PROCEEDINGS
Technical Session
August 26, 1968
Cleveland, Ohio
Pollution of Lake Erie and its Tributaries-
Indiana, Michigan, New York,Ohio, Pennsylvania
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR FEDERAL WATER POLLUTION CONTROL ADMINISTRATION
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CONFERENCE
In the Matter of Pollution of
Lake Erie and Its Tributaries
TECHNICAL SESSION
Afjoncjj STATLER HILTON HOTEL
CLEVELAND, OHIO
AUGUST 26, 196S
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U£S. Envlrc
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CONTENTS
Page
Opening Statement - Murray Stein 4
Questions and Answers #
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Technical Session in the matter of the
pollution of Lake Erie and its tributaries, convened
at 9^30 a.m., in the Garden Room of the Statler Hilton
Hotel, Cleveland, Ohio, on Monday, August 26, 1968.
PRESIDING:
Murray Stein, Chief, Enforcement,
Federal Water Pollution Control Adminis-
tration, Washington, D. C.
CONFEREES:
Frank 0. Bogedain, New York State
Department of Health, Albany, New York
Lorin F. Oeming, Michigan Water
Resources Commission, Lansing, Michigan
George H. Eagle, Ohio Department of
Health, Columbus, Ohio
H. W. Poston, Regional Director,
Great Lakes Region, Federal Water Pollution
Control Administration, Chicago, Illinois
Blucher A. Poole, Indiana State
Board of Health, Indianapolis, Indiana
Richard M. Boardman, Pennsylvania
Department of Health, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
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2-A
PARTICIPANTS:
Dr. A. F. Bartsch, Pacific Northwest
Laboratory, Federal Water Pollution Control
Administration, Corvallia, Oregon
Sharon D. Bresler, Director of Util-
ities, Lima, Ohio
Frank Hall, Federal Water Pollution
Control Administration, Great Lakes Region,
Chicago, Illinois
George L. Harlow, Cleveland Program
Office, Federal Water Pollution Control
Administration, Cleveland, Ohio
John E. Richards, Ohio Department of
Health, Columbus, Ohio
Dr. David G. Stephan, Acting Assistant
Commissioner for Research and Development,
Federal Water Pollution Control
Administration, Washington, D.C.
John J. Wirts, Easterly Pollution
Control Center, Cleveland, Ohio
John Weaver, Proctor and Gamble,
Cincinnati, Ohio
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ATTENDANTS:
E. Thomas Alvord, Rand Development
Corporation, Cleveland, Ohio
Dr. Daniel G. Bardarik, Pennsylvania
Department of Health, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
Ed Earth, Federal Water Pollution
Control Administration, Cincinnati, Ohio
Robert C. Black, Soap and Detergent
Association, New York City, New York
Torn Braidech, Federal Water Pollution
Control Administration, Cleveland, Ohio
Richard W. Brown, Hammermill Paper
Company, Erie, Pennsylvania
Thomas M. Burnett, Cleveland, Ohio
D. S. Caverly, Ontario Water Resources
Commission, Toronto, Canada
Thomas Colpetzer, Lake County Health
Department, Painesville, Ohio
Thomas W. Cooper, Municipal STP
Manager, Columbus, Ohio
Seba H. Estill, Izaak Walton League,
Cleveland, Ohio.
Carlos Fetterolf, Michigan Water
Resources Commission, Lansing, Michigan
David L. Flynn, Stanley Consultants,
Cleveland, Ohio
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3-A
ATTENDANTS (Continued)
Joseph B. Gaghen, Dow Chemical
Company, Cleveland, Ohio
George B. Garrett, Ohio Department
of Health, Columbus, Ohio
G. A. Hall, Ohio Water Pollution
Control Board, Columbus, Ohio
Richard D. Hall, Diamond Shamrock
Corporation, Cleveland, Ohio
Robert P. Hartley, Federal Water
Pollution Control Administration, Cleveland
Program Office, Cleveland, Ohio
James Haube, City of Toledo, Toledo,
Ohio
Henry Hauenstein, Finkbeiner, Pettis
and Strout, Toledo, Ohio
Ihor Havryluk, A. C. Ackenheil and
Associates, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Clifford R. Hindman, Burgess and Niple,
Limited, Mentor, Ohio
Robert Howick, Reporter, WKBF-TV 61,
Cleveland, Ohio
Bob Kasarda, News Photographer,
Cleveland, Ohio
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3-1
ATTENDANTS (Continued)
Betty Klaric, Reporter, Cleveland
Pres,, Cleveland, Ohio
Donald G. Kirk, Hammermill Paper
Company, Erie, Pennsylvania
Sanford Kwasney, City of Cleveland,
Cleveland, Ohio
Robert K. Jordan, U. S. Steel
Corporation, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Perry Miller, Indiana State Board
of Health, Indianapolis, Indiana
Peter T. Miller, Cinematographer,
WJW-TV, Cleveland, Ohio
Hal Morgan, Reporter, WJW-TV-S,
Cleveland, Ohio
Dr. Paul Olynyk, Cleveland State
University, Cleveland, Ohio
Michael F. Pikus, Cleveland State
University, Cleveland, Ohio
Chris Potos, Federal Water Pollution
Control Administration, Cleveland, Ohio
Glenn Pratt, Federal Water Pollution
Control Administration, Chicago Regional
Office, Chicago, Illinois
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3-C
ATTENDANTS (Continued)
Tad Rajda, Federal Water Pollution
Control Administration, Washington, B.C.
