Clean Water News

PHILADELPHIA—PennEnvironment and Clean Water Action denounced the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) proposed guidance to permit a massive increase in the dumping of partially treated sewage into our waterways, calling it a major threat to both the environment and public health, and urged Senators Santorum and Specter to vocally oppose finalization of this proposal.

The proposed policy would allow sewage treatment plants to dump partially treated sewage into the waterways anytime it rains, massively increasing the current levels of partially treated sewage discharges. Currently sewer operators are allowed to discharge partially treated sewage only in extreme cases, such as hurricanes and tropical storms, and when there is no feasible alternative.

"This new policy would expose millions of Americans to inadequately treated sewage in the water they rely on for drinking, swimming and fishing," said Ariel Hegedus, Clean Water Associate with PennEnvironment. "This means more of our elderly, our young infants, and those with weakened immune systems will get sick, and more of them will die."

Untreated sewage contains a variety of dangerous pathogens, including bacteria (such as E coli), viruses (such as hepatitis A), protozoa (such as Cryptosporidium and Giardia) and helminth worms. The pathogens in sewage can cause illnesses ranging from diarrhea and vomiting and respiratory infections to hepatitis and dysentery. Even with the current, stronger sewage treatment standard, experts estimate that there are 7.1 million mild-to-moderate cases and 560,000 moderate-to-severe cases of infectious waterborne disease in the United States annually.

For the last 50 years, standard sewage treatment has involved a two-step process: solids removal, and biological treatment to kill bacteria, viruses and parasites. The new policy allows facilities to routinely bypass the second step and "blend" partially treated sewage with fully treated wastewater before discharging it into waterways.

Robert Wendelgass, Pennsylvania State Director of Clean Water Action, indicated that "The Clean Water Act has required secondary treatment of sewage for the past thirty years, and this has been a major factor in the improvement of rivers like the Delaware and Schuylkill." He added: "Rolling back this requirement would violate the Clean Water Act and threaten the progress we've made cleaning up our nation's waterways."

The Bush administration's fiscal year 2005 budget called for cutting $492 million from the Clean Water Act State Revolving Fund, which loans money to states to help pay for sewage treatment. Congress ultimately cut $250 million from the fund. Environmental groups urge Senators Specter and Santorum to work to increase federal funding to sewage treatment, and to oppose the funding cuts and rollbacks that jeopardize the environment and public health.

Along with improvement of sewage treatment infrastructure, environmental groups call for preventative measures to lessen the burden on sewer treatment facilities. Environmental groups call for land-use policies that reduce major sources of pollution into waterways, such as reducing run-off pollution from overdevelopment, and reducing nutrient pollution from poorly managed industrial farms. "Prevention is the cheapest and most effective way to manage pollution," said Hegedus.