... 229
Urban Areas Coalition, letter, April 15, 2005.................... 230
Virginia Association of Municipal Wastewater Agencies, Inc., Mark
A. Haley, President, letter, April 12, 2005.................... 232
Washington-East Washington Joint Authority, R.A. Dami, Executive
Director, letter, April 8, 2005................................ 234
Water Environment Services, a Department of Clackmas County,
Oregon, R. Kent Squires, Director, letter, April 12, 2005...... 236
Wayne County , Robert A. Ficano, County Executive, Detroit, MI,
letter, April 11, 2005......................................... 238
Water Environment Federation, statement.......................... 240
West County Agency, E.J. Shalaby, Manager, letter, April 8, 2005. 247
West Bay County Regional Wastewater Treatment Plant, Kenneth C.
Schott, Plant Superintendent, letter, April 12, 2005........... 248
West Virginia Municipal Water Quality Association, David Sago,
President, letter, April 12, 2005.............................. 250
Twenty-eight Organizations in support of a final U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency Clean Water Act blending
policy, January 21, 2005....................................... 251
WASTEWATER BLENDING
----------
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
House of Representatives, Committee on
Transportation and Infrastructure, Subcommittee
on Water Resources and Environment, Washington,
D.C.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:00 a.m., in
Room 2167, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. John J. Duncan,
Jr. [chairman of the subcommittee], presiding.
Mr. Duncan. I want to call this subcommittee meeting of the
Water Resources and Environment Subcommittee to order. We have
a very distinguished panel of witnesses that we will hear from
shortly, but in order to get our colleague, Congressman Stupak,
on the way and because we have a chance to discuss these issues
and ask questions of our colleagues later on the Floor and at
other times, we generally don't ask questions of our member
panels.
Ms. Johnson and I have agreed, before we even give our
opening statements, to let Bart go ahead and give his statement
and then proceed. Then, Bart, you're welcome to stay with us,
but we know that you have many, many other things on your
schedule. So you may proceed and give the first opening
statement in regard to this hearing here this morning.
TESTIMONY OF HONORABLE BART STUPAK, A MEMBER IN CONGRESS FROM
THE STATE OF MICHIGAN
Mr. Stupak. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member
Johnson, thank you for the courtesy. I am just down the hall at
a markup on the Energy bill that's been going on the third day.
So that's been getting a little contentious, so I would like to
get back there.
But I really want to thank you for holding this hearing on
wastewater blending. My staff will be here, because as I said,
I won't be able to stay. Because I would really be interested
in hearing from those who support the EPA's proposed policy to
dump inadequately treated human waste into our waters, a
practice that the EPA refers to as blending.
I guess having worked on this issue for a while now, I
anticipate they will probably argue that blending effluent will
meet effluent limitations outlined in their discharge permits,
or that the costs that will be incurred if blending is not
allowed to continue will be astronomical, and that blending is
legal, safe and a commonly used practice in this Country.
But you know, for 30 years, since the Clean Water Act,
we've been working hard as a Country, we've spent billions of
dollars to clean up our Nation's treatment of water and
wastewater in particular. And I just don't want to turn back
the clock on 30 years of progress we have made. That's really
what it comes down to, when you take a look at this blending
policy.
If finalized, it would effectively lift the current
prohibition, and the current prohibition on bypassing a crucial
secondary phase in treating human waste before it is discharged
out into our rivers, our lakes, our streams. Because that
second the viruses, the parasites that enter our waterways and
our drinking water. It's just as simple as this, people don't
want to drink water that has only been partially treated
against these pathogens and viruses and parasites from waste.
Those who support the EPA proposed blending policy may
argue that the secondary treatment will be safe because the
final effluent will still meet discharge standards at the end
of the pipe. Well, even if blending sewage meets the end of the
pipe discharge limit, it still is the increase of human risk to
human health and to the environment. If you look at the current
Federal standards, I know this Committee is very familiar with
them, there are very few standards that exist for at the end of
the pipe. The proposed policy would allow treatment plants to
meet these few standards that are on the books by trying to do
a massive dilution of sewage with storm water instead of
providing effective treatment.
If you take a look at the history of this policy, it was
first proposed in 1984 under President Reagan. The Congress and
President Reagan said, we don't accept this. It was then
proposed again, to do blending in the Clinton Administration.
It was rejected there. Well, we're back here now to November of
2003, when the EPA once again is proposing blending.
The EPA regulations are clear. And they define a bypass as,
``the intentional diversion of waste streams from any portion
of a treatment facility and secondary treatment of human waste
is clearly a part of the treatment facility. In fact, secondary
treatment is the core of the sewage treatment process.''
Current regulations say that the general prohibition on
bypassing secondary treatment has an exception. In rare
situations where a treatment facility is likely to be damaged
or public health is to be harmed or repair to the system to
accommodate and fully treat heavy flows cannot be accomplished.
If we are going to allow this, facilities should be forced to
do a feasibility study on a case-by-case basis rather than just
change the rule in all wastewater treatment plants, or at least
those municipal wastewater treatment plants, would fall
underneath this change.
If you take a look at it, and I'm on the Great Lakes and we
all protect our water resources, no matter what State we are,
but I'm in the Great Lakes. If you take a look at places like
Milwaukee, Cleveland, Toronto, Chicago and others, and Detroit,
are dumping billions of gallons of partially treated sewage
into our Great Lakes. There was one day last July where 400
cities along the Great Lakes, 400 of them, discharged sewage
into our Great Lakes, partially treated sewage. That's 400
cities. Releases are frequent, and under the EPA's proposal,
they will become more frequent.
In 2004, and this is according to preliminary data we have,
Detroit released wastewater which contained some form of sewage
400 times. That's more than once a day. Four hundred times,
just Detroit alone. And Detroit has, I'm not here to knock
Detroit, but they have also spent, in trying to improve their
system, they have spent now close to a billion dollars trying
to improve upon it.
In Michigan, not only is the Great Lakes the world's
largest body of fresh water, but it hurts our tourism, it hurts
our fishing industry, which is a large industry, and human
health is a big concern. Back in 1993, I was in Congress, as I
think most of you were with me, Milwaukee had a cryptosporidius
outbreak that occurred in Milwaukee. Over 100 people died, over
400,000 people became ill. The parasite that caused this
illness, cryptosporidium, is not effectively removed if you do
not have the secondary treatment process. So we should not be
bypassing. Milwaukee is a good example on why we should not do
this.
And I know Milwaukee has taken great steps to try to
alleviate their concerns. But this is what's going to happen if
we allow blending.
Myself, Congressman Pallone, Congressman Shaw, Congressman
Kirk and 132 others of our colleagues signed a letter to the
EPA earlier this year urging them not to proceed with this
blending proposal. Democrats and Republicans joined in and
said, don't do this blending proposal. On March 3rd,
Congressman Shaw, Congressman Pallone, Congressman Gilchrest,
Congressman Kirk and others representing States from coast to
coast, came and we introduced legislation called Save Our
Waters from Sewage Act, H.R. 1126. We right now have 77
bipartisan co-sponsors. Our legislation would just prevent the
EPA from finalizing the blending policy.
Mr. Chairman, I can go on and on and on. I'll wrap it up
just by saying, if we take a look at the President's budget,
and not casting stones here, because Congress has the ultimate
responsibility here to pass the budget and put the money in.
But we see one-third cut in the Clean Water Revolving Loan
funds, we see other cuts in the Safe Drinking Water Revolving
Loans. And I know it's a tight year. But the health, and for
the good of our economy and the health of our American people,
I hope we can replace these cuts and not allow this proposal to
go through, this blending proposal. I think it's dangerous for
our environment, but especially for our human health.
With that, I see I have gone over my time. I appreciate
your courtesy. If there are any questions, I will be happy to
try to answer them.
Mr. Duncan. Well, Bart, as I said earlier, we generally
have a policy in this Subcommittee of not having questions to
members, as a courtesy to all of our witnesses who have come in
from around the country. And because we also have a chance to
ask you questions later on. But certainly you are one of our
outstanding members and I appreciate very much your concern on
this issue. For all the reasons that you've stated, that's why
we're starting to look into this.
Do you have anything you wish to say, Ms. Johnson?
Ms. Johnson. No, thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Duncan. Okay, well, thank you for coming.
Mr. Stupak. And thank you for having a hearing shortly
after we introduced the legislation. I appreciate it.
Mr. Duncan. Thank you.
I want to welcome everyone to our hearing today on
wastewater blending. As most people know, there is a great deal
of confusion, even at times misinformation about this issue. My
goal today is to have a balanced discussion and hopefully come
to some reasonable conclusions about when blending is
appropriate and when it is not.
Some people say that blending is bad because it involves
diverting part of a treatment plant's excess water around its
biological treatment unit. Then also, we will have one of our
expert witnesses today who says blending protects public health
and the environment by increasing wet weather wastewater plant
capacity and thereby significantly reducing raw sewage
overflows into streams and potentially into homes.
So there you have sort of both sides of the equation.
Currently in some parts of the Country, States issue permits
that allow wastewater treatment plants to discharge blended
wastewater during periods of heavy rain or snow melt. Some of
these permits also impose conditions requiring additional
treatment of this wastewater. All of these permits require the
wastewater treatment plant to meet all applicable Clean Water
Act standards before it discharges blended wastewater into a
river or lake. That requirement is already in the law.
In other parts of the Country, States cannot issue permits
that allow blending because the EPA region will veto the
permit. That is the situation in Tennessee. There has been a
change of a rule that was in effect for 26 years and a
regulation that was in effect for 20 years. So when you have
one EPA region saying one thing and one EPA region saying
another, that leads of course to some of the confusion and
misunderstanding that there is on this issue and that's what
this hearing hopefully is about here this morning.
What this means in Tennessee and many other States is that
wastewater treatment plants may have to build additional
treatment capacity and additional storage capacity, which could
cost over $100 million at a single plant, even for small
cities. That kind of expenditure is almost impossible to handle
for some, to require this expenditure to handle heavy
wastewater flows that occur sometimes only once or twice a
year.
This is a very important issue. Around the Country, it is
estimated that at a minimum, $80 billion, maybe as much as $200
billion of additional infrastructure will have to be built if
wastewater blending is not allowed. That's a lot of money.
Where are we going to come up with all that, with all these
other needs? People are going to have to explain that, I would
say.
Since I announced this hearing, I have received over 50
letters from communities in 22 States all over the Country--
Missouri, Arkansas, Ohio, California, Illinois, Michigan,
Tennessee, Florida, Massachusetts, Indiana, New Jersey, Kansas,
Maryland, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas,
Virginia, West Virginia, expressing support for the practice of
blending and asking for help to ensure that blending remains a
wastewater management tool.
My goal today is first, to help people understand what
blending is. Very few people even understand what it is. I've
heard some people compare blending to the discharge of raw
sewage. That's not true. Blending simply means that less than
100 percent of the wastewater flow receives biological
treatment before it is discharged. All the wastewater flow
receives some treatment, and all the wastewater meets Clean
Water Act standards before it is discharged. All the wastewater
meets Clean Water Act standards before it is discharged.
Secondly, I would like to have a balanced discussion of
whether or not blending is a practice that is protective of
human health and the environment. Some argue that blended
wastewater will have more pathogens, as we just heard
Congressman Stupak say. Others argue that this is not true.
Third, I would like a balanced discussion of whether or not
blending is legal under the Clean Water Act. This relates back
to the confusion between the regions that I just mentioned a
few moments ago. Some argue that blending is an illegal bypass
around treatment. Others argue that it is legitimate plant
design and point out that the Clean Water Act does not dictate
plant design.
Finally, I would like the witnesses to help us look for a
solution to resolve all the controversy and uncertainty
surrounding blending and surrounding this issue. I expect each
of our witnesses today can agree that a wastewater treatment
plant can be designed in a way that allows wastewater to
receive protective and cost-effective treatment, even if not
all the wastewater goes through a biological treatment unit.