Lawrence E. Rigby, F. G. Browne and
Associates, Marion, Ohio
Ray Roth, City of Cleveland, Bureau
of Industrial Wastes, Cleveland, Ohio
Agnes Rupp, Federal Water Pollution
Control Administration, Cleveland, Ohio
James P. Schaefer, City of Cleveland,
Bureau of Industrial Wastes, Cleveland, Ohio
Robert Seid, Reporter, WEWS News,
Cleveland, Ohio
David J. Scullin, Aqua Laboratories,
Cleveland, Ohio
Albert Seiler, Burgess and Niple,
Limited, Columbus, Ohio
R. N. Simonsen, Standard Oil Company
of Ohio, Cleveland, Ohio
Robert C. Singer, 'Water in the News,"
New York City, New York
Alfred Smith, Federal Water Pollution
Control Administration, Cleveland, Ohio
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3-D
ATTENDANTS (Continued)
Mrs. Richard L. Smith, League of
Women Voters, Fairview Park, Ohio
Standly H. Sutton, Havens and
Emerson, Cleveland, Ohio
Martha Takacs, Cleveland State
University, Cleveland, Ohio
W. R. Taylor, Diamond Shamrock Corpor-
ation, Cleveland, Ohio
William A. Telliod, City of Cleveland,
Water Division, Cleveland, Ohio
Larry J. Vereb, Cleveland State
University, Cleveland, Ohio
Fred A. Voege, Ontario Water Resources
Commission, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Adel Wagner, Federal Water Pollution
Control Administration, Cleveland, Ohio
G. H. Watkins, Lake Erie Watershed
Conservation Foundation, Cleveland, Ohio
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Opening Statement - Mr. Stein
PROCEEDINGS
OPENING STATEMENT
BY
MR. MURRAY STEIN
MR. STEIN: May we come to order, please? The
meeting is open.
This is a Technical Session growing out of the
Federal-State Water Pollution Control Conference on Lake
Erie.
The Conferees have unanimously come up with an
analysis of the problem and a time schedule and requirements
for cities and industries in the five States concerned.
We would like to address ourselves at this tech-
nical meeting to just the single problem of the nutrient
impact on the aging and eutrophication of the lake and that
is all I guess particular emphasis on the phosphate
problem.
This and I would like to emphasize it again
will be a technical meeting and if your notion of
entertainment is listening to a technical meeting that is
what you are going to have. We are not going to take up
any other question or broad questions of policy.
The Federal Conferee is here, Mr. H. W. Poston.
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Opening Statement - Mr. Stein
For Indiana, Mr. Blucher Poole; Perry Miller. From Ohio,
Mr. George Eagle and Mr. Richards. From Pennsylvania, Mr.
Richard Boardman and Dr. Bardarik. From New York, Mr.
Frank Bogedain. From Michigan, Mr. Loring Oeming. And
my name is Murray Stein and I am the representative of
the Secretary of the Interior, Stewart Udall and from
Washington, D.C.
We may have a lot of people participating in the
meting today. Our proposal would be to utilize the ques-
tions submitted by Mr. Eagle a list of about seventeen
questions have the questions read, have one of our
experts try to give an answer to the questions and then
have any comment or clarification made by the feonferees
or anyone technical expert or anyone else a Conferee
may want to call on at that time.
I would suggest in view of the number of people
who are going to participate in the meeting that if you
are called on to make a comment or ask a question you
identify yourself by your last name and the State.
Now, do any of the Conferees want to make a
statement or make a comment before we start with the
questions?
