EPAWATCH Effluent trading could spur abandoned mine cleanups A market-based effluent trading program being proffered by EPA's Region VIII office and a coalition of state and local government agencies, industry representatives, and environmental groups could provide the incentive that companies have been lacking to voluntarily adopt and clean up or remediate abandoned mine sites. In the past, companies and other organizations have been wary of touching such sites for fear of thirdparty lawsuits. Under the current Superfund provision, anyone that assumes responsibility for an abandoned facility containing hazardous waste automatically accepts any liabilities associated with discharges coming from that site. Under the new program that was expected to be launched this summer as a pilot project in Colorado's Clear Creek watershed, companies, cities, or any other group would receive credits for cleaning up abandoned sites. They could then either use these credits against their own discharges, deposit them in a bank for future use, trade and sell them on the open market, or simply retire them, said Larry Selzer, director of the Conservation Fund, an environmental organization that is serving as the program's sponsor. What makes this program different from other trading schemes is the concept of trading "out-of-kind" pollutants, such as metals for nutrients or habitat restoration for metals, said Dan Lueke, director of the Environmental Defense Fund's Rocky Mountain office. The idea originated with Coors Brewing Co., which sits at the bottom of the Clear Creek watershed and depends on clean water for its beer production but also has discharges. However, any trades have to result in net water quality improvement, and trades can only occur © 1999 American Chemical Society
within a given watershed, not across watersheds, said Holly Fliniau, Clear Creek project manager and watershed coordinator for the Region VIII office. For example, "if we identify a certain stream segment impacted by metals, a company could come in, clean it up, and in the process move the metal-impacted segment into the [healthy] target zone," Fliniau said. "They could then discharge more nutrients at a different location within the watershed" but never at levels that exceed water quality standards, she added. Liability relief has been a major obstacle in getting the pilot off the ground, but the regional office has approved the use of an administrative order of consent concept existing under Superfund, which offers liability protection for any conditions that existed prior to cleanup. ASARCO, Inc., a mining company involved in the pilot, made the liability relief protection a condition for its participation because "we don't want to volunteer to be good guys only to find out that by having done so, we've gotten ourselves trapped," said Bob Coner, ASARCO's associate general counsel. "The key thing is that we have no interest in assuming any long-term responsibility. We want to go in, fix the problem, and help identify an approach that everyone can agree on," Coner said. He expected the first pilot to be completed by the fall. If this unique trading scheme works, its potential impact could be "profound," Selzer said. The Clear Creek watershed alone has more than 1300 abandoned mine sites, not to mention other hardrock mining relics across the West, coal mines in the Appalachian region, and metal ore mines in the Midwest and Great Lakes region. "All told, more than half of the United States is dealing with this issue in a significant way, and there's no mechanism to handle it except what we're proposing," Selzer said.
NRDC report backs longdelayed stormwater rules A Natural Resources Defense Council report supports EPA's proposed rules to clean up stormwater runoff and storm sewer discharges in small cities and notes that the proposal's cleanup strategies have been successfully employed by more than 150 urban towns. At the same time, however, some states are complaining that the EPA proposal will undermine many state-run programs already in place. State officials are pressing EPA to approve more stringent state programs now in place, in lieu of the proposed federal program. EPA's proposal will pressure states with complex programs to alter them to meet the lowest common denominator, because as many as 30 states are prohibited from having stormwater rules that are more stringent than EPA's, said Linda Eichmiller, deputy director of the Association of State and Interstate Water Pollution Control Administrators, in Washington, D.C. Florida, for example, has a comprehensive stormwater program that goes beyond EPA's permits by requiring wetlands protection and regulating stormwater quality and quantity. Urban stormwater runoff, which EPA says is responsible for nearly half of all impaired estuarine waters, has been regulated since 1992 on large construction sites and in cities with more than 100,000 people. Now, as part of the rulemaking, urban areas with less than 100,000 people and construction sites of less than 5 acres will be required to obtain federal water pollution permits. Cities, meanwhile, must develop cleanup plans that include best management practices (BMPs) such as detecting and eliminating any illegal connections from residential or commercial sewage pipes to city stormwater lines that flow into nearby waterways. The rules, delayed since 1992, were proposed in 1998 [Fed. Regist. 1998,
AUGUST 1, 1999 / ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY / NEWS • 3 1 1 A
