Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Watered down river regs delayed

By Dan Hassert
Post staff reporter

A proposal to relax bacteria standards in the Ohio River when it's swollen by rain has been put off until at least 2008, partly because of public outcry.

With more than 7,000 e-mails, letters and postcards, most of them objecting to the proposed new standards, it became clear that more work was needed for the Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission to make its case, said Peter Tennant, deputy executive director of the agency created by eight states and the federal government to address water quality issues in the river.

During a meeting of ORSANCO's board late last week, officials approved a minor portion of the so-called wet-weather standards but deferred action on the majority of them for more research, Tennant said.

In essence, the agency was telling environmental groups and others, "We see your point. We want to find some good answers to these questions," Tennant said.

But, Tennant emphasized, ORSANCO remains committed to the underlying premise: that the current standards written to protect swimmers and boaters from infectious diseases are impossible to meet when heavy rain causes bacteria levels to spike in the river, and that the standards are almost meaningless anyway because few people are using the river at such times. As written, they set up the potential for unlimited public spending for small benefit, the agency says.

But environmental groups who see the proposals as a retreat from clean water goals celebrated ORSANCO's decision as a "short-term victory" and commended the agency for not rushing on the plan. Environmentalists said they realized the discussion was not over and that the bigger battle was not the written rules but the pollution itself.

"We do realize there's a huge problem that's going to cost a lot of money and it's not going to go away overnight - for better or worse, we're going to talk about this for years," said Nate Holscher, project coordinator for Rivers Unlimited.

But "we need the standards for accountability and for a balanced viewpoint that takes into account both economic efficiency and the fact that clean water is a basic right."

Relaxing the rules would eliminate the sense of urgency in solving the various sewage and run-off problems that cause bacteria levels to shoot up, Holscher said.

Tim Guilfoile, a regional representative of the Sierra Club, said he had been amazed at how ORSANCO's proposals had galvanized river supporters. "I've been an environmentalist for a long time, and I can't remember the last time I had people comment to that extent," said Guilfoile, who lives in Edgewood. "People really do care about the Ohio River."

Earlier this year, ORSANCO's board gave preliminary approval to seven recommendations written by its technical committee concerning wet-weather issues so they could be sent out for formal public comment. Since then, the agency has been inundated with negative responses, Tennant said.

Some of the responses raised legitimate questions about the data ORSANCO was using, and commissioners have asked for more research, he said.

For example, federal studies that link bacteria counts and infectious diseases are based on beaches and lakes, not flowing bodies like rivers, and are not very thorough in the first place, he said. In addition, the agency has no hard data on recreation in the Ohio River - how often, where, when and for what purpose it's used for "contact" activities like swimming, skiing and boating, he said.

In addition, there's also recognition that the proposed "trigger" for when the relaxed standards would kick in -a 2 mph river current - was an arbitrary number geared more toward swimming and not boating, he said.

Tennant said ORSANCO would also like to employ a high-power statistician who could extrapolate conclusions from bacteria counts that routinely show levels of fecal coliform and E. coli are exceeded.

Guilfoile seconded some of those concerns with the data. ORSANCO's basic assertion - that standards should be relaxed during flood conditions - probably has some truth to it, he said. But some of the specifics of the proposals, as well as the conclusion that no one is on the river after it rains, are "absurd," he said.

"As soon as it stops raining, I go out and play around on the river," he said. "Two miles per hour is nothing."

Guilfoile said he's a big fan of the work ORSANCO does but said the flood of public responses should be a "wake-up call" that the agency has to be more open. This "was bound to come to a fight," he said.

Tennant said it would take some time to get the additional data and fine-tune the proposals. The federal Environmental Protection Agency is doing some work on infectious disease scenarios, but to do a recreation survey of the Ohio River would probably require ORSANCO partnering with some environmental or outdoors groups, he said. Next summer is the earliest that could be done.

Since that data would have to be analyzed, a year from next February is the earliest any new proposals could be ready to be voted on, he said, although there's really no timetable.

"These are big, big decisions we're making, he said.

The ongoing wet-weather debate - the local version of one that's been going on nationally almost since the creation of the Clean Water Act in 1972 - is an attempt to find the "happy medium" between a completely safe, healthy river and reasonable public spending, which is already estimated at several billion dollars, said Jeff Eger, a member of ORSANCO's board and general manager of Sanitation District No. 1 of Northern Kentucky, which oversees Northern Kentucky's sewage systems.

The agency and its counterpart in Hamilton County, the Metropolitan Sewer District of Greater Cincinnati, are under order by the federal government to write plans to eliminate or rein in sanitary sewer problems that dump untreated waste into the river. The combined plans are expected to cost nearly $2.5 billion.

That mandate wouldn't change regardless of any new wet-weather standards, Eger said. But new, relaxed standards would guide the spending so it's more efficient, so there's "more bang for the buck," he said.

To that end, ORSANCO did approve one change related to wet-weather issues, adopting language that allows the establishment of alternative bacteria criteria in the long-term control plans being drawn up. In effect, that "serves notice" of changes to come, although it does not spell out those changes, Eger said.

All such changes to wet-weather standards, Eger pointed out, would have to be reviewed and approved by state regulators.

Copyright 2006, The Post