MR. POSTON: Mr. Chairman.
MR. STEIN: Yes.
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Opening Statement - Mr. Stein
MR. POSTON: Do I understand that the question
will be read and the answer will then be read?
MR. STEIN: The answer or a summary. Any kind
of answer you want to make to the question, if you can
summarize it, this will be fine. I think the question
and the full written answer which the Conferees have will
appear as read in the transcript. We are making a
transcript of this meeting which will be available and
I think we probably will be able to have much useful
technical information in that.
MR. OEMING: Do I understand that the answers to
these questions were prepared by Dr. Stephan and Dr. Bartsch
jointly?
MR. STEIN: Dr. Stephan, Dr. Bartsch and our
regional staff here. They were prepared as most answers
are prepared, individually, and then they got together by
conference call and discussed this, and I think these are
pretty generally the position.
What we intend to do is have the question read
and then have the particular specialist from the Federal
Government give the answer, and then you can make any
comment or questions. If we have to call on another
specialist at that time, we are prepared to do so and hope
you are.
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Opening Statement - Mr. Stein
Again, we will limit the questioners and the
comments to the people the Conferees call on and that is
all. I hope they will all be confined to -- I don't want
this limited necessarily to the seventeen questions, but
I hope they will be germane to the technical purpose of
the meeting.
MR. OEMING: My only comment here, Mr. Chairman,
was that I am assuming, maybe wrongly so, that Dr. Stephan
and Dr. Bartsch are the experts here and those are the ones
I came down here to hear.
MR. STEIN: Yes, they are going to be available,
but the point is: we did not frame the questions, and a
good many of the questions are directed really at our
regional people. The regional people have the material
on hand rather than Dr. Bartsch or Dr. Stephan. Both of
these men went over the questions very, very carefully.
To give you a notion of the procedure we use,
both Dr. Bartsch and Dr. Stephan went over the questions.
The}'- had the first crack. The questions which they thought
were appropriate for them to answer they answered. Certain
questions they figured were not appropriate for either one
and would be handled largely by Mr. George Harlow who has
been doing work in the region. He will supply the answers
to those questions.
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Opening Statement - Mr. Stein
MR. OEMING: There is no objection to a Conferee
asking Dr. Bartsch or Dr. Stephan to comment.
MR. STEIN: Not at all, sir. That is right.
MR. POSTON: I had proposed that we have the
question read and the answer, as provided here, and then
the Conferees could ask any one of our experts here to
elaborate or clarify anything they had in mind.
MR. STEIN: Well, I thought that is what we had
outlined in the procedure to begin with. Letfs go on with
the first question.and see how it works.
Mr. Hall, would you read the question, please?
You know who is going to handle each answer, don*t you?
MR. POSTON: Yes.
MR. STEIN: Question 1.
MR. HALL: Question No. 1: Will an 80 percent
reduction of phosphates in all wastewater discharges in
the Lake Erie basin eliminate algae in the western basin?
Mr. Stein, would you like me to read the answer?
MR. STEIN: You or anyone else can read the
answer.
MR. POSTON: Well, Dr. Bartsch provided the answer
on this question.
MR. STEIN: Why don't you handle that?
I would suggest the one who is the specialist
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Questions and Answers
provide the answer.
Dr. Bartsch.
DR. BARTSCH: If you need identification for your
record, I am A. F. Bartsch.
The answer is as follows: No. Elimination of
algae is neither feasible nor desirable. Algae are
necessary as food for higher forms of life. They are now
present in an abundance several orders of magnitude greater
than necessary to sustain those higher forms. An BO percent
reduction of waste phosphate input will reduce the algae
population to nearer a balance between that population and
those of the higher forms. More importantly, it will be
somewhat selective in that those algae which require
greater amounts of phosphorus will experience greater
reduction in population. It is these algae (mainly blue-
green) which are the most troublesome in water supply and
in their ability to produce massive "blooms."
In contrast to Lake Michigan, Lake Erie, at
least in the western basin, already has reached a historical
stage capable of producing planktonic algae in amounts
considered to be excessive. Such production is an expression
of the fertility of the water its chemical composition
and a response to physical factors such as light energy,
transparency and suitable temperature. In discussing
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Questions and Answers
nitrogen and phosphorus as algal nutrients in connection
with considerations in Lake Michigan, I, FWPCA, stated,
"In any event, the quantity of algae a lake can grow is
largely determined by the amount of nutrients available.
