Thoughts on Katrina and Heroes

By Adam Zabinski, 2008-2009 Immediate Past President of the Water Environment Federation (WEF)

The upcoming August 29 anniversary of Hurricane Katrina seems to always gets people thinking and talking (or in my case, blogging). Among the many things it’s come to symbolize, like failure of government emergency response, Katrina will always be a tragic reminder to me of the vulnerability of our water resources and the critical nature of the work we do as water quality professionals. I’m sure I’m not alone in remembering news accounts of individuals who did their best to keep their facilities operating under the most extreme circumstances, sometimes staying on the job while surrounded by flood waters in New Orleans. I was in awe of those heroic efforts and proud to be involved in water quality protection, and I salute everyone who worked to maintain the availability and safety of water during that difficult time. (In fact, please feel to share names and stories of “Katrina Water Heroes” by responding to this blog; I’m sure everyone would enjoy hearing about them.)

While we have fortunately not faced an environmental calamity on Katrina’s scale since then, there is still a huge, essential, and ongoing challenge to preserve and protect our water resources. It’s a job that demands real commitment and a genuine desire to protect public health and the environment through clean water. It is also a job that is done every day by members of the Water Environment Federation. We protect our families, our neighbors, and people we will never meet from the dreaded water borne diseases that are the scourge of most of our planet. Katrina symbolizes our achievement because even in those opportune conditions, we had no outbreaks.

I’d invite you to take a moment to read through some of the personal statements from our own WEF Water Heroes, water quality professionals who are working hard to keep our water clean and safe—all day every day. While (thankfully) there are no major wet weather events occurring on a regular basis, professionals in facilities across our country and around the world are ready. And they’re operating water and wastewater facilities to protect and deliver clean water, 24/7, every day. I’d call that heroic, too.

New TMDL Rulings Give Them Something to Talk About

By Brooks Smith, Hunton & Williams LLP

The raging national dialogue on TMDLs moves into high gear next week in Minneapolis during TMDL 2009: Combining Science and Management to Restore Impaired Waters in Minneapolis. If you’re not a water quality junkie, stop here. If you are, you’ll be thrilled to hear that the comprehensive program includes scientists talking about new research like model development and advancements in water quality monitoring and evolving tools to implement effective TMDLs. Perhaps even better, representatives from source, nonpoint source, regulator, permittee, and environmental interests, and maybe even your next-door neighbor, will be there, and we expect lots of talk about the latest court rulings and what they mean for the nation’s watersheds.

Two new and controversial TMDL rulings, if widely applied, have the potential to turn the world of watershed management upside down. The first is from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in the so-called Pinto Creek case, which deals with what to do with permits for new dischargers after a TMDL is in place. According to the Ninth Circuit, such permits may not be issued, even if they require offsets of equivalent or greater reductions in loading beyond existing conditions, unless and until all other regulated dischargers (and maybe even unregulated ones!) are subject to enforceable schedules of compliance to achieve their own allocations.

Anyone want to opine on what this will do to the pace of new permitting across the country? Egads!

The second is from a Vermont environmental court and deals with older TMDLs that have already been on the books for a few years. According to the court, these TMDLs may not control subsequent permit proceedings and may actually need to be re-evaluated as part of each proceeding to ensure that the original assumptions remain accurate. Let’s see, we have something like 60,000 TMDLs left to do around the country. And now we cannot even rely on the ones already in place! Read: budget, administrative and regulatory nightmare. There has got to be a better way to figure this out, so please go ahead and post some ideas! Meanwhile I hope to see you in Minneapolis.

Nutrient Removal: Everywhere, All the Time?

By Jeanette Brown, 2008-2009 Vice-President of the Water Environment Federation

As water quality experts know, many treatment plants throughout the United States are required to remove nitrogen, phosphorus or both. And if you manage or work at a utility like mine, in a region where nutrient removal is required, you know there are significant related costs, both capital and operating, as well as increased process monitoring requirements. As stewards of the environment, we take great pride not only meeting permit requirements but also in trying to achieve much greater removal of pollutants. Now we must all address a fundamental question as to whether or not every water body would benefit from nutrient removal. It’s complicated, because while we strive for the cleanest water possible, we understand this objective must be balanced against most effective use of environmental resources and diverse considerations that impact water quality at the regional and local levels.