If that is the case, we should not be talking about
prohibiting blending, we should be talking about the
circumstances and conditions under which blending is
appropriate and when it is not.
I want to hear from each witness about how we can reach a
consensus so that blending can hopefully in some way be a win-
win both for public health and the communities.
Now let me turn things over to our very distinguished
Ranking Member, Ms. Johnson.
Ms. Johnson. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for holding
this hearing today on the practice of blending under the Clean
Water Act.
There are two questions that should be answered regarding
blending. One is, is it permissible under the Clean Water Act
and its implementing regulations; and two, is it protective of
human health and the environment. To both questions, there is
no agreement. Within the Environmental Protection Agency there
is disagreement over whether blending is authorized under the
Clean Water Act regulations. EPA has not taken a uniform
position around the Country.
Unfortunately, we will not hear from them today and their
views. Perhaps though in the future EPA could explain its
position to the Committee and eliminate some of the confusion
that surrounds the issue.
Let me talk about what we know and what we do not know
about sewage blending. We know that blending is conducted in
some areas of the Country and prohibited in others. We know
that there are insufficient data as to whether blending is
protective of human health and the environment. We know that
the Nation does not have the resources to provide full
treatment of every drop of water, 100 percent of the time, and
that there will be times when less than full treatment is
allowed, such as under the current bypass rules.
We know that while blending may or may not cause an
increase in the concentration of pathogens and other
pollutants, it certainly increases the total mass of those
pollutants in receiving waters. We know that blending is a
distinct issue from both the elimination of combined sewage
overflow and storm water discharges. Blending involves sanitary
sewers and partially treated sewage. We know that the Clean
Water Act allows EPA to define by regulation the technology-
based standard that constitutes secondary treatment. But we do
not know whether blending is consistent with that standard.
We know that a major cause of extremely high flow is
infiltration inflow from aging collection systems. As systems
age, infiltration inflow has a tendency to increase. We know
that while communities are addressing infrastructure needs,
they continue to face a funding gap in excess of $300 billion
over the next 20 years. And clearly, we need to focus on
reducing infiltration inflow and minimize the instances by
which any bypass should be necessary.
If nothing else, I believe that today's hearing will
demonstrate that the cuts in Federal spending for wastewater
infrastructure are extremely ill-advised. Worldwide, someone
who is ill because of polluted water occupies every second
hospital bed. Six thousand children die every day from an
illness caused by the lack of sanitary facilities.
People think that that cannot happen here. Yet in the last
decade, 104 people died and over 400,000 became ill because of
the cryptosporidium in Milwaukee's drinking water. And it's
present in the waste stream and highly resistant to
disinfectants such as chlorine.
Secondary treatment is the best way to reduce the
introduction of cryptosporidium from wastewater treatment
plants. Mr. Chairman, clean water and safe water is a right for
every American. We should tread cautiously where any action
could imperil this precious resource. I look forward to hearing
the witnesses, though I'm in a markup in another committee, I
might have to dash out. But I thank the witnesses for being
here and thank you for the hearing.
Mr. Duncan. Thank you very much, Ms. Johnson. Does anyone
else have a statement they wish to make? Mr. Gilchrest.
Mr. Gilchrest. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a markup on
the Energy bill in the Resources Committee. So after my
statement I am going to have to leave.
Mr. Duncan. Well, I'll tell you, we're all in that
situation. I've got markups going in two other committees. It's
a busy, busy day.
Mr. Gilchrest. Maybe I'll just stay here, and I won't have
to worry about the votes.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Duncan. Go ahead.
Mr. Gilchrest. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I am going to address specifically the issue of the
Chesapeake Bay and the Chesapeake Bay watershed and blending.
One of the problems in the Chesapeake Bay is that it is
extremely shallow, extremely fragile and extremely vulnerable
to human activity. The biggest problem in the bay, and there
are a lot of problems, I think we should outlaw during this
next markup, Mr. Chairman, cigarette boats and big power boats,
because not only are they noisy, they create a great deal of
disturbance with the sediment in the water. But that's for
another day.
The nitrogen is a key issue to the degradation of the
Chesapeake Bay. What we're doing now is ensuring that all
plants have biological nutrient removal mechanisms. In the next
few years, we're going to enhance that. There is well over a
million pounds of nitrogen that gets flushed into the bay ever
year. And we have targeted sewage treatment plants. The next
will deal with the conservation efforts of agriculture, we're
dealing with storm water runoff and so on. We have a plan over
the next ten years to deal specifically with nitrogen.
It seems to me that if we use blending, it reduces the
incentive and the motivation to target that specific nutrient
of nitrogen. We get nitrogen from the air, we get nitrogen from
agriculture, storm water runoff. Specifically the easiest fix
for nitrogen in the short run is sewage treatment plants.
I look forward to further discussions on this. I certainly
would like to talk to the witnesses as we go along. Because if
you can show me that blending will help us stay on track with
reducing nitrogen by 30 million pounds a year, that's our goal,
take that right out of the system, then I'll go along with this
program.
But I don't see how blending, with releasing, the old
saying in the 1960s was, the solution to pollution is dilution,
maybe that's delusionary, I don't know. And I'm not sure if I
said that right.
But in this case, nitrogen is water soluble. That baby just
goes right through there, and I don't see how blending can
reduce the amount of nitrogen that goes into the Chesapeake
Bay. So I look forward to working with EPA on this issue. It
may work in some other place, but it's really difficult for me
to see how it would work in the Chesapeake Bay.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Duncan. Thank you, Mr. Gilchrest. Anybody else? All
right. We go by seniority first, so I'll go--did you have a
statement, Mr. Pascrell? All right, go ahead.
Mr. Pascrell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
This issue of wastewater blending, and I want to associate
myself with many of the remarks that the gentleman from
Maryland just expressed. This is not an easy issue. I'm sorry
we don't have the EPA here to have dialogue, but obviously
there's a reason for that.
I think that we can come to some conclusions here that
would, maybe I'm foolish enough to think this, that would
satisfy the environmental community as well as the EPA and the
Congress, more important. I think that's possible. The reason
why I think it's possible is that the Chairman of this
Committee has been the main reason for the fairness of the
Committee. I say what I mean usually, right?
There's no question that all of the communities out there
that are struggling to meet the requirements of the Clean Water
Act do not have the resources to do that, and you know, we've
struggled over this, we've authorized. We still don't have
appropriations. This is serious business. Then when we look at
the budget, hundreds of billions of dollars are needed to meet
the real and pressing needs.
So I must be honest with you, today if there was a vote
taken, I couldn't support the process of blending. But I
believe we could come to a conclusion whereby it is acceptable
under very specific standards. I think we can do this. And I
think the gentleman from Maryland set the pace. The money to
make upgrades must come from somewhere, though. It's not going
to fall out of the sky. The state of the communities and the
state of the States is not very good.
So we have to step up to the plate, since apparently the
state of the Union is so terrific. Or is it?
But we have to find the money to do this. I think this is a
priority. We've made clean water a priority, Mr. Chairman, and
I have faith in the direction you bring us in. But I hope that
the EPA will have dialogue with us and not simply hand
something down.
Thank you.
Mr. Duncan. Well, we will have the EPA here at another
time, if we have some interest. But we just have this panel, in
fact, I think a very balanced panel of all sides here for this
hearing today so we can all learn more about this.
Ms. Tauscher, did you wish to make a statement?
Ms. Tauscher. Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you
for holding this hearing today on an issue which I know is of
importance to all of our constituents, and thank you for
allowing me the opportunity to make a brief statement.
The need to ensure clean water and protect our Nation's
waterways from harmful discharge, including inadequately
treated sewage, should be of paramount importance to all of us.
First, and while it may not be the main concern of this
morning's hearing, I believe that today's discussion of
blending would be well served if it also included a discussion
of Federal infrastructure financing and funding. We have done
less than an adequate job in ensuring that Federal financing is
available to meet the growing water infrastructure needs of
this Nation. Unfortunately, the trend continues this year.
Under the fiscal year 2006 budget, the Clean Water State
Revolving Fund, the Federal funding which is responsible for
assisting with infrastructure development, will be decreased by
$370 million. At a time when every infrastructure dollar is
valuable and we are asking our publicly-owned treatment works
to meet stringent clean water standards, the Federal Government
cannot abandon its role as partner in this process.
Mr. Chairman, I have worked with my good friend Sue Kelly
on infrastructure financing in the past. I look forward to
continued efforts with her and my colleagues on the
Subcommittee. Briefly, Mr. Chairman, like many of our
colleagues and like a number of the panelists here today, I
believe that the EPA's proposed blending policy is overly
broad, and I fear that it may lead to the use of blending as a
too-common practice. Our guidance on blending should be derived
from the Clean Water Act itself, which states that an operator
may bypass secondary treatment if it is, ``unavoidable to
prevent loss of life, personal injury or severe property
damage'' which includes ``damage to treatment facilities which
causes them to become inoperable.''
Blending should never be a common practice. I also
understand that across the Nation, responsible POTWs have made
substantial infrastructure investments to address the negative
effects of wet weather events. In my own district, investments
of more than $650 million have been made to build wet weather
storage facilities and address the issue of infiltration and
inflow into the system due to rainfall, snow melt and resulting
high groundwater levels. We must protect both these investments
and our duty to clean water by ensuring that blending does not
become a common practice, but in extremely limited
circumstances, a final way to address serious inflows.
Of course, Mr. Chairman, I believe we all agree that our
goal should be to end the practice of blending in order to
ensure clean water. I look forward to today's panelists
addressing the technological and infrastructure needs, which
will allow all of us to move to that standard.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time. Thank
you.
Mr. Duncan. Thank you very much.
Mrs. Schwartz.
Mrs. Schwartz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for
holding this hearing today, and I appreciate again the
opportunity to share some opening comments.
I also wanted to acknowledge our colleague, Bart Stupak,
who has taken such a leadership role on addressing the concerns
many of us share about the proposed changes that are being made
by the EPA. I think a number of us here represent areas, if not
all of us, that have river ways, streams and really are very
deeply concerned about what this change could mean to our
districts.
Certainly the concerns about the discharge of large amounts
of untreated sewage in the event of what seems like a very
general category of wet weather is something that many of us
are really concerned about. I look forward to the panel and
hearing what they have to say.
After 30 years of really active work on cleaning up our
waterways under the Clean Water Act, we have been able to not
only protect the health of Americans by guaranteeing better,
cleaner water, but I know in Pennsylvania we have just seen
enormous opportunities from cleaner rivers and cleaner streams.
That relates to of course recreation and the kind of fishing
that's come back.
We've seen rivers in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia being used
for recreation and for economic development in ways that were
really unimaginable given the unsafe, the lack of safety in the
water four years ago. Lake Erie is completely different, and
the city of Erie would tell you that, that the opportunities
there are really enormous. I see that in my own district and in
the Delaware riverfront some of the opportunities that exist
now because it is cleaner and healthier.
Having said that, there are over 9,000 miles of rivers,
lakes and streams in Pennsylvania that are considered too
polluted to be safe for fishing or swimming. So the possibility
that we might in fact be moving backwards rather than moving
forward and being able to guarantee a safer waterways and safer
water is really something that concerns me greatly.
Let me also state one other point. We have also seen, and
Pennsylvania has an aging infrastructure in water and sewer. As
a State senator, we addressed some of this in trying to provide
some funding for replacement of some of these aging systems.
But having said that, we know that we have actually put in, I
know the city of Philadelphia has put in large sums of dollars
to improve the water and sewer infrastructure. What we don't
also want to do is to set a standard where we end up saying
we're going to discourage those kinds of investments and in
fact create incentives for any local community that has failed
to do that. That would be moving in the absolutely wrong
direction.