The more nutrients there are, the more algae there will
be, the greater the nuisance will become. There is
evidence that continued input of nutrients can finally
bring a lake beyond the point of no return to the stage
where continuous recycling of nutrients already present
can result in production of nuisance growths of algae."
It should be recognized that there is no real
magic number for nitrogen or phosphorus (other than zero)
below which there will be no growth. If even greater
algal production in the western basin is now curtailed
because nutrient supplies are exhausted as growth
approaches the peak of a bloom (as opposed, for example,
to light extinction or some other physical cause), any
actions that decrease nutrient availability will result
in a smaller algal crop. If one can formulate a program
that will bring soluble phosphorus to a level of 0.010 mg/1
and inorganic nitrogen to a level of 0.3 mg/1 before the
growing season begins, the resulting crop of algae will
be small, consistent with these levels and presumably
tolerable.
Dr. R. Vollenweider, after reviewing for the
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Questions and Answers
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development all
circumstantial data available on nutrients versus algal
problems in lakes throughout the world, finds basis for
belief that loading rates and recycling from sediments are
more significant than concentrations existing at the moment,
He concludes that critical loading rates in this sense are
0.2 to 0.5 g/ra /year for phosphorus and about 59/m2/year
for nitrogen. The influences of sediment-water interchange
are superimposed on this.
Because no systems are perfect, and because
nutrient input comes from many sources, some not measured
and perhaps some not even known, it is believed that a
remedical campaign should not be satisfied with aiming
toward these specific numbers but should be designed to
curtail nutrients in every possible way from every known
source. It is not known if Lake Erie is now at the point
where continuous recycling of nutrients already present
can result in production of nuisance growths of algae, but
there seems little question from our knowledge of Lake
Erie conditions that the action must be remedial and not
preventive. In any event, curtailment of nutrient input
must be so designed that phosphorus concentrations avail-
able for algal growth are brought down to levels that will
permit the total lake system to purge itself of existing
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Questions and Answers
abundant supplies.
It is quite possible, and perhaps probable that,
in the western basin, even though the reduction in algae
may be substantial, it still will not be to a desirable
level with an BO percent reduction of phosphate input.
More than half of the phosphorus discharged to Lake Erie
is to the western basin, including a large amount in
runoff. An $0 percent reduction there still leaves a large
amount entering the lake and this amount will surely
increase in the future if positive steps are not taken
to reduce phosphorus levels in waste effluents. Therefore,
serious consideration should be given to greater than $0
percent reduction, since this is now feasible. Even then,
algal production in the western basin will be greater than
in the rest of the lake, but that is understandable because
the western basin is also the most productive of fish and
food requirements are greater.
MR. STEIN: Thank you, Dr. Bartsch.
Are there any comments or questions?
MR. OEMING: Dr. Bartsch, will you clear up some-
thing for me? When you are using the term ''phosphorus,' you
are expressing it as 0.010. Is that as phosphorus or as PO,?
DR. BARTSCH: No, that is as phosphorus.
MR. OEMING: So the level would be as PO, , about
V
.03, wouldn't it?
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Questions and Answers
DR. BARTSCH: Yes.
MR. OEMING: Do you recall, Dr. Bartsch, what
recommendations were made at the original Interstate Lake
Erie Conference? Was it .03 as PO, ?
DR. BARTSCH: I am sorry, I cannot answer that.
I do not know.
MR. OEIIING: I think that is correct. I wondered
if you knew that, or if you were proposing a different
level here than had been recommended and accepted by the
original Conferees to the Lake Erie Conference.
DR. BARTSCH: My impression is that is the same
level. MR. OEMING: It is the same. I would like this to
be verified though by someone else here.
MR. POSTON: Mr. Harlow can answer that.
MR. HARLOT: My name is George Harlow, Director
of the Lake Eric Program Office of the Federal Water
Pollution Control Administration.
This is the same level, Mir. Oeming, that was
recommended by tho Technical Committee. This is the level
upon which they based their recommendation for phosphorus
and nitrogen control.
I don't recall at the original meeting in 1965
the Conferees deciding upon a level at that time. They
left it- in abeyance and it depended upon the recommendation
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Questions and Answers
of the Technical Committee.
MR. OEMING: They had not decided on a level but
the record is full of recommendations by the biologists
of FWPCA and I think the figure was .03 and that is what I
am trying to confirm as PO^. Does this represent a change
in the ground rules?
MR. HARLOW: No. This is probably correct and it
has always presented, I think, a confusing picture of this
phosphorous problem, how you talk about it. But to my
knowledge, in every instance when we spoke of 0.03, we
were talking as PO,, and when we talk about 0.01, we
are talking as P.