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has petitioned EPA to issue generally applicable nitrogen and phosphorus removal requirements for wastewater treatment plants. They contend that total phosphorous limits of 1.0 mg/L and total nitrogen limits of 8.0 mg/L are consistently attainable on an annual average basis using current secondary treatment technology. They also contend that many treatment plants are currently doing this with either a slight increase in cost or in some cases reduction of costs.

Many of us who currently operating nutrient removal plants have some concerns about this proposal because we understand how cold temperatures, wet weather and changing influent characteristics can impact nutrient removal efficiencies. In order to evaluate this petition, which will certainly be a hot topic at the upcoming Nutrient 2009 meeting, members of WEF and the National Association of Clean Water Agencies (NACWA) developed a questionnaire which has now been completed by many plants throughout the country. The results give us an understanding of the processes used at plants, whether or not they are doing nutrient removal, effluent quality, and costs. The goal is to provide EPA with expert advice as they continue to address nutrient criteria and issues.

Additionally WEF has convened a nutrient issues workgroup. This workgroup is assessing base line performance of conventional secondary treatment plants that evaluate how much nitrogen and phosphorus can be removed by the process. They are also evaluating state-of-the-art processes for nutrient removal, including cost and performance.

It is vitally important that we continue to thoroughly address this question of universal benefits of nutrient removal before any final decision is made to mandate generally applicable nutrient removal requirements. As stewards of clean water, we all have a stake in the answer, and I’d appreciate your thoughts.

P.S. You may want to check out the Nutrient Removal Knowledge Center on WEF's website for more information.

Sharing the Sustainability Buzz

By Peter T. Brady, B.E., Residuals and Biosolids Committee Chair

At the residual and biosolids meeting in Portland last week, sustainability through effective residuals management could be described as a shared vision…or the major buzz. Topics like benefits of land application where appropriate and increased plant efficiency were discussed everywhere. And presentations on green energy and energy renewal were especially popular among older and younger attendees alike. That’s actually why I’m blogging.

In addition to creating leading-edge optimization solutions and tools for today’s residuals managers, our field must continue to attract and cultivate a new generation of young professionals (YPs). The Residuals and Biosolids Committee (RBC) is addressing sustainability from both perspectives because to make sustainability work, we need a sustainable workplace.

Green energy savers like the incinerator Cleveland upgraded to generate electricity or the report on carbon emissions presented last week are great for at least two reasons…they contribute to our profession’s knowledge base and they attract the YPs who want to fix the environment. While we build on a solid range of best practices and operations to sustain the environment through smart residuals management, we must communicate the very real opportunities to protect public health and the environment. And we should do that through venues where YPs seek information (like blogs)-- and encourage their involvement. The time to reach out has never been better.

As we saw in Portland, big things are happening in residuals management, a field bursting with innovative and practical ways to improve our environment. WEF and the RBC continue to work toward developing the best possible technical information and resources, making them available in formats that work for experienced residuals professionals as well as YPs who may be exploring the field for the first time. (Visit the Residuals and Biosolids Conference Proceedings page to see materials from recent RBC meetings.) And the RBC has challenged each of its subcommittees to increase their number of active YPs, through social media, old-fashioned networking or whatever else works, and we’ll review our progress at WEFTEC. We need YP involvement, and so does a sustainable planet.

Sound Science: Water Quality Monitoring

Carl Myers, Assistant Director, WEF Government Affairs

Recently joining the WEF staff a few years removed from my former EPA life, I was cheered by the new Administration’s focus on sound science, clearly stated by EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson:

“Science must be the backbone for EPA programs. The public health and environmental laws that Congress has enacted depend on rigorous adherence to the best available science.”

A critical component of applying sound science, the need to collect, analyze and wisely use good water data, including the robust ambient and related water quality monitoring efforts necessary to provide good data, cannot be overlooked. In these tough economic times, we must appreciate the array of monitoring efforts now underway at Federal, State and local levels and do whatever we can as water professionals to cooperatively support and improve all our monitoring efforts.