Interesting little side note, Philadelphia actually had one
of the earliest leaders in water treatment, its water works. We
have just renovated it for historic purposes, you can come
visit it on the Schulkyll River. We really were leading the way
in the early 19th century on some of the ways we've treated our
water. So I don't want to see us go backwards, either because
of the effect on the health of our constituents, the health of
all Americans, or the opportunity to use our river ways for
recreation and economic development.
So my questions for the panel will really be simply, how
this moves us forward in guaranteeing clean water for the
American public. If it moves us backwards, that certainly is
the wrong direction. So I look forward to the panel and to the
questions we will have an opportunity to ask.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Duncan. Well, thank you very much, Mrs. Schwartz.
We are going to go ahead and ask the panel to start taking
their seats. Oh, Ms. Norton.
Ms. Norton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have only a few
brief words to say. The subject is of special interest to me.
If there are any real shortcuts, I'd like to hear them. because
this region has one of the worst storm water overflow problems,
I'm sure, in the United States. It comes because the system was
originally built by the Corps of Engineers, we face a billion
dollar problem.
Frankly, there's blending, all right, the kind of blending
we don't want, it's the kind of blending we're afraid of.
Because when the water just overflows, there it goes into the
Anacostia and the Potomac, ultimately into the Chesapeake Bay.
Obviously if there was a shortcut that worked, that was not a
threat to waterways and to water, everybody would embrace that.
One really wonders if you can get around, yes, the very
costly process of renewing our water infrastructure, which was
often built, sometimes a century ago. For most localities in
the United States, it's very old. When roads get to be old, you
recognize that at some point they have to be fixed or
reconstructed or paved. That is not the way we have dealt with
the infrastructure for our water.
I must say, you will find me very skeptical that blending
is a shortcut that preserves the health of the American people
and that preserves the health of our waterways. If there is a
shortcut, despite my skepticism, I will be very open to
considering it.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Duncan. Thank you very much, Ms. Norton.
As most of you know, the American Society of Civil
Engineers recently graded the condition of the infrastructure
throughout the country. They gave the wastewater infrastructure
a grade of D minus. Ms. Johnson mentioned the estimated cost of
the needs, the CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, the EPA
and the Water Infrastructure Network estimated that the gap
between current spending and needs investment could be as high
as $200 billion or more over the next 20 years. Of course, Ms.
Johnson referred to an even higher estimate.
The problem is, much of this infrastructure is underground,
and people just do not realize that the aging that Ms. Norton
talked about.
I read four or five years ago, a column that said you could
put every family of four in the State of Texas and give them
three acres of land each and leave the whole rest of the
Country totally empty. It's just impossible to comprehend how
huge this Country is and how much land there is, how much open
space there is. But having said that, everybody is still moving
out of the rural areas, because they say they want land, but
they really don't. They want to be near the malls and the movie
theaters. So most of our urban areas around the country are
having these tremendous population increases, and increasing
greatly the demands on the system.
We passed a couple of years ago in this Committee, because
this Committee was involved with it, in its origination, a
combination of the Clean Water Act. As the New Republic
Magazine pointed out about four years ago, the air and the
water are both much, much cleaner than they were 30 years ago.
We have made tremendous progress.
But because of these increasing demands and the aging
infrastructure, we have to continue to do more and do better.
That's what this hearing is about.
So I'm very pleased to introduce a very distinguished
panel. We have Mr. Alan H. Vicory, Executive Director and Chief
Engineer of the Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission,
from Cincinnati, Ohio; we have Mr. John H. Graham, Jr.,
Assistant Director of Water Quality Control Department,
Maryville, Tennessee, in my district, one of my bosses. Glad to
have you here, Mr. Graham.
Dr. Joan B. Rose, Homer Nowlin Chair in Water Research, of
the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife from Michigan State
University in Lansing, Michigan; Dr. Adam W. Olivieri,
Principal Engineer and Vice President, EOA, Inc.; Ms. Nancy
Stoner, Director of the Clean Water Project for the Natural
Resources Defense Council here in Washington, D.C.; and Mr.
John C. Hall, President of Hall and Associates, also here in
Washington.
We certainly appreciate all of you taking time out from
your busy schedules to come and be with us. We always proceed
in the order the panelists are listed on the call of the
hearing. That means, Mr. Vicory, you may go first. Your full
statements will be placed in the record. All the committees and
subcommittees, I think, in this Congress give the witnesses
five minutes. We give the witnesses six minutes, but we cut you
off. We bang the gavel at that six minutes, not to be impolite
to you, but in consideration of the other witnesses.
So Mr. Vicory, you may begin.
TESTIMONY OF ALAN H. VICORY, JR., EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AND CHIEF
ENGINEER, OHIO RIVER VALLEY WATER SANITATION COMMISSION; JOHN
H. GRAHAM, JR., ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, WATER QUALITY CONTROL
DEPARTMENT, MARYVILLE, TENNESSEE; DR. JOAN B. ROSE, HOMER
NOWLIN CHAIR IN WATER RESEARCH, DEPARTMENT OF FISHERIES AND
WILDLIFE, MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY; DR. ADAM W. OLIVIERI,
PRINCIPAL ENGINEER, VICE PRESIDENT, EOA, INC.; NANCY STONER,
DIRECTOR, CLEAN WATER PROJECT, NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE
COUNCIL; JOHN C. HALL, PRESIDENT, HALL AND ASSOCIATES
Mr. Vicory. Thank you very much, Chairman Duncan and
Congresswoman Johnson, Members of the Committee. I am pleased
to be here today to talk about the issue of wastewater blending
from a wastewater perspective. I think it's good to start out
to talk a little bit about my employer, ORSANCO is the acronym
for the formal name that you've mentioned. ORSANCO is an
interstate compact commission, established in 1948 to abate
interstate water pollution. Signatories to the compact are all
the States along the Ohio River, some of which you mentioned
earlier, as well as New York and Virginia. ORSANCO's board of
commissioners are appointed by the Governors to represent their
respective States, and there are several commissioners
appointed by the President of the United States to represent
the Federal viewpoint.
Now, the compact under which we operate has been adopted in
each of the States' laws and sanctioned by the U.S. Congress.
As such, it is an agency with regulatory powers on equal par
with any and all agencies that we work with, including U.S.
EPA. Among the powers of ORSANCO is to adopt standards of
treatment for discharges to interstate streams in the Ohio
Valley that the commission deems necessary to achieve the
compact's objectives.
Now, blending is a concept that's not new to ORSANCO. In
1997, this commission, after notice and public hearing, adopted
in its regulatory requirements, and I have a copy here and I'd
be glad to submit that if you're interested in it, adopted in
its regulatory requirements the availability for blending to be
practiced at municipal wastewater treatment plants, serving
combined sewer areas that have primary treatment in excess of
secondary treatment capacity. Our regulations focus on
maximizing the treatment of wet weather flows from CSO systems,
and thereby reducing the frequency and duration of sewer
overflow events.
Blending facilities in our jurisdiction must be properly
maintained, provide maximum flow-through secondary, and
ultimately, and I'd like to emphasize this one, meet Ohio River
water quality standards.
As the director of ORSANCO now for 18 years, I recall
fairly vividly the discussions in 1996 about this issue. There
really wasn't a great deal of discussion amongst the
commissioners. There was a pretty strong consensus that the
prevailing feeling should be, in our blending policy, as it
states, the need to promote the maximum amount of treatment and
disinfection to the maximum amount of flows. Otherwise, as our
blending policy recognizes, untreated sewage, totally untreated
sewage, could be released elsewhere in a combined sewer system
and water quality would suffer.
Now, ORSANCO, I think our track record in water pollution
stands on its own. This organization adopted secondary
treatment two years before the Federal Clean Water Act, and was
instrumental in the science issue of bacterial standards for
rivers. So our track record, I think, in terms of being on the
edge, if you will, in water pollution control I think is there.
But our board of commissioners, inasmuch as they represent
in the body of 27 people, State agency representatives, State
EPAs, U.S. EPA is on the commission, water and wastewater
utility administrators, folks from the legal profession, folks
from industry, that ORSANCO's requirements focus themselves on
the Ohio River, a large stream, and tend to be a bit broader,
and in a sense, pragmatic and broad-based in its concept. I
think that's important to point out.
I think our policy that we have on the books speaks to
this. And again, if we did not have the policy in place, I
think we would have situations in some communities, at least,
where if the flows were not received for at least primary
treatment they would be released as combined sewer overflow
structures elsewhere in the system. And a concern would be,
many of those sewer overflows would be on smaller tributaries,
which may present an even higher level of public health risk.
In addition, if blending were not possible, I think it
would probably exacerbate the already huge challenge that
municipal treatment facilities have in trying to manage the
avalanche of wet weather flows that they typically receive,
given the fact that we have many older communities in the Ohio
River area, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Louisville, Wheeling, West
Virginia. Among those four communities alone we probably have
upwards of a thousand combined sewer overflow points.
Now, ORSANCO doesn't view blending as an expedient
substitute for proper management of wastewater infrastructure,
or of wet weather flows. Blending is but one of a suite of
integrated actions that communities need to be looking forward
to and implementing at the end of the day by the best regime
for managing wet weather flows. Cincinnati alone is going to be
spending a billion and a half dollars over the next 20 years
correcting its sewer overflow points. And so it's just very
important that we try to use the facilities that we have to the
maximum extent.
It's important, I point out that this is a policy for the
Ohio River. It may not be best policy elsewhere. There's lots
of different regimes out there, and in my testimony I indicate
some of the important questions that perhaps need to be
reviewed, if you will, in the context of looking at the
possibility of blending and some of the other areas. That's
there for the record.
I want to kind of sum up that there's been some concern
about the possibility that blending being available might
precipitate communities using that possibility cavalierly. My
experience in working with wastewater treatment utilities on
the Ohio River and nationally is that these people are
professionals, this is what they do. They really want to
provide the maximum amount of treatment that they possibly can,
given the facilities that they have. And so I conclude, again,
with a word of thanks for the opportunity to provide this
testimony and of course, will be available to answer any
questions at the proper time.
Mr. Boustany. [Presiding] Mr. Vicory, we thank you for your
testimony and look forward to asking questions as we move
forward.
Next, the Committee will entertain the testimony of Mr.
Graham. Mr. Graham is Assistant Director of the Water Quality
Control Department in Maryville, Tennessee. Welcome, Mr.
Graham.
Mr. Graham. Good morning, Commissioner, and Chairman. I'd
like to thank you for allowing me to testify this morning, and
I greet you and the Committee members.
My name is Jack Graham, and I am the Assistant Director of
the Water Quality Control Department for the city of Maryville.
I am speaking for the city and also for the Tennessee Municipal
League. Thank you for holding this important hearing about
blending.
Blending is a way of maximizing treatment and protecting
the public health. The misinformation on blending is
substantial. To help clarify that, I hope to discuss this
morning how the issue started, the impacts on our State and how
the misinformation has actually delayed the resolution of this
issue.
Our wastewater plant, like many others, is designed to
blend primary and biologically treated wastewaters to maximize
the wet weather flow that can safely be treated prior to
disinfection and discharge. By increasing wet weather plant
capacity, blending significantly reduces those collection
system overflows of raw sewage. We meet the Clean Water Act
permit limits for public health and environmental safety in our
discharges when blending. The blended discharge is fully
protective of the public health.
Blending ensures that the biological system within the
plant, which is sensitive to hydraulic changes, is also
protected. Many wastewater plants in Tennessee specifically
incorporate blending processes as part of their design and have
received Federal grants for construction.
Historically in Tennessee, in early 1999, without any
public notice, EPA Region IV informed Tennessee that blending
violated the Clean Water Act's secondary treatment bypass
regulations. This announcement came 20 years after the adoption
of the regulations. And based upon EPA Region IV's position,
the State began issuing permits that prohibited blending. In
June of 2000, EPA called a public meeting in Chattanooga to
inform us that blending was prohibited. It was a complete
surprise, since EPA itself had approved and funded some of the
plants that blend. We found out later that EPA headquarters
here in Washington did not approve the Region IV position.