MR. STEIN: Any other comments or question on
the first question?
Yes, Fir. Poole.
MR. POOLE: This is not a comment exactly, it is
a question.
When we are talking about 0.01, are we talking
about total phosphorus or soluble phosphorus?
DR. BARTSCH: These recommendations, as I under-
stand them, have reference to soluble phosphorus and not
total phosphorus.
MR. STEIN: Are we in agreement? Are there any
other comments? Any other comments or questions? If not,
we will try to get on with Question No. 2.
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Questions and Answers
MR. HALL: Question No. 2: Is the natural level
of phosphates in Lake Erie adequate to permit algal growths
even if all phosphates are eliminated from municipal and
industrial discharges?
MR. POSTON: George Harlow.
MR. HARLOW: The answer: Yes. Bureau of
Commercial Fisheries' observations have noted algal growths
in quiet coves of Lake Superior where natural phosphorus
levels should be lower than the "natural level" in Lake
Erie. Lake Erie can never reach a completely "natural"
level now because of the impossibility of controlling
entirely the runoff of artificially introduced phorphorus.
However, it is suspected that something near the natural
level now exists, at least for part of the year, in raidlake,
central, and eastern basin waters and these waters do
sustain algal growth, though not at obnoxious levels.
Natural levels of phosphorus in Lake Erie prior
to the impact of domestic and industrial waste discharges
to the system are, in fact, not known. The influence of
domestic and industrial wastes on the concentrations of
calcium, chloride, sodium-plus-potassium and sulfate
during the past 50 years in Lake Erie is well documented,
however.
That completes the answer to the question.
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Questions and Answers
MR. STEIN: Are there any comments or questions
on this one?
Yes, Mr. Poole.
MR. POOLE: I am assuming, George, when you are
saying "natural level," you are including in that what we
get from soil runoff.
MR. HARLOW: This is true.
MR. EAGLE: Mr. Chairman.
MR. STEIN: Yes.
MR. EAGLE: Mr. Harlow, I think you need to
clarify here: what is the relationship here now between
phosphates and these other chemicals that you point out
about calcium and chloride and sodiura-plus-pctassium, and
so on?
MR. HARLOW: The second part of this question
was answered by Dr. Bartsch, I believe.
If I may be permitted, I think they are inferring
because of the increases in these other substances that one
can imagine or think that you have had somewhat similar
increases in phosphorus.
We have measurements well documented in the past
of these other substances in Lake Erie. We do not have
comparisons on phosphorus many years ago, and it is by
inference that you would presume that phosphorus has also
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Questions and Answers
increased in Lake Erie.
MR. EAGLE: Isn't it true that some of these
increases have not been very significant? What do your
figures show?
MR. HARLOW: I don't know specifically each one.
I can think of one that is, I think, very well documented
that comes to mind, and I think it gives a pretty good idea
of the general overall change of the chemicals in the lake,
and that is total solids. Total solids has gone up from
around 1 think these figures are correct -- somebody
correct me if I am wrong from around 145 milligrams
per liter around 1900 to almost 200 milligrams per liter now.
MR. EAGLE: Yes. I don't want to belabor the
point, but I don't think this is a valid comparison because
these total solids might be from industry, for example,
which had no contribution of phosphates, so I don't quite
see the comparison. I am not going to belabor the point
further, but I don't believe it is a valid comparison.
MR. HARLOW: I think there is no question in my
mind and in the people that I have talked to that we are
getting substantially greater inputs of phosphorus than
we used to, and it seems to me that it is axiomatic if
you are going to get more in the lake you are going to have
more in the lake.
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Questions and Answers
MR. EAGLE: Yes. I don't think there is any
argument about that. But just because we are getting more
total solids, I don't want it to follow that this makes it
true that we are getting more phosphates. It may have no
relationship at all.
MR. STEIN: Dr. Stephan.
DR. STEPHAN: Dave Stephan, FWPGA, Washington.
I would just like to strengthen George's comment
here that the reason this particular statement was added
or included in here was simply to indicate there is docu-
mentation on available records as to the increases in
various soluble components in the lakes. These are
mentioned here: calcium, chloride, sodium, and so on.
Data do not exist historically on the concentra-
tions of phosphorus or of soluble phosphates in the lake,
but I think one can infer that some increases have occurred.
That is all we are trying to say. There is some data
indicating increases in soluble inorganic salts in the
lake. Phosphates, I think one would infer very strongly,
were also included.