WEF has long supported the National Water Quality Assessment (NAWQA) Program administered by USGS in cooperation with many others. NAWQA is a well-designed and implemented water quality monitoring program producing both national and State/local data and results helpful to informing water management decisions. WEF, in cooperation with USGS, has sponsored a continuing series of congressional briefings to make sure NAWQA findings are understood and discussed by national leaders. The next congressional briefing, which as always is open free to the public, will discuss new findings about the quality of our nation’s private drinking water wells. “The Quality of Our Nation’s Private Drinking Water Wells: Are Current Contaminant Levels Above Public Health Benchmarks?” is scheduled for Friday, March 27 from 9:30-11:30 a.m. in the Cannon Caucus Room of the Cannon House Office Building in Washington, DC. No RSVP is required for attendance. For more information, contact Donna Myers (dnmyers@usgs.gov, 703-648-5012) at USGS or Nick Bardis (nbardis@wef.org, 703-684-2400 x7731) at WEF.

Supporting water quality monitoring should include encouraging everyone, not just water professionals, to both understand and participate in water monitoring. WEF and the International Water Association in partnership with a wide range of sponsors have been helping local participants observe World Water Monitoring Day™ (WWMD). In 2008, more than 73,000 people worldwide visited their local streams, rivers, lakes, and other waterbodies to take basic water quality measurements in celebration of World Water Monitoring Day, marking a 60% increase in participation from 2007. WWMD is officially observed each year on Sept. 18. Beginning in 2009, participants will be able to monitor and report data to the WWMD database from March 22 (World Water Day) until Dec. 31. The goal is to engage 1 million people in monitoring their local waterways by 2012. For more information, see the World Water Monitoring Day 2008 Year in Review, available at www.WorldWaterMonitoringDay.org or by request at wwmd@wef.org.

NAWQA and WWMD are just two examples of how WEF is supporting and advancing water quality monitoring. It’s important that all water professionals work together to help develop the best possible monitoring data to support sound science even as we go full-speed-ahead on watershed management actions.

Global Water Stewardship and WEF

By Paul Freedman, 2008-2009 President-Elect of WEF

During this very recent bitter cold spell my water pipes froze, and I was without water. Albeit a short time, still this helped me really appreciate the importance of having adequate, clean and safe water. Yet, we know that here in the US, and globally, the sustainability of our water supplies is continually threatened by pollution, excessive demands, and now climate change. So, as an organization of water professionals, we at WEF asked, “what can we do to help mitigate these threats?” At our last meeting, the WEF Board of Trustees passed a resolution to partner with the Alliance for Water Stewardship to promote and recognize good practices among large water users and providers.

As water quality professionals know, water scarcity is a human health and economic threat. In 2003, the US and the GAO predicted that 46 states will experience water shortages within 10 years, and we have already seen dangerous levels of drought across the continental map. Areas of historically stable supplies like the southeast came dangerously close to depleting their available supplies just two years ago, while sunbelt areas in the south and Southwest are perennially short. Globally, insufficient and unsafe water supplies are problems for over a billion people, causing an estimated 1.6 million deaths every year. Industries and even whole economies of countries are often threatened by water shortages. So when it comes to water, smart conservation, effective allocation, and wise use are essential to public health, economics, and the environment worldwide. (See WEF's resources on water reuse.) Governments and users share responsibility for the solutions.

Per the Board resolution I mentioned earlier, WEF is now helping launch the Alliance for Water Stewardship. The Alliance is an international partnership of like-minded organizations with the objective to develop a set of principles and good practices for large water users and providers, including industry and all types of water utilities. We have a 3-year goal to develop a global certification program with a vision to recognize water users and managers who are responsible water stewards, protecting and enhancing freshwater resources for people and nature. The program builds on global scientific and policy research on “water footprints” and the desire to not only minimize wasteful water uses but also undertake practices that can protect and replenish the availability of safe clean water in individually stressed watersheds and groundwater aquifers.

There are numerous international efforts to define sustainable practices, and in many cases we certify those good steward practitioners in everything from forestry to commercial fisheries. However, sustainable water is a foundation for all of those industries. Water is not only essential to life, it’s a foundation for our food supply, our economy, and our global ecology. So WEF members, as the professional “stewards” of the water environment, we have a responsibility to lead and establish practices that will insure a sustainable future for clean, safe water. That’s why we are supporting the Alliance for Water Stewardship.

What do you think? Add a blog reply. If you want more information please contact me or Matt Ries at the Water Environment Federation.