The cost to eliminate blending, and we've done engineering
studies on five local plants to us, is in excess of $127
million. Statewide, it's very much significantly higher. This
is in addition to the monies we are already spending for
infrastructure improvements to our collection systems. A
blending prohibition would not benefit the public. Blended, in
fact, blended effluent quality of our facility is far better
than the water that is currently in our receiving stream.
Given the massive costs and the lack of environmental
benefit, the Tennessee Municipal League requested that EPA
headquarters address this matter. EPA headquarters itself has
sent a letter and confirmed to Senator Frist and to all the
Tennessee delegation that the existing rules do not prohibit
blending. Nonetheless, this issue is unresolved.
Our ability as the city of Maryville to plan wastewater
facility improvements is at a standstill. We need to and want
to design a cost-effective plant expansion. We will meet the
discharge limits, we will treat all the flows reaching the
plant and we need to protect the biological process. But we
can't proceed to get approval and to complete the design until
the ongoing regulatory confusion is solved.
Blending must be resolved so that municipal facilities like
ours may continue to operate properly and to plan for the
future. There are several misconceptions that have come to
light. First, the idea that blending will decrease the efforts
to maintain the infrastructure. Allowing blending affects the
need for cities to invest in their wastewater infrastructure,
yes. But we have to control the water that gets to our plant.
You can't just keep on expanding plants. Blending allows you to
handle the peak flows.
For example, Maryville spends $1.6 million in this coming
year on collection system improvements. And we are planning to
spend $12 million on a plant expansion. But we need to know
what the rules are to let us design that and complete it.
Second, many Congressional offices were informed by
activist groups that blending presents a public health threat,
even when the permit limits are met. Such claims are a basic
attack on the very structure of the Clean Water Act. Moreover,
the statements are false.
The Rose Report, issued by NRDC, was based upon a
mischaracterization of the Washington, Pennsylvania wastewater
plant operations. I know the manager, Ray Dami, and he
confirmed that many of the assumptions about plant operations
were simply wrong, and that no one from NRDC had ever visited
the facility to discuss its operations.
Mr. Dami's correspondence confirms that his plant, first,
does not blend raw sewage; the disinfection process operates
effectively during peak flows; and that the blended effluent
that he discharges is cleaner that the receiving stream.
Pennsylvania generally recognizes that body contact recreation
does not occur in cold weather. The elderly and small children
are not swimming under the conditions assumed in the Rose
Report.
Third, some activist organizations have resorted to scare
tactics, using outrageous claims to trigger thousands of
letters from the general public against blending. Finally, if
future research shows that the existing wet weather treatment
practices are of concern, then we need to set tight standards
with State output and let the engineers and the plant operators
tailor the solution to fit the local conditions to meet the
Clean Water Act requirements while taking advantage of all the
options out there, non-biological processes like disinfection,
chlorine or UV, as well as new, innovative technologies. We
will get cleaner wastewater for our municipal dollars.
In summary, I would like to thank you all for inviting me
to testify and stress that we need a solution to this issue to
allow us to proceed to treat the waters in the best way we can
as professionals in the wastewater industry.
Mr. Boustany. Mr. Graham, thank you for your testimony.
The Committee will now hear testimony from Dr. Joan Rose,
the Homer Nowlin Chair in Water Research in the Department of
Fisheries and Wildlife at Michigan State University, East
Lansing, Michigan. Welcome.
Ms. Rose. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and members of the
Committee.
I am a water pollution public health microbiologist. I have
been examining wastewater for pathogens for over 20 years. It
includes a whole array of different types of microorganisms.
Microorganisms actually fall into three categories; that is the
bacteria, which include e-coli and are standard fecal coliform;
includes the parasites, cryptosporidium and giardia, and you've
heard a bit about those; and it includes viruses. That may
include something like the Norwalk virus which has caused the
cruise ship outbreaks on things like coxsaki-B viruses.
These pathogens do cause disease when they contaminate
drinking water. And they do cause disease when they contaminate
recreational waters. And we know that our sensitive populations
are at greatest risk: that is our young children, our elderly
and our immuno-compromised. If they are exposed, they are going
to be at the greatest risk.
What have we learned in the last 30 years since the Clean
Water Act has passed, especially the last decade, the last 10
years? There are a lot of these contaminants we can now find in
untreated sewage, and we have methods now to look. We know that
our e-coli and our fecal coliforms, and this has been supported
by the National Academy of Sciences, do not represent all
constituents of harm in sewage. And you know that in the law
there is that leeway to look at the constituents that cause
public harm. Our indicators do not represent these pathogens.
I have sampled for viruses and parasites and bacteria in
untreated and treated sewage. I would just like to talk a
minute about removal by the processes. Primary treatment
removes things by settling, by taking the solids, pulling them
out. It pulls out some of the big stuff, like the worms, the
helmus, they can be removed. But it's not very good at pulling
out the little things, particularly the viruses. It pulls out
some of the bacteria, pulls out some of the protozoa. And
plants vary. You will see ranges of how much primary removes,
anywhere from 50 to, say, 90 percent.
Secondary, though, removes more of these organisms. It can
remove anywhere from 80 to 99.9 percent. And again, there is a
wide range of secondary facilities out there in terms of how
they are operating and their design as well as their flow.
I think the people who say primary removes more than
secondary have not taken a virus or a parasite sample
themselves and examined it. And I don't think they've done an
adequate job of looking at the literature. So if we have 1,000
giardia cysts in untreated sewage, we could remove 50 percent
by primary, we'll have 500. We could remove 99 percent by
secondary, we're going to have 56 left as we discharge. All you
have to do is do the math. If you add in more, you're going to
add in more.
Now, does present a public risk of going swimming? This is
a community issue of how they want to protect their water in
the future.
I want to talk briefly about disinfection as well. We know
that disinfection is an important process for control of these
microbes. And it is influenced by upstream processes. Recent
studies by the University of North Carolina and Duke have shown
that if you add in increased particles this affects how well
you can kill these organisms by both chlorination, the common
disinfection process, and UV. So it's going to affect it.
In one case, in one study they actually added secondary
effluent, 10 percent, back to drinking water. And we can kill
our viruses very well in drinking water. But in this particular
study, that destroyed the ability to kill viruses in drinking
water, when they added 10 percent of secondary effluent back
in.
So we also know that these organisms have varying
resistance. Cryptosporidium is extremely resistant to
chlorination. We cannot kill it with chlorination. We have to
physically remove it. We can kill it with UV. However, the
viruses are extremely resistant to UV and more susceptible to
chlorination. So we do need to look at all these processes.
I was surprised when I started looking at water quality
data on blended effluent. There are some facilities that say
they blend. You cannot find the data on the volumes that they
combine and you cannot find actual water quality data during
blending and non-blending events. I took one facility that had
a design and said, this is one way that they may blend, and I
did the math.
I also looked at the Milwaukee data, which is minimal, in
which you could compare concentrations of e-coli and pathogens
in blended and non-blended. Basically, both from a math
standpoint and a data standpoint, there was an increase in
pathogen concentrations during blending, a thousand-fold
increase, in the Milwaukee data, we got a hundred-fold increase
in the mathematical calculation.
I think that wastewater treatment and utilities and the
industry are unsung heroes. The public doesn't understand the
benefit that wastewater provides in many cases. I do think that
more monitoring is needed. I do think more investment in
treatment and treatment operations and I do believe that in 30
years, we need to look at the standards for protection of
public health and take into consideration new criteria and
goals for water quality. I appreciate both the State and the
Federal leadership in this role.
Thank you.
Mr. Boustany. Dr. Rose, thank you for your testimony.
We will now hear testimony from Dr. Adam Olivieri,
Principal Engineer, EOA, Inc., in Oakland, California. Welcome,
Dr. Olivieri.
Mr. Olivieri. Good morning, Chairman, and members of the
Committee. I would like to thank you, Chairman Duncan and the
members of this Committee for your continued commitment to
clean water issues in California and nationwide. Your
dedication to solving the challenges our communities face
across the Nation is essential to achieving the goals of the
Clean Water Act.
The purpose of my testimony here is to improve the
understanding of the public health implications associated with
the practice of wastewater treatment plant blending relative to
exposure to microbial pathogens. There is significant concern
regarding the current practice of blending treated effluent
during high treatment plant flow events prior to discharge to
local receiving waters and the potential public health risk
associated with probably exposure to pathogens in receiving
water. My testimony on this subject is based on my education,
experience and the evidence in the scientific literature.
There is concern regarding potential public health risk
associated with exposure to waters receiving discharge from
treatment plants that are blending with stormwaters. However, a
number of factors support the use of a risk-based management
approach that allows for the continued use of blending under
conditions where current water quality criteria are met and
public health is protected. It is my understanding that water
quality criteria are met in receiving waters at some facilities
that utilize blending.
Further, blending is just one part of the puzzle. As will
be discussed, risk assessment, including exposure assessment,
allows public agencies to sort out what factors are important
and provides the foundation for balance risk based management
decisions. Today the public awareness and concern about the
safety of the Nation's water resources is high, and thus the
public expectations are high as well. In the United States,
there are over 15,000 wastewater treatment facilities, most
providing primary, secondary treatment and some form of
disinfection.
When considering infectious diseases implications of human
exposure to wastewater, the following factors need to be
considered. For water-borne illness or disease to occur, an
agent of disease, that is, a pathogen, must be present. The
agent must be present in sufficient concentrations to produce
disease, or a dose, and a susceptible host must come into
contact with the dose in a manner that results in infection or
disease.
Although a wide range of pathogens have been identified in
raw wastewater, relatively few pathogens appear to be
responsible for the majority of waterborne illness caused by
pathogens of wastewater origin. The pathogens of public health
concern based on food-borne disease in the U.S. were identified
by the CDC. Many of these pathogens find their way into
domestic wastewater. Although wastewater characteristics are
highly variable, there is a high probability that microbial
pathogens are present in raw wastewater at any given time and
location.
One of the important objectives of wastewater treatment is
to remove or inactivate the pathogens. For time, I'll skip a
few pages.
Risk assessment has generally been the tool used to
estimate risk associated with environmental exposures to
pathogens. Exposure is the most important link in the chain of
infection and disease. During blending events that coincide
with extreme wet weather events, people tend to avoid swimming
or recreating in receiving waters. So the potential for human
contact is minimal. In other words, the important link,
exposure, is missing.
Microbial risk assessment involves evaluating likelihood
that an adverse health effect may result from human exposure to
one or more pathogens. The infectious disease process in a
population is fundamentally a dynamic process. Therefore, the
most rigorous and scientifically defensible approach for
mathematically modeling the infectious disease process is to
employ a dynamic model.
However, the reported results of a very simple static
assessment conducted by Katonak, et al., was used to evaluate
the potential public health concerns associated with blending,
and represents an estimate of the theoretical probability of
illness or infection for a single exposure event for one
individual. The static estimate is based on a number of
conservative assumptions, for example, knowing inactivation
from disinfection. It only provides a gauge from which
potential risks to an individual may be evaluated for a single
exposure event.
Clearly, as the authors noted, the estimated risks will be
lower if all flow is treated. However, the authors estimated
risks even though it was based on conservative assumptions, are
within the range of risks considered acceptable by U.S. EPA
national bacterial water criteria. From a risk management
criteria, the number of people exposed during events from
blended effluent as discharged must be taken into
consideration. Risk of infection disease from a single exposure
event above some pre-determined tolerable level does not
necessarily imply that public concern is warranted.
Specifically, the expected number of cases from an exposure
event can be thought of as the product of probability of
illness or infection in the number of people exposed.