One other point: The levels of phosphorus as
compared to the levels of chloride, which cause problems
in the lake, pollution problems in the lake are quite
different.
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Questions and Answers
We are talking in terras of hundredths or tenths
of parts per million in terms of phosphorus, whereas we
are speaking maybe in terms of tenths or in some cases
scores of parts per million of other materials such as
chlorides.
MR. BOGEDAIN: These increases of inorganic salts
-- are they related to the algal problem? Are they also
nutrients or material for algal growth?
DR. STEPHAN: No. This was not the intent of the
inclusion of these in here, not to imply that at all.
MR. STEIN: Are there any other comments?
DR. BARTSCH: Fir. Chairman, I would like to
comment on this question, too.
MR. STEIN: Yes.
DR. BARTSCH: The question was asked whether some
of these other contributions to the total dissolved solids
might or might not be involved as algal nutrients, and I
would like to go back and tell you some fundamental biology
for the moment and simply point out that there are many
elements which make up the total nutrient requirement of
plants and we ordinarily think of some ten major ones, and
if you want to remember how to remember this, you simply
think of this ditty that says, !iC. Hopkins Cafe, Mighty
Good.1 I know that some of the biologists here are familiar
with what I have just said because this is a clue to the
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Questions and Answers
fact that we are talking about calcium as a requirement; we
are talking about carbon as a requirement; iron, magnesium,
nitrogen, phosphorus, and so on.
When you follow that ditty, why, then, you have
the identity to those ten. Some of them you will recognize
contribute to this total story of dissolved solids in the
lake.
In addition, there is an array of other elements,
many of them metals, and some getting over into the organic
compounds such as vitamins which are required as micro-
nutrients in exceedingly minute amounts.
So I think I did want to emphasize that so far
as the total dissolved solids picture is concerned, if we
have a buildup of them, one can anticipate that the supply
of essentially all of these nutrients for algal growth
are going to be there in increased amounts.
MR. STEIN: Mr. Richards.
MR. RICHARDS: Earl Richards from Ohio. I think --
one additional comment, Fritz. I think it has been reported
in some of the European lakes that possibly some of these
other elements are triggering mechanisms, right?
DR. BARTSCH: I think there is a question in this
array of 1? that refers to triggering mechanisms, and I
think maybe this is not a true usage of the word so far as
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Questions and Answers
the nutrients are concerned. I prefer to think of this
in this sort of way, that the triggering mechanisms have
to do with rotation of the earth, for one thing, which
determines the seasons of the year, the length of day, the
intensity of solar radiation. These in some complicated
fashion are really the triggering mechanism that determines
when you have a bloom of diatoms, when you have a bloom
of blue-green algae, and what the sequence is in the annual
succession.
Think of the nutrients not so much as triggering
mechanisms but the governor on the system that determines
how big the crop will be.
MR. OEMING: Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask
Dr. Bartsch a question to clear this matter up for me.
It would have been much more clear in my mind
if that second paragraph had been left off. Isn't the
answer in your first paragraph here, and isn't this second
paragraph extraneous material really?
The question was asked: Is the natural level
sufficient to have growths of algae without municipal
and industrial discharges? And the first paragraph answers
the question. What is the purpose of the second? You got
me lost.
DR. BARTSCH: I hate to disclaim responsibility
for the second part of the answer. I am not sure that this
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Questions and Answers
was the intent or not. In fact, I had some doubts in my
own mind as to what was really meant by the word "natural"
and if one interpreted it as I did originally to mean what
was the phosphorous level in Lake Erie before the white
man came around if this was the meaning why, then,
I would conclude that the phosphorous level in Lake Erie
was very low perhaps, sufficient to grow some algae, but
most likely not to a level which would be obnoxious or
onerous to people.
MR. OEMING: That is the answer I wanted and that
is all I want to know.
MR. STEIN: Okay. Thank you.
MR. POSTON: I submit, Mr. Chairman, that maybe
the first sentence, the word "yes" would have answered it.
MR. STEIN: I think there is more to it than "yes.w
Yes, but in certain levels not to obnoxious levels and
presumably it is always a pleasure to listen to Dr.
Bartsch.
You know 20 years ago, Fritz came to me, before
anyone ever heard of this, and he said, "Let's leave the
Government and go into business and clean up the algae
problem in the lakes," and I never thought it was a
problem. I wish I had your prescience.
Are there any other comments?
