FEATURE
The Challenge of Watershed Cleanup States are finding innovative ways to implement the Clean Water Act's TMDL program. JANET PELLEY ntil now, the U.S. total maximum daily load (TMDL) program has been a largely ignored section of the Clean Water Act requiring states to identify water bodies that are unfit for fishing, swimming, or drinking, and then to control pollution in the entire watershed from both point and nonpoint sources. But under pressure from environmental groups and others and as a result of a spate of lawsuits, state agencies and EPA are breathing new life into the program and raising questions about how pollution sources will be controlled and how the expensive TMDL program will be funded. The issues surrounding the emerging water quality program surfaced at the meeting "Watershed Management: Moving From Theory to Implementation," which was held this past May in Denver, and was sponsored by the Water Environment Federation. According to Tad Foster, a legal counsel for several wastewater treatment plants in Colorado and California, the Clean Water Act should be amended to require nonpoint sources, such as farms, to shoulder their fair share of pollutant reductions. Foster said the point source community is concerned that because there is little enforcement authority over nonpoint sources, industries that are considered point sources of water pollutants will be forced to shoulder the economic burden as well as pollution reductions mandated by the TMDL program Foster and Ken Kirk executive director of the Association of Metropolitan Sewage Agencies predicted that when it comes time for a TMDL program to allocate reductions in pollutant loads in a watershed representatives from nonpoint sources will fail to,come to the table "We are still the primary lever to implement TMDLs" said Foster According to Kari Dolan, TMDL water resources project manager with the National Wildlife Federation, pressure from point source discharges and else-
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where could lead to regulation of nonpoint sources, something environmentalists have supported for years. Seeing the writing on the wall, the U.S. Agriculture Department's National Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) is putting a lot of money and effort into the TMDL program and is urging farmers to make voluntary controls a success, said Jim Greenfield, TMDL coordinator for EPA's southeastern region. Whether states will be able to find ways to equitably distribute financial responsibilities among point and nonpoint sources remains an open question, but some recent developments suggest that this may be possible. In the city of Palo Alto, Calif., where copper from brake pads is the principle source of copper contaminant release to the watershed, participation in a TMDL for the San Francisco Bay proved to the city that a voluntary partnership with nonpoint sources of copper in urban runoff could be the key to cheap, efficient achievement of water quality standards. In 1995, Palo Alto initiated a partnership between brake pad manufacturers, government, academia, and environmental groups to explore ways to voluntarily reduce or eliminate copper from brake pads. According to Kelly Moran, Palo Alto water pollution prevention manager, copper levels exceed water quality criteria in south San Francisco Bay, and urban stormwater runoff is the main source. A local government study found that copper in brake pads is responsible for 80% of the copper in runoff. The city decided that because mechanical controls such as street sweeping and drain inserts are not effective, eliminating copper from brake pads would be the best way to control pollution. Although the voluntary effort to control copper in runoff has not yet concluded, Moran said that industry officials welcomed the nonregulatory approach and several companies indicated that they have changed products and research strategies since the partnership started The TMDL program requires a shift in focus from 0013-936X/98/0932-364A$15.00/0 © 1998 American Chemical Society
discharges at the end of a pipe to controlling nonpoint source pollution on a watershed basis. Instead of relying on the technology-based controls emphasized for the last 20 years, the TMDL program is a water quality-based system that addresses pollution in an entire watershed, regardless of its source. Thanks to a host of lawsuits brought by environmental groups, the TMDL program is now a priority at the state and federal level, said Doug Haines, executive director of the Georgia Center for Law in the Public Interest. "The litigation kicked this thing into gear," he concluded. The lawsuits, introduced in 32 states so far, demand that EPA force the states to implement TMDLs (i). According to Lee DeHihns III, environmental attorney at Atlanta's Alston & Bird, no other environmental regulation has attracted so much litigation (2). On the books since 1972, the TMDL program was intended as a cleanup plan for water bodies that remain polluted despite the compliance of point source dischargers. States are required to identify and list all bodies of water that are impaired—that is, unfit for swimming, fishing, or drinking—and identify the cause of the pollution. States must then determine how much pollution each listed water body can receive and still meet water quality standards. This pollution limit, known as a TMDL, is divided like a pie among all the sources of pollution in a watershed. The TMDL is the sum of waste load allocation (from point sources) and load allocation (from nonpoint sources). EPA must approve state TMDLs which are then incorporated into states' water quality plans and point source pollution permits (see figure) (3). Lack of state funds for TMDLs Now that many states have begun implementing TMDLs, they argue that they do not have the resources to fully implement them. Mike Haire, an official in the Maryland Department of Environmental Quality, told the watershed management conference that developing TMDLs in his state costs from $3000 to $3 million per water body—not including implementation—depending on their size and complexity. Greenfield quoted figures from $2500 for developing TMDLs that employ existing data to $100,000 for those that require several field studies. An EPA official in the Watershed Branch said that $7 million will be available this year for TMDLs and that EPA is developing methods to predict the cost of TMDLs. "Developing and implementing TMDLs will be more expensive overall than point source cleanups because there will be more local governments footing the bills," said Greenfield. "We're always going to have limited resources, so we need to be creative," stated Kari Dolan, project manager with the National Wildlife Federation. According to Dolan, if municipal wastewater plants are forced to shoulder the costs of pollution reductions through upgrades or pollution trading, they will pass those costs along to their clients—the ratepayers— creating more popular support for enforcing pollution controls on nonpoint sources. "We don't want to see the federal government
Status of state Total Maximum Daily Load lists Although total maximum daily loads (TMDLs) can play a key role in watershed management programs, only slightly more than half of the states have submitted final TMDL lists for review by their EPA region. Two states, Idaho and Iowa, have yet to submit a TMDL list to EPA.
coming in and telling our farmers how to grow corn," said Alison Hensel, watershed coordinator for the Missouri Corn Growers Association. Her organization is helping to fund and run a TMDL pilot project in Missouri "to prevent the need for additional government regulation by solving the problem ourselves." The association has entered into a partnership with the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, EPA, the University of Missouri, U.S. Department of Agriculture, NRCS, the University of Missouri Extension Service, and North Carolina's Novartis Corp., which manufactures the herbicide Atrazine. In the next year, the group will be setting up a monitoring program and testing the effectiveness of various best management practices in TMDL watersheds. Their ultimate goal is "to come up with recommendations for TMDLs for the Missouri Department of Natural Resources," said Hensel. "Tackling nonpoint source pollution through TMDLs will be harder than cleaning up point sources because you have to look at the whole watershed," said Greenfield. But according to Dolan, it is time for the state and federal governments to allocate more resources to water quality. "Had the states implemented the TMDL program the way it was intended, we would not have had the outbreak of Cryptosporidium that killed 100 people in Milwaukee, blooms of fish-killing algae in Maryland and North Carolina, and the dead zone of hypoxic water in the Gulf of Mexico," she concluded. References (1) LeClair, V. Environ. Sci. Technol. 1997, 31, 178A-179A. (2) DeHihns, L. A. III. Nation. Law J. 1998, 20(29), B7-B12. (3) Office of Water, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. http://www.epa.gov/OWOW/tmdl (accessed May 1998).
Janet Pelley is a contributing editor of ES&T. AUG. 1, 1998 / ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY / NEWS • 3 6 5 A