The protection of public health clearly dictates that when
more individuals are potentially exposed to pathogen, a greater
level of concern and thus protection is warranted when making
risk management decisions. For example, one reason a risk
manager may decide to implement a control strategy at a
specific location over another can be based on the actual or
expected number of individuals potentially exposed.
Water quality regulation strategies endorsed by EPA follow
the above public health concept. In the Ambient Water Quality
Criteria for Bacteria, EPA defines an acceptable swimming
associated gastroenterital illness rate and derives water
quality criteria for designated beach areas, moderately used
full body contact recreation areas, lightly used full body
contact recreation areas, and infrequently used full body
contact recreation areas.
In summary, a one-size-fits-all approach to address the
potential public health concerns associated with blending would
probably divert limited resources towards efforts where a
commensurate public health benefit would not be realized. A
risk-based management approach would better allow research to
be focused on the most important public health concerns and at
the same time protect the beneficial use of the receiving
waters.
It should be recognized that many aspects of the estimation
and evaluation of potential health risks associated with
exposure to microbial pathogens during recreational activities
and the potential relationship to the use of blending as a
management tool to treat wastewater during peak flow conditions
are poorly understood. However, based on the above discussion,
a number of factors support the use of a risk-based management
approach that allows for the continued use of blending under
conditions where current water quality criteria are met and the
public health is protected.
I hope that above discussion helps improve the
understanding of the nature of the public health implications
associated with the practice of wastewater treatment plant
blending relative to exposure to pathogens. I would be happy to
accept any questions.
Mr. Boustany. Thank you, Dr. Olivieri.
The Committee will now recognize Ms. Nancy Stoner, Director
of Clean Water Project, Natural Resources Defense Council here
in Washington, D.C. Welcome and thank you.
Ms. Stoner. Thank you.
Good morning. We are here today because we are at a
crossroads in one of the most important Clean Water Act
programs: the program to provide secondary treatment for sewage
established in the 1972 Clean Water Act. That program has been
very successful in reducing the volume of sewage dumped into
lakes, rivers and coastal waters. But there's lots of work
ahead even to maintain that progress, much less to continue to
reduce sewage pollution. EPA is making it difficult for
communities by slashing the funding available to them for sewer
maintenance and upgrades through America's Clean Water Fund,
the Clean Water State Revolving Fund.
NRDC appreciates the leadership of the Chair, the Ranking
Member and many other members of the Subcommittee in supporting
restoration of that funding to ensure that communities have the
resources they need to provide effective sewage treatment.
But this hearing is not primarily about funding, but
instead, about treatment standards. Should sewage treatment
plants be required to provide effective treatment for sewage
under all routine operating conditions, or should they be
allowed to skip such treatment and rely primarily on dilution
instead of treatment during wet weather. This is a question
that I believe Congress already answered back in 1972 when the
decision was made to upgrade from primary treatment, which
removes only large solids from sewage, to secondary treatment,
which typically uses microbes to eat the pollutants in sewage.
Sewage is filled with pollutants that make people sick,
close shellfish beds, make beach waters unsafe, contaminate
drinking water sources, damage coral reefs, feed toxic algal
blooms and rob the water of oxygen that fish need to breathe.
Secondary treatment removes the bulk of these pollutants from
sewage: bacteria, viruses, parasite, toxic organics, metals,
oxygen-depleting substances and solids. It also provides
significant removal for nutrient pollution, although advanced
removal techniques are needed for discharges into nutrient-
impaired waters.
Primary just doesn't do the job. All it does is settle out
the larger particles through gravity. No transformation of the
sewage takes place. And because primary effluent is so cloudy,
it cannot be effectively disinfected. Discharging effluent that
has not received secondary treatment does not protect public
health or the economy from the adverse effects of sewage
pollution: water-borne illness, shellfish contamination, beach
closures and so forth.
EPA's proposed blending policy would attempt to legalize
discharges of sewage effluent after only solids removal when
they are sufficiently diluted to meet end of pipe concentration
limits. This policy would put more inadequately treated sewage
into the environment. That is why it has been opposed by a
number of States, public health officials, conservation groups,
shell fishermen and a number of offices within EPA itself. NRDC
requests an opportunity to put into the record its compilation
of quotations from those filing objections with EPA on the
proposed blending policy.
EPA's proposed policy does not require the use of
alternative treatment approaches that have been the subject of
much discussion at this hearing. It does not require
disinfection; it isn't limited to wet weather events of any
particular size; and apparently most importantly to those who
support it, it doesn't require an assessment of whether there
are feasible alternatives to discharging inadequately treated
sewage that should be employed instead.
The assessment of feasible alternatives is the core of what
the bypass rule requires. It requires an analysis of the sewage
treatment system as a whole, to figure out how to maximize
treatment by aligning pipes, cleaning out pipes, offloading
stormwater, storing sewage until it can be treated and so
forth. Those are the types of measures that have typically been
required of sewer operators over the years to reduce excessive
infiltration and inflow and assure that sewage can be
effectively treated.
EPA's proposed blending policy undermines the incentives
for sewer operators to look system-wide for solutions,
essentially to fix their leaky sewer system. It's a penny-wise,
pound-foolish approach in our view. The problem will only get
worse because it isn't being effectively addressed. And
remember that leaky pipes not only leak in when it rains, but
they also leak out when it doesn't. That is, they leak raw
sewage into surface waters and groundwater.
As one sewer operator who served on a panel with me in a
Water Environment Federation conference put it, ``If you remove
excessive infiltration and inflow, you don't need to blend.''
Exactly. EPA's policy requires sewer systems to fix their
problems, not discharge largely untreated sewage because of
their failure to do so.
NRDC fully supports and urges every member of the Committee
to co-sponsor the Save Our Waters from Sewage Act, H.R. 1126.
This bipartisan legislation would block EPA from finalizing its
proposed sewage blending policy, require EPA to implement the
existing Clean Water Act rule that mandate full sewage
treatment under routine operating conditions and require public
notification of discharges of inadequately treated sewage.
Finally, let me reiterate that we cannot expect communities
to do it alone. The Federal Government needs to assist them,
just as it did in the 1970s and 1980s, to maintain and upgrade
their aging sewer systems and sewage treatment plants. Surveys
show that Americans are well aware of the importance of
protecting our rivers, lakes and coastal waters from sewage
pollution and are willing to pay for it. We need to move
forward with the creation of a long-term funding source, a
clean water trust fund which is supported by more than 80
percent of the American public.
I understand that the Subcommittee is planning additional
hearings on clean water funding issues and I commend you for
doing so. Thank you for inviting me to testify today. I would
be happy to answer any questions you may have.
Mr. Boustany. Thank you, Ms. Stoner.
The Committee will now recognize Mr. John Hall, President
of Hall and Associates here in Washington, D.C. Thank you, Mr.
Hall, and welcome.
Mr. Hall. Thank you, and good morning, Mr. Chairman and
Committee members. My name is John Hall. I am speaking today on
behalf of municipal organizations from Tennessee, Pennsylvania,
Kansas, New Jersey and Minnesota.
Blending is a common wastewater engineering design practice
promoted by EPA since the 1970s. Therefore, I was quite
surprised when several regional offices began to assert that
blending was a prohibited plant design. It's a bedrock
principle of the Clean Water Act that the agency does not
dictate plant design or the selection of the treatment process
to meet the Department limits set. EPA has frequently
reiterated this position.
We contacted EPA headquarters in late 1999 to get this
matter resolved. EPA headquarters acknowledged that the
regional blending prohibitions were never authorized and that
``State permitting authorities had considerable flexibility''
to permit blending.
EPA was in the process of issuing a blending clarification
when advocacy groups began to assert that this was some type of
regulatory rollback conjured up by the Bush Administration that
would allow the discharge of raw sewage. These groups published
ads in newspapers and filed thousands of objections with EPA,
making the same assertions. Attached to my testimony is an
example of an ad published in the Pittsburgh Press. It states,
``We already have too much raw sewage in our water. So why is
President Bush making it worse? Stop the blending policy.''
H.R. 1126 is apparently a product of these same
representations. Blending, however, does not involve the
discharge or dumping of raw or inadequately treated wastewater.
The wastewater is treated to meet all applicable public health
standards.
Now, the primary claims of the various environmental
activists have been two-fold. One, that the secondary treatment
rule mandates the use of biological treatment, and two, that
the bypass rule mandates that all flows pass through all
processes at all times. As documented in detail in my written
testimony, the preambles to both of these rules, the judicial
decisions involving these rules, plainly confirm that designing
and operating a plant to blend is not and has never been
prohibited under Federal law.
The fact that the bypass rule doesn't prohibit blending
explains why EPA routinely grant funded blending facilities
throughout the Country. If the activity were illegal under
Federal law, the Federal construction grant regulations would
have prohibited the funding of these facilities. I worked in
that program for four years.
Regarding biological treatments, in 2000, Congress asked
EPA to identify the best method for treating wet weather flows.
That was part of the Wet Weather Water Quality Act of 2000.
EPA's 2004 Congressional Report concluded that non-biological
methods were the most effective at addressing pathogens and
other pollutants.
The contrary assertions of various activist groups,
therefore, don't really have a good factual or legal basis. In
particular, NRDC's characterization in their testimony that the
1987 bypass rule, about the bypass rule decision is wrong. In
that case, EPA expressly stated and the court agreed that the
bypass rule did not dictate plant design and that split flow
and seasonal treatments, which is what blending is, is not a
bypass. EPA clarified that the rule was intended to prevent
parties from turning off unit processes. Blending certainly
doesn't turn off any unit processes. In fact, it promotes the
maximum use of the technology. It pushes it to the edge until
it can't take any more.
The claims that the bypass rule requires all flows to pass
through all processes at all times is simply incorrect. In
fact, if such biological treatment were required per H.R. 1126,
EPA itself has estimated that the nationwide costs of that
requirement would range somewhere between $160 billion and $210
billion. There's a reason for that. Biological treatment is not
capable of handling these kinds of dynamic peak flows. So you
would have to do something extraordinary to it to make it
handle those flows.
Now, in other testimony, the groups have asserted that
secondary treatment is essential to pathogen reduction.
However, in 1976, EPA specifically amended the secondary
treatment rule to eliminate pathogen reduction requirements as
unnecessary and environmentally detrimental. EPA stated that,
``Pathogen reduction necessitates the use of a separate, non-
biological unit process specifically designed for
disinfection.'' As mandated by EPA, States subsequently set
water quality standards and set disinfection requirements as
needed, seasonally and on a case by case basis for the past 30
years.
Now, there are several critical factual points that were
omitted from Dr. Rose's submitted testimony that confirm the
pathogen threat in the earlier analysis submitted--greatly
exaggerated--and the implied solution, biological treatment, is
simply unnecessary. Number one, while claiming cryptosporidium
is a grave concern, she failed to inform the Committee that her
own blending threat analysis demonstrated that the swimming
risk associated with this pathogen in effluent discharges is
below the accepted swimming standards. It's not at a threat
level.
Secondly, while this organism is certainly resistant to
chlorine, it is easily treated with UV disinfection as
specified in the detailed study she cited in her report. So if
you want to treat it, you don't put in more biological, you put
in UV. Last, her testimony acknowledged that giardia and
viruses are reduced by chlorine, but her threat analysis gave
no credit to chlorine disinfection, thereby significantly
overestimating the threat.
In conclusion, blending has been and continues to be one of
the most cost-effective means to process peak wet weather
flows, while maintaining a high quality effluence. Claims of
public health threat or illegal operation are misplaced, and as
Mr. Graham testified, disruptive of State programs that seek to
minimize overflows while ensuring effective plant operations.
I thank you for your attention to this important issue and
would be happy to answer any questions you might have in this
regard.
Mr. Boustany. We thank you for your testimony, and now we
will start our first round of questions. We appreciate all of
your testimony, thank you very much.