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Questions and Answers
MR. HALL: The third question: Who documents
the blooms in Lake Erie? Is there a continuing record of
blooms?
MR. POSTON: George Harlow.
MR. HARLOW: Answer: To our knowledge, no
concerted continuous effort has been made for reporting
algal blooms for Lake Erie as a whole. However, the
following institutions are among those studying the lake,
and all of them have had studies on algae:
FWPCA, Cleveland Program Office
FWPCA, Detroit Program Office
Canadian Centre for Inland Waters at Toronto
and at Burlington
Ohio Division of Geological Survey, Sandusky
Western Reserve University, Department of
Biology, Cleveland
Great Lakes Research Division, University of
Michigan
Ontario Water Resources Commision, Rexdale
Central Michigan University, Department of
Biology, Mt. Pleasant
U. S. Bureau of Commercial Fisheries, Ann Arbor
State University of New York, Department of
Civil Engineering, Buffalo
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Questions and Answers
Syracuse University, Department of Geology
State University College, Division of Physical
Sciences - Geology, New Paltz, New York
State University of New York, Great Lakes
Laboratory, Buffalo
While blooms are not routinely documented, it is
also true that the term "blooms" has not been precisely
defined. Lackey defines a "bloom" as more than 500
organisms per milliliter, but, because of the great
diversity in size of organisms, a number-per-unit-volume
parameter is not universally applicable. Nonetheless,
with regard to "continuing records," Michalski (Canada)
has a four-year record of abundance at north shore water
intakes and Davis has a 30-plus year record at Cleveland.
These records and the term "bloom" consider only planktonic
forms, not Cladophora or other attached algae.
MR. STEIN: Thank you.
Are there any comments or questions?
MR. EAGLE: Yes, I would like to ask Mr. Harlow
a question.
George, is FWPCA now carrying on any studies to
correlate nutrient levels in the lake with blooms? Are
you making any observations on a continuing basis now?
MR. HARLOW: These kind of observations have
been made in the past, but I wouldn't say with just that
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thought in mind. I cannot answer this as to this, but I
do know that there are studies going on elsewhere in FWPCA
to correlate phosphorous levels with blooms. I don't
think Lake Erie is the type of place to make that kind of
investigation. it is too large. We need to do it on a
smaller lake. To my knowledge, FWPCA is doing this and
maybe the others would prefer to answer this.
MR. EAGLE: I don't quite agree with you, it
is too large.'; We have some areas with very prolific
growths. There isn't any question about this. Don't you
think you should be making some nutrient measurements in
these areas on a continuing basis?
MR. HARLOW: We do take measurements in these
areas and we correlate algal growths with levels of
phosphorus. The Nutrient Committee was very explicit on
this point that where we are getting the high levels of
algae, this is where we find the high levels of phosphorus.
MR. EAGLE: Is this information available in a
report form from your office?
I-IR. HARLOW: This is reported in the Nutrient
Committee Report.
MR. EAGLE: In a technical committee report?
IIR. HARLOW: Yes, the technical committee.
:iR. POSTON: I would like to ask Dr. Bartsch to
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Questions and Ansv/ers
comment on this with regard to eutrophication studies.
DR. BARTSCH: I am not sure about all of the
confines that Mr. Stein put on the roaming around in the
subject matter, but if we have freedom to leave Lake Erie
MR. STEIN: Surely.
DR. BARTSCH: - I would like to go back to about
1942 or thereabouts when Claire Sawyer went down the begin-
ning of the road that led to some of these critical numbers
that we have heard, which incidentally, as many of you
know, have been misinterpreted many times.
But with this beginning and, in fact, other
observations made by many of the old-time limnologists
that go back to the time of Jacob Verduin and the turn
of the century, it was demonstrated which many people now
acknowledge that in any lake where you start to increase the
nutrient levels, you get a resulting and following increase
in the production of plant material.
Dr. Sawyer, you may recall, examined fourteen, if
I remember the number correctly, lakes in southeastern
Wisconsin for this very purpose of ascertaining what
relationship there is between the levels of nitrogen and
phosphorus and the annual production of algae. More
recently -- and this, incidentally, is the basis for the
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Questions and Answers
0.01 figure for phosphorus and the 0.3 figure for nitrogen.
More recently, Dr. Vollenweider, whom I cited in
the answer to the first question, has made this kind of
scrutiny of available information on all of the lakes in
the world, and while you recall that I said that he said
or felt that the rate of input is perhaps more significant
than the concentrations existing at the moment, he did find
essentially the same basis, the same numerical relations
that Dr. Sawyer found in the Wisconsin lakes some 20 or 25
years ago.
To tie the context of this together, let me say
that I see nothing in Lake Erie to indicate that there
should not be expected to be a response of the algae in
increasing numbers as the nutrient levels increase.
MR. RICHARDS: I believe that Dr. Sawyer, as I
have heard him state many times and many of the other ex-
perts that talked to the technical committee,said it was
quite dangerous to try to extrapolate from one body of
water to another as far as the phosphate level or nutrient
level of any kind. In other words, they did not want to
stick their neck out and make a specific figure for any
particular water, Lake Erie being includedf so I feel that
it would be quite appropriate to accumulate as much
information as we can with respect to the waters of Lake
Erie and algal blooms.
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DR. BARTSCH: In response to your comment, which
I think is well taken, I have absolutely no disagreement.
I think what you say here with respect to eutror-hication
we all know with respect to a vague knowledge in the field
of water pollution generally, but I think we also
have to recognize some basic fundamental facts of biology
and this is really an ecological problem that if we
are serious about reclaiming Lake Erie, and once we reclaim
it, keep it in a condition which it is usable, we have no
choice except to take this knowledge, and to me this means
we have to reduce the nutrient input to a level that
eventually we are going to get the nutrients out of the
lake. This means we have to have the input down to a level
less than the rate of output into the lake.
MR. STEIN: I would like to make a comment
because I think Mr. Richards raised an interesting phil-
osophic point of view.
I, of course, agree with everything you said,
but as I understand Dr. Bartsch, it is pretty generally
known what the general trend is going to be. If you put
more nutrients in the lake, according to what Dr. Bartsch
said, you will have an algal growth.
Now, by the same token, we cannot protect unless
we predict, unless we get data on each stream precisely
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what each sewage treatment plant or industrial treatment
plant is going to do, before we put it in, unless we make a
particular study.
The question, it seems to me, here is: Do we
have enough knowledge to be able to apply a nutrient
reduction program in Lake Erie without having that par-
ticular knowledge on precisely what is going to happen in
a body of water, or are we going to have to wait until we
get all that information? If we do that, do we exercise
the same kind of precise control in your State programs
before you ask anyone to put in an industrial waste plant,
or a sewage treatment plant, because I think this can be
applied to every waterway we get into.
Now, I think this kind of approach we have here
is a significant one.
Mr. Oeming.
MR. OEMING: I wonder, Dr. Bartsch, if you have
in your own mind a definition of what the term "bloom"
means or how you define that area. We are dodging the issue
here by reporting in the literature and everything, but we
are depending a lot on you here and I would like to know
if you have a definition.
DR. BARTSCH: Yes, I have a definition. I have
a definition for the layman, and I think with respect to the
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layman, this is the only way the term should be used.
To the layman, by my definition, a "bloom" is
any growth of algae which has reached such proportion that
it becomes nuisance-forming or obnoxious.
Now, the scientist has attempted to define a
"bloom," and every time he has tried to do this he gets
into difficulty because there are too many exceptions-.
A-nd if you are interested why there are exceptions, I will
go into thisy but I think if we can agree that a "bloom"
of algae simply means that condition of algal production
in a body of water that we don't like; then this is what
we will agree a "bloom" is.
MR. STEIN: Are there any other comments?
MR. EAGLE: Yes, Mr. Chairman.
A member of my advisory committee, Mr. John
Weaver, I believe has a question from Mr. Harlow if this
is in order.
MR. STEIN: Yes, Mr. Weaver.
MR. WEAVER: I think that we would be interested
in the history of what has happened during 1968 as far
as algal blooms are concerned, George.
MR. HARLOW: In Lake Erie?
MR. WEAVER: Yes.
MR. HARLOW: Are you talking about season by
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season?
MR. WEAVER: I am talking 196B from the growing
season on. Now, what has happened this year?
MR. HARLOW: I can only report as to particular
cases that have appeared since spring. I cannot really
report on point by point in the lake on exactly how the
algae have gone up and down day by day, month by month.
I think you have to recognize that we are dealing with ten
square miles of lake, and you get ups and downs in the
algae counts all over. You cannot be everywhere at every
time. But lately, I can say that we are getting the usual
counts of blue-greens in the lake. We are having a
tremendous "bloom" right now in the western basin. We
have had "blooms" all along the south shore of the lake,
to the extent that we are having some rather difficult
taste and odor problems at water intakes.
We went out this year testing water quality in
the lake emphasizing summer water quality. This was