Let me start by offering the Ranking Member time to ask
questions. Mr. Pascrell?
Mr. Pascrell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Hall, blending may be cost-effective, but 30 percent of
the water that we assess, and this has been fairly consistent,
does not meet water quality standards. Would you please respond
to that?
Mr. Hall. Certainly. And actually, there's information--
Mr. Pascrell. Is that correct or incorrect?
Mr. Hall. Thirty percent of--
Mr. Pascrell. Of assessed water. We can't assess all the
water, all the drinking water. The water that we assess, 30
percent of it is unacceptable. Is that true or untrue in your
mind?
Mr. Hall. There are a significant percentage of waters in
the State that do not meet bacteriological standards,
particularly in wet weather conditions. Failing to meet those
standards generally is not a function of municipal wastewater
discharges, as demonstrated by the data appended to Mr.
Graham's testimony and that for Ray Dami. They measured
upstream and downstream of their treatment plants during wet
weather. And their effluent were far cleaner. The effluent were
below the water quality standards, but the background water
coming to them was above the standards. That water was not
caused by wastewater discharges.
So what we're seeing around the Country very often is,
during wet weather conditions, people walk their cats and dogs,
you have animal operations, even in State parks, deer, things
like that, you'll see bacteria standards exceeded during wet
weather. And I'm not sure that those exceedances actually pose
a health threat, because I understand animal bacteria are
different from human. But as they are measured by the adopted
water quality standards, often the numbers are higher than the
applicable standards.
Mr. Pascrell. Mr. Hall, the figure, as I can find, is a
pretty accurate figure. It would seem to me, you're the
professional, but it would seem to me that we would want to
increase the amount of assessed water as meeting those
standards. And I would like to know, Dr. Rose, what did you
think of his answer?
Ms. Rose. Well, as I said, I think that some of, you look
at what's going on under the Safe Drinking Water Act and the
Drinking Water rules, they are acknowledging the parasites,
cryptosporidium and giardia, and viruses as a concern. In fact,
in 50 years of outbreak data, there was a significant
statistical relationship between rainfall and when there were
outbreaks in water supplies. So we know that our drinking water
systems are vulnerable during these events and these pathogens
are getting in.
One of the problems with the bacterial standards is that
they are coming from a variety of sources. But if we look at
human enteric viruses or we use source tracking methods, we can
show that they are coming from the wastewater.
Mr. Pascrell. But would you agree with my figure?
Ms. Rose. Yes, I would, and I think--
Mr. Pascrell. What do you think about that? Is that
acceptable? I mean, to listen to Mr. Hall, and this is not to
disagree with him, but to listen to Mr. Hall, that is an
acceptable, consistent figure, which if you look back over the
last 10 or 15 years, has been around 30 percent, what am I
missing here? Shouldn't we be trying to improve that number?
Ms. Rose. I think that many communities are trying to
improve that. If you look at TMDLs and impaired waterways, they
are spending a lot of money on assessment of those waters and
the watersheds. If you look at the city of New York and the
investment they've made in advanced wastewater treatment, you
look at Cincinnati and Kentucky right now, are looking at
issues of wastewater treatment, advanced treatment, in fact,
upstream of the drinking water supply, closure of beaches. I
certainly think that we should be moving in the direction of
trying to improve the water quality.
Mr. Pascrell. Mr. Graham, I listened very carefully to your
testimony. It would seem to me, and I want you to get me on the
right path, if I'm not on the right path, what we need to do is
try to avoid litigation and get everybody in a room and come up
with an acceptable solution, which may include blending under
specific standards. But when you say we need a solution, that
does not necessarily mean we need the solution at hand.
I want your comments.
Mr. Graham. Representative, I do not know what the solution
is. I wish I did. But I think where the thrust of national
policy and State policy has been is to try and address each set
of waters to set standards of what can be discharged into them.
I think as has been said by I think everyone up here, blending
is one of those tools, along with new technologies that may be
coming down the pike, disinfection and other methods of
treatment to open the bag of what the engineering tools are to
allow operators and plant designers to meet the discharge
limits that the environment needs.
I think that's where, not to say blending is the only
solution, it isn't. But it is one of those tools that should be
left in the bag. When you can meet the discharge limits and
you've already got your plant operating at full bore, what do
you do with the extra water that comes down? We can discharge
it by letting it overflow back upstream, or we can bring it in
as blended, provide the maximum amount of treatment we can to
it, and then still meet those discharge limits as we put it out
into the streams.
Mr. Pascrell. Ms. Stoner, if I may, Mr. Chairman, just to
complete, you said that we are at a crossroads. And we probably
heard that 10 years ago, but okay, we'll accept right now we're
at a crossroads. Am I naive to ask the question of how do we
get the folks in the room to come up with a solution? I mean,
in the rules, there's like one paragraph that deals with what
are the clean water standards, and there's 300 pages on the
exceptions.
So how, in that atmosphere, in that background, in that
legacy are we going to get folks that you talked about and that
everybody is talking about in a room to come up with something?
Do you envision blending never being a possibility under
different standards that exist today?
Ms. Stoner. No, actually, that's not true. What we're
trying to do is to implement the existing rule that says that
full treatment should be provided whenever it's feasible--
Mr. Pascrell. But if that isn't possible, Ms. Stoner, if
that's impossible because of the resources that are not
available, then we need to have another option, rather than go
to court every time there's a problem. That's not solving the
problem.
Ms. Stoner. I absolutely agree with you. I have always been
willing to talk and think that we should be able to solve this,
because the existing rule sets the right standard where
blending is disfavored, full treatment is favored, and an
analysis needs to be made of the feasible alternatives, so that
we can maximize treatment. Everyone here on the panel actually
said that they supported maximizing treatment, I believe.
Mr. Pascrell. Right.
Ms. Stoner. That's what I support also. EPA's proposed
blending policy does not do that. It says primary treatment,
and it says little else in terms of maximizing the treatment.
It's not implementing the law. That's what we need to do. And
we need to figure out how to do it together.
Mr. Pascrell. Okay, we've got six experts here whom I have
a great deal of respect for. I'd like to put you all in a room
with EPA and come up with a solution. You know what's
fascinating is that we have tried, we have authorized at the
leadership of this Chairman, to authorize, reauthorize
legislation to provide funding for the CSO problem that we had.
We can't get appropriations.
So you know, we talk out of both sides of our mouths. The
fact is that we cannot continue to provide more and more
exceptions. We have to look blending straight in the eye, in
that is not a total success by any stretch of the imagination.
That 30 percent figure should be--we should have a goal of over
the next 10 years reducing that 30 percent to 25 or 20 percent.
And we are not in the path that we pursue.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Duncan. [Presiding] Well, thank you very much, Mr.
Pascrell. Of course, that's one of the purposes of a hearing
such as this, that we need to call more attention to these
needs. That ultimately, hopefully, and usually does lead to
some increased appropriations.
I'm going to go to Dr. Ehlers first, but just let me ask
one question. I've got information here that says EPA estimated
that the cost of providing biological treatment to all combined
sewer flows of between $88 billion and $130 billion. For
separate sewer flows estimated cost would be between $79
billion and $83 billion. Collectively, this means a total cost
of roughly $80 billion to $200 billion. Most of these costs
would be incurred by requiring cities to build sewage
facilities to capture all wet weather flows.
Do any of you or all of you agree that those EPA estimates
on the costs, if we eliminated blending altogether, would it
cost roughly in the $100 billion to $200 billion range, or do
you dispute that, Ms. Stoner?
Ms. Stoner. EPA is not able to answer a question about
where blending currently occurs in the United States and where
it doesn't. I've been trying to get that information from EPA
for two years. I did a Freedom of Information Act request
trying to get it. EPA doesn't know. EPA does not have an
estimate of that. It doesn't have an estimate of the health
risks, it doesn't have an estimate of a lot of the things that
you would want to know and the American public want to know
about its own proposed policies.
Mr. Duncan. If EPA doesn't have an estimate, do you have an
estimate?
Ms. Stoner. No, sir, because I don't know which facilities
in the United States do or don't blend. But I believe that it
is appropriate to consider costs in terms of the feasibility
analysis I just spoke of. Cost is an element of that. It's an
element of it in the combined sewer overflow policy which
recognizes that this practice is a bypass and should be
disfavored and only allowed as an alternative.
Mr. Duncan. Let me ask you this. If you don't know which
facilities, would there not be a way that you could contact the
major facilities around the country, assuming that you can
contact them all, the small ones as well as the large ones, but
couldn't you contact most of the major facilities and make a
sort of an educated guess as to what the costs might be? I
mean, it looks like to me like if we talk about eliminating, if
somebody wants us to eliminate something, we need to talk about
what the costs would be.
Do any of you others have any cost estimates, or do you
think that the EPA is correct here in this $200 billion range?
What do you think about that, Mr. Graham?
Mr. Graham. Well, Limnotech did the study for EPA. We were
one of the utilities that was contacted by Limnotech. Based on
talking with them, they tried as best they could to put
together a realistic estimate on what the cost was.
If anything, our experience has been, when you try and put
an engineering cost to something, you're more likely to have
cost overruns, in other words, cost more than the estimate,
than to cost less.
Mr. Duncan. So in other words, you think the estimates may
indeed be low, is that what you're saying?
Mr. Graham. I think they may even be low, yes, sir.
Mr. Duncan. Mr. Vicory, you wanted to say something?
Mr. Vicory. Well, as I mentioned in my testimony, the City
of Cincinnati is on the hook in a Federal consent decree for a
billion and a half dollars over the next 20 years. That cost,
the basis of that cost cap is not relief from future additional
costs to the city above that. It basically gives them relief in
terms of the schedule they have to meet in order to put their,
what they call the long-term control plan together for CSOs.
And then at the end of the day, Cincinnati's end result is
probably not going to be literally complete capture and full
treatment of all the flows that they have. So I think if you
take that figure alone and extrapolate it, we're talking
obviously a huge amount of money. I know that Atlanta, I
believe, and Toledo, New Orleans I believe all have consent
decrees that are in these magnitudes of dollars. So I think
when you kind of add up in a very rough sense the figures,
we're talking about that magnitude. And I have no basis
ultimately to refute.
But I know there are some associations out there, such as
the Association of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies, AMSA, they
themselves would be a source of information regarding your
question, sir.
Mr. Duncan. All right, thank you very much. Dr. Ehlers.
Mr. Ehlers. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you
especially for holding this hearing. It's an extremely
important issue that our Nation has been struggling with for
some time. It's certainly time for resolution.
I happen to come from what I happen to think is a very
wonderful community, Grand Rapids, Michigan. We faced,
approximately 15 years ago, a mandate from the State to get rid
of the combined sewage overflow. I remember being invited by
the city commission to meet with them to explain how they could
possibly handle this horribly expensive problem. And I
explained the best way to do it is to separate the sewers,
which is of course extremely expensive.
I still recall one city commissioner jumping up and
screaming at me that, this is something we can't afford, the
people won't stand for it, they can't pay for it and so forth.
And I countered by saying, yes, it is expensive, but yes, the
people will pay for it. They do not like to see sewage flowing
downriver. And they're willing to pay to not have that happen.
The upshot is, the city has gone ahead, I'm very proud of
my city. They have spent roughly a quarter of a billion
dollars, and it's not a large city, 180,000 people. My sewage
treatment bills have gone up I would say at least five-fold
since then, and that sounds exorbitant. But today, we are
fishing in that river. Some people actually swim in the river.
And my bills have gone up five-fold, my sewage treatment bill
is considerably less than my cable TV bill, even more so less
than my telephone bill, less than my cell phone bill, less than
my water bill. You go right down the line.
They bonded for it, they got some money from the State
revolving fund. The city has simply tackled the problem and I
think done a first-rate job and deserves a commendation for
that. At the same time, the city of Detroit received the same
instructions at the same time, and they are still pouring
millions of gallons of sewage into the river and into the Great
Lakes system every year.
My point is simply, there are solutions out there. They are
not cheap, but the public, I believe, is willing to pay for
them. I don't think we should expect the Federal Government to
pay for it all. We can help with the revolving loan fund. But
communities still have bonding authority and as I say, the
public is willing to pay this what I think is still relatively
a minimal charge. Typically a monthly charge is less than
taking your family out for hamburgers. And I think providing
proper treatment for what happens to the hamburgers after you
eat them is a reasonable thing to do.
Now, end of sermon. Dr. Rose, I'm sorry I missed your
testimony. We have two committee markups going on
simultaneously, and I had to be in those. But it's very
discouraging reading your testimony, which I've done, all these
little critters, viruses, other entities in the water. Let me
ask, if you came to a body of water that did not have human
habitation nearby, in other words, a lake without cottages on
it, or a mountain stream, how many of these organisms would you
find in that water, and how dangerous would it be for humans to
drink that water?
Ms. Rose. Well, we do know that all waters will have some
level of fecal contamination from a variety of animals. But the
more you have humans near that water, the more variety of
pathogens you will have, and the greater the concentrations.
For example, the viruses, there are over 100 different types of
enteric viruses. They only come from human waste and human
sewage. And in fact, although the cattle might have been blamed
in Milwaukee when they did the genetic testing of the
cryptosporidium they found that it actually was the type that
came from human sewage.
And so I think that when we look at wastewater in a
community, we can find these different pathogens there, we find
them in high concentrations. And they're fairly young. They've
just been excreted, they've just come out of another infected
person, and they're in the water. So as we get closer and
closer to urban and high density populations, we find more of
these types of microbial contaminants. So that means that the
risk goes up if we are being exposed to those waters without
adequate treatment.
I certainly, Dr. Ehlers, support what you've said about the
public and trying to make priorities when there is a very
costly problem in front of them and trying to decide how they
want to spend their dollar. I think knowledge and information
is important to the decision that the community is going to
make.
So if these facilities are blending or undertaking these
other options, perhaps more water quality data and more
information could help communities decide how they want to
spend their dollars. If the infrastructure is at a D, maybe we
are going to have to invest in infrastructure anyway, and
perhaps there are ways we can kill two birds with one stone if
we look broadly at the problem.
Mr. Ehlers. In your testimony, you talk about some of the
organisms that are in there. it seems, looking at your
testimony, that a surprising number survive the treatment
process. If blending were used in a fashion that didn't change
the number or by very much, would blending be acceptable?
Ms. Rose. Well, it does change the number. But there is a
wide variation. I think as was pointed out in the testimony by
my colleagues up here, some wastewater plants don't even have
primary. Some don't do a very good job at secondary. So when
you're blending, you might get different numbers.
But if you look generally, primary contains higher
concentrations. So when you mix it with secondary, you're
adding more organisms and you're adding also more solids that
impacts the disinfection process. You're going to try to kill
the organisms after blending.
And you can easily kill the e-coli and fecal coloforms. But
the studies have shown that it's the viruses and these
parasites that are more difficult to kill and are affected by
increased particles to the effluent. So the approach I took is
just one approach. I think it could be used in a whole variety
of different facilities that may have, at different times,
different blending scenarios that they might want to use. I
think it could inform management on how they might want to go
about blending different streams under different flow
conditions at different times in terms of the risk.
Mr. Ehlers. You didn't discuss, at least I didn't see
anything in here about tertiary treatment. What does that
consist of? Does that really take care of the rest of the
organisms?
Ms. Rose. Well, in the reclaimed water arena, in Florida
and in the West, where they take wastewater and they reclaim it
and reuse it, tertiary treatment generally refers to a
filtration after secondary. So what they do is they use a
filter, like a sand filter, that's similarly used in drinking
water. It therefore reduces the pathogens even more.
I've seen some of the newer facilities produce effluent in
which you cannot detect any of these pathogens in their final
effluent. It also makes the disinfection process very
effective. So it undergoes primary, secondary, then filtration,
then disinfection. So it takes even more particles out.
Some tertiary treatment refers to nutrient removal as well,
so there are facilities that, after secondary, they take, the
ammonia goes to nitrate, then they take the nitrate out of the
water. Tampa Bay was able to get money because they discharge
to the bay, and Hillsborough County and the city of Tampa, to
take out the nitrogen before they discharge. That was also
advanced, considered tertiary treatment. So there are different
forms.
Mr. Ehlers. One last question. You mentioned a moment ago
that in some cases, there is only primary treatment, sometimes
not even that. In other cases, partial secondary treatment. Are
you referring to that occurring as a result of blending, or
were you saying there are treatment plants in the U.S that are
treating sewage and still only doing primary?
Ms. Rose. Yes, what I mentioned was, there are facilities
that skip primary, they go right to secondary, they don't even
have primary treatment. But also there are facilities that have
a waiver from the Clean Water Act and they discharge primary.
Hawaii was one of those, and in fact, there was an issue with
whether the outfall was impacting the beaches. They decided to
go to what's called an enhanced primary. It's one technique in
which you can get primary to better treat and remove organisms,
and then you can better disinfect. So Honolulu and Mamala Bay
is one example where they had a waiver.
Mr. Ehlers. But this is without blending? This is actually
wastewater treatment?
Ms. Rose. This is actually a wastewater treatment plant
that achieved primary treatment and then discharged through the
ocean outfall and used a diffuser to dilute the wastewater in
the oceans.
Mr. Ehlers. I didn't realize we had any plants left like
that in the United States.
Ms. Rose. There are a few.
Mr. Ehlers. We should not have any. Thank you. I yield
back.
Mr. Boustany. [Presiding] Thank you, Mr. Ehlers.
The Chair now recognizes Mrs. Schwartz.
Mrs. Schwartz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you for all of your testimony. Just a couple
questions, if I may. One thing that wasn't mentioned, as a
point of information, I guess, I understand there are now
waivers for extreme conditions. So we're not asking anyone to
build or rebuild a water treatment or sewage treatment plant
for any circumstance. We do understand there are hurricanes,
I'm not sure what wet weather is, but I do understand there are
extreme conditions, and it would be, from a cost-benefit
analysis, not sensible to prepare for these rare occurrences.
So I think what--you're all nodding, so this is one we all
agree on. Good. So what we're really looking at is, it seems to
me, what is really the goal here. Is the goal to say, look,
we've made a great deal of progress, but it's expensive and we
don't have the money so let's do the best we can? Or is the
goal to really do much better and continue the progress that we
have made in cleaning up the water?
Certainly there are a couple of you who referred to the
fact that you have some connection to Pennsylvania and that's
interesting to me. Certainly our Department of Environmental
Resources, through the Deputy Secretary for Water Management,
has made it very clear that they're not pleased about this
policy and the change in this policy from the EPA. So if any of
you have any statement you want to provide to me separately
that implies that that's not correct, I would be interested in
hearing that.
What I am hearing certainly from my constituents is that
they believe that the goal has to be clean water. That's been
the goal for 30 years. The issue is, how are we going to get
there, how does that make sense. You know as well as I do the
President's 2006 budget actually reduced the amount of money
available to the State revolving fund that was just talked
about by my colleague. So that's not helping States and
municipalities move in the direction of improving the water and
sewer treatment facilities and the infrastructure, which is
aging and does need improvement.
So that to me is not moving in the right direction, if our
goal is to increase the clean water available to Americans and
I believe it has to be.
One of the things I was interested in is that, it seems
that what we are talking about, the proposal is should we have
more blending or not. That seems to me to leave off a whole
other list of what we might be able to do. No one really has
mentioned that. Some of my constituents say, why all of a
sudden is this such a problem. I believe the problem is that,
well, we have standards we want to meet, we have an aging
infrastructure.
But the other is, all the development, much of which we're
very proud of, that in fact has increased water flow. Part of
my district has seen flooding that never has before. They don't
know why that creek is overflowing, forgetting that they just
put in a new supermarket and a whole new pavement and a lot
more of that community is paved over than it ever was before.
So the water is not being absorbed. And I'm not the expert,
you're the experts, the water is not being absorbed, it's
running off and flooding, and in fact has resulted in some new
problems that we have to fix.
So one of my questions is, why not put on the table what
else we could be doing in addition to helping our local
municipalities be able to improve their infrastructure? But why
not also put on the table, I understand there are some new
technologies unrelated to the infrastructure of water and sewer
treatment and unrelated to the regulations actually that would
help, for example, create more porous paving for our parking
lots. I mean, this is not new age stuff here, this is something
that, in my district, I have a wonderful arboretum, their
parking lot has porous paving. They don't have a runoff
problem.
Now, you're going to tell me that's expensive too . But
somewhere along the line, we have to figure out where we're
going to start to encourage some of the other kinds of
infrastructure that is being developed and being built, being
done in a way that doesn't then cause us to have to make up for
the problems that are caused by that.
So I know there are stormwater gardens, and again, I know
this sort of sounds like green stuff, but in fact, this is new
technology that we know can make a difference that could in
fact potentially save taxpayers billions of dollars over the
next few years. So again, I understand the cost benefit
analysis, we're talking about $200 billion being awfully
expensive over the next 10 or 20 or 30 years for
infrastructure, when in fact we talk about spending $200
billion in other ways, it seems like, oh, that's not a big
deal.
I think this is all very much a question of what are our
priorities. But my question here is, what else could we be
doing that none of you have mentioned that in fact could both
save municipalities and States money, one, and two, are there
other ways we should be helping our municipalities be able to
pay for some of that infrastructure, that we're moving in the
wrong direction? And three, isn't our goal cleaner water? It
seems to me the EPA's regulations are saying, you know, we're
throwing up our hands, we can't do it fast enough so we're just
going to make it less of a priority.
Those are big questions, but maybe I would start with you,
Ms. Stoner, you're nodding. If you would talk about what else
we could be doing that no one else has actually mentioned.
Ms. Stoner. Yes, I am nodding, because you are all over it.
That's exactly what we need to do. We need to look system-wide
at the collection system, where is the water coming from into
the system. Of course, Pennsylvania has a lot of combined
systems. One of the ways to address the problem of having too
much water in the system is to offload it to allow it to seep
into the ground. So soil and vegetation can treat it as Mother
Nature has done, we're now trying to mimic that through the use
of rain gardens, through the use of green roofs, just simple
things like disconnecting the downspouts from our houses so
that they run out into the yard where the water can then sink
into the soil, replenish the groundwater supplies and stay out
of the sewer system.
That's part of the solution, is to look broadly. Part of
the problem that I see with this blending or bypass approach is
that it isn't looking broadly, it's looking at the treatment
plant. Dilute water is coming into the treatment plant, what do
we do now. And it offers a solution that is not as good as
actually treating it.
There are other ways to look more broadly at how we can
meet multiple goals, having cleaner water, having replenished
groundwater supplies, even having a more beautiful environment.
Rain gardens are beautiful, as are green roofs. Helping with
the heat island effect, reducing air pollution, it's all of the
piece. If we look broadly and spend our dollars wisely on those
kinds of approaches, which are often called green
infrastructure approaches, we can accomplish more for our
communities and for our environment.
Mrs. Schwartz. Thank you.
The only other question I would ask is, again, something I
mentioned in my opening remarks, but a concern I have is that
for some of our States and municipalities in particular that
have actually been spending money over the last two decades for
sure on infrastructure, and I know that the Philadelphia water
department in the last 20 or 30 years actually spent almost $1
billion to improve the water treatment, and is operating now
three award-winning pollution control plants. Secondary
treatment systems are in place in all three of our water
pollution control plants. And again, we've spent about a
billion dollars.
If we move in this direction that has been suggested by the
regulations from the EPA, is this actually going to reward
municipalities that have sat on their hands or discourage the
kinds of investments that my colleague on the other side of the
aisle was sort of saying his community is wiling to make? And
in fact saying to our local communities, don't spend money on
improving the infrastructure because in fact, we are not going
to really require you to do it and we're going to acknowledge
that it's too hard.
So we're actually again creating rewards and incentives to
do less rather than rewards and incentives for the communities
that have actually taken some real responsibility to think
about the future and to start to plan ahead and to start to
create what really are more innovative, potentially more cost-
effective in the future, kinds of water treatment and sewer
plants, recognizing that so many of our communities have to do
this. Some have stepped up to the plate to do it.
So how do we switch gears here and actually encourage the
communities to do that? Are there financial incentives to do
that? There are obviously grant programs. But one of my big
concerns is that these changes will actually encourage allowing
or blending, but discourage the kind of investment that's not
going to go away. These are still aging systems that need to be
upgraded, and as I say, many municipalities that are struggling
are in fact still making this kind of investment.
So maybe this is a question for Mr. Graham, Mr. Vicory, you
might want to say, why not encourage this kind of investment
that you have to make in your municipality? Why discourage it?
Mr. Graham. I don't think we are discouraging it. The city
of Maryville, which I work for, has very actively supported us
in the water and the wastewater treatment to spend the monies
that we have been spending to decrease our I&I, significantly
decrease it over the course of the last 15 years.
Where our problem has come is with Region IV saying, no
blending, any time, anywhere, it's illegal. We took plant down
and that region said, you can't do it, period.
Mrs. Schwartz. Even in extreme situations?
Mr. Graham. Even in extreme situations.
Mrs. Schwartz. So is that what's driving this, is that the
EPA or the region--you didn't actually say, maybe that's a
problem with their interpretation of the current regulations
rather than a call for significant changes in those
regulations? It's a rather big answer to what might be a
regional administrator, I don't know.
Mr. Graham. What we're asking for is a clarification of
those rules so that we know what we can and cannot do on the
other side.
Mrs. Schwartz. I think that's a very different problem than
actually rewriting the regulations.
Mr. Graham. I don't think we're rewriting the regulations,
Mrs. Schwartz. I think what we're asking for in our opinion,
and what EPA has said in their Freedom of Information, is that
blending has been in the tools and that the secondary, the
Clean Water Act doesn't prohibit blending. To address whether
blending is the primary one, no. Blending in our plant is what
we do when the water goes above a certain level. Every time,
all of us have at some point in time had a sink overflow, or a
tub overflow, the water's been too much going into the system
to be handled under the conditions that it was originally
designed for.
Where we look at blending is to try and handle those peak,
infrequent flows when the biological side, and biology rules in
a biological treatment plant, it can only take so much of a
surge or so much starvation between the dosages of sewage
that's going on. Whether it's blending or storage, that is the
approach that helps you equalize and get the maximum treatment
while still meeting those discharge limits that the State and
the EPA have set as being protective of the water body that
we're discharging to.
Mrs. Schwartz. So then I'll just close with this, it sounds
like what you're saying then is that you are supportive of
continuing to upgrade the infrastructure and make those kinds
of investments and hopefully not calling for blending too
often. The question is getting that right, of course.
But maybe that speaks to what the Ranking Member talked
about earlier, which is, that's getting the right people in the
room to make sure the interpretation is addressing some of your
concerns, rather than making changes that could have dramatic
effects on other areas or not experiencing the same kind of
response from the region. Maybe that's something to look at
more locally and see if we can't get kind of, some kind of
response from your own delegation. Obviously you have some
folks here from Tennessee who might be able to bring the EPA in
and see if you can't have some other discussion about that.
But anyway, Mr. Chairman, thank you.
Mr. Boustany. Thank you, Mrs. Schwartz.
I have one question while I have the Chair that I'd like to
ask. Mr. Graham, you mentioned in your testimony concerns about
misinformation. I'm someone who has a health care background
and understands the importance of Koch's postulates when
dealing with microorganisms and so forth.
It's my understanding that in some communities that have
practiced blending, there have been communities that have
practiced blending over the past 30 years, in this time frame,
have there been any reports of outbreaks of pathogens, and a
real good study done to show that it was related to the
facility that was in question? Ms. Rose, would you like to
handle that? Dr. Rose, I'm sorry.
Ms. Rose. Specifically looking at blending and tying it
back, that is one of the problems. I think more studies do need
to investigate this, and investigate both water quality and
public health impacts. That is perhaps through better
epidemiological and health surveillance. So I definitely
support that there's not enough information to actually test
Koch's postulates right now.
What we do know is that in 50 years of waterborne disease
outbreaks in the United States, they are statistically related
to events with high precipitation. And so in high flow, we're
getting more outbreaks, waterborne outbreaks, from these types
of pathogens, including viruses, giardia and cryptosporidium.
So the question becomes, then, during these events, if our 50
years of data, and that's from epidemiological surveillance,
shows this relationship, how do we go to the community level
and start investigating and investing to make the association.
I do think investment in science and research, I think the
work that the Water Environment Research Foundation is
embarking on is extremely important. I think we have not
invested enough research and science into the wastewater side
of the water industry.
Mr. Boustany. Thank you.
Mr. Vicory, same question. What are your thoughts?
Mr. Vicory. Well, there's no information that's come across
my desk that indicates there has been what might be termed a
defined outbreak as a result of a discharge from a blended
facility.
But I have to put that in context, I think it's important
to do that. When you look at the Ohio River, which is kind of
my hometown, Cincinnati, the number of people that literally
use that river for swimming purposes and get the kind of direct
exposure, you know, it's really, I think, practically speaking,
on an nice day, probably a handful of people. A lot of people
use the Ohio River for recreation. Many of them are in boats.
But the number of people that literally have the jet-skis or
are on the water skis are really not that many.
And even if there was somebody who got sick, or two or
three people, they could live in totally opposite parts of
town, they could live in a different State. So trying to tie
visits to a hospital or visits to a doctor to the anecdotal use
of the Ohio River, you can hopefully understand how difficult
that really is.
But having said that, that when you look at a wet weather
situation in the Ohio River and Cincinnati, and the bacterial
loading that occurs from the Cincinnati side or the northern
Kentucky side, Cincinnati has roughly 250 sewage overflow
structures, the northern Kentucky side probably has 70 to 100.
When you look at the loading of bacteria in a wet weather
event, the amount of bacteria that ends up going into the river
from a blended sewage treatment plant effluent that gets
disinfection, versus the bacteria in the combination of sewer
overflows, there could be 10, 15 sewer overflows, could be 300
overflows, the ratio of bacterial input is, I think,
practically speaking, very small if not relatively minuscule,
of a blended effluent versus the raw sewage that's being
discharged in these overflow points.
So even if you had some information that people were
getting sick in the Ohio River and literally tying it to the
blended effluent versus the other inputs, I think, would be
probably almost impossible to do. But that issue that I speak
of, about relative loadings, really gets back, I think, at the
heart of the issue that's important for a community when they
talk about bacteria in the river. That's ultimately what we're
trying to do here, is to achieve water quality, that a
community needs to spend its money it's struggling to acquire
in a fashion that, as was mentioned earlier, that gets at where
can we reduce the risks the most for the money that we spend,
how do we do that.
Mr. Boustany. Thank you. I think as we move forward, having
some of that scientific data and relating it to outbreaks is
going to be very useful. Because the big challenge is going to
be looking at cost benefit analysis, because we've got aging
infrastructure and major concerns. So I think the lesson here
would be to try to come up with some studies.
I guess one other question, quickly, and that is, are there
standard methodologies of looking at the effluent right now in
blended water? I mean, is there a standard being used to
quantify organisms across the board or facilities are using
different methodologies? Anybody who might have an answer to
that question, I would appreciate it.
Mr. Graham. Each State puts requirements on the discharging
facility. It's called the NPDES permit. In our case, we are
required to monitor the discharge for the pollutants that have
been identified. The Little River, there, for example, is a
TMDL on coliform. We monitor for coliform, we monitor for total
suspended solids and we monitor for BOD.
If the State has additional rules that says, we need to
monitor for additional items, then we would monitor for that.
That is part of that NPDES permit, and I think that would be a
basis to start from as to what needs to be monitored for, and
getting that information in from the utilities can provide a
lot of that.
Mr. Boustany. Thank you.
Now the Chair would like to recognize the Chairman of this
Subcommittee.
Mr. Duncan. Well, thank you, Dr. Boustany. And of course,
you're the Vice Chair of this Subcommittee and I do appreciate
your participation and taking over for me. I've had two
different markups going in two different committees, in
addition to this Subcommittee this morning. I usually try to
stay for just about every bit of a hearing. I apologize to the
witnesses, because I do think this is a very important subject.
I'm not going to ask any questions, because I'm supposed to
speak at a meeting at noon, and another meeting at 1:00 and
another group at 2:00. I don't know how I'm going to do it all.
But I do want to thank you once again for coming. I say
this, for whatever reason, the Congress doesn't have very many
scientific or technical people in the Congress, very few. Dr.
Ehlers is one of the very rare exceptions. So we need, I think,
a closer working relationship with those who do have scientific
and technical knowledge in many of these fields. You are going
to have to explain things to us in a simple way that 98 percent
of us can understand these things.
But I think that we've got to rely most heavily on the
people who are on the firing line. I have talked to many people
over the years such as Mr. Vicory and Mr. Graham, who have
worked or are working in our water treatment facilities. And
I've never seen a one yet that wants to put out a dirty product
or discharge sewage. Some people act like there are people in
those facilities who want to harm people, and I just have never
found anybody in that situation.
I do think it's unfortunate, we are probably spending more
per capita on the water system in Iraq, at least at the Federal
level, than we are on the water system here in this country.
Thank goodness, the States and the local governments and the
ratepayers are doing as much as they are doing.
Now, I told Dr. Ehlers, I agreed with him on the cable TV
and cell phone bills. In fact, I wrote the FCC several weeks
ago or two or three months ago opposing use of the cell phones
on the airplanes. But I put in my last newsletter something
about that, then I said, if young people would conservatively
invest what they are paying in their cable TV and cell phone
bills each month, they probably could retire early with
substantial fortunes.
But having said that, and I do agree with what he said,
that people probably should and probably are willing to pay a
little bit more on their water bills, because they are getting
a real bargain. But having said that, and I don't represent,
some people up here think because I'm from east Tennessee, I
represent this Appalachian poverty district where we still have
outhouses and all that. And that is so totally false. Our
economy in east Tennessee is better than probably 90 percent of
the places in this country. It's become one of the most popular
places to move to.
On the other hand, even where the economy is good, most of
the people that all of us represent don't have a lot of excess
funds. Your average, typical families out here are having
difficulties paying all their bills and so forth. So I don't
know that we want to advocate five or ten-fold increases in our
water bills, at least doing it very quickly. So we've got to
use a little common sense in these situations, we've got to use
a little balance and realize that people have so many other
things that they have to pay for in addition to all this.
So we need to work together, and I know Dr. Rose has looked
into the emerging technologies that are coming about. I don't
understand the technology but I have read and been told that
it's far improved over what it was 25 or 30 years ago. It seems
that it's moving even faster now.
So hopefully a combination of doing a little more at the
Federal level, using a little common sense and going to some of
the emerging new technology, and just a whole combination of
things, we can keep improving this product that we're putting
out for the American people. And I look forward to hearing from
each of you in the future, and working more closely with you to
try to solve what I think is very, very important.
With that, I'll yield back to Dr. Boustany for any closing
comments or questions that he has, and I'll run off to my
meeting. Thank you very much.
Mr. Boustany. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I would just like to close by saying thank you all for
coming to testify. We appreciate your patience in answering our
questions and we certainly look forward to working with all of
you.
With that, we will adjourn the Subcommittee hearing. Thank
you.
[Whereupon, at 12:07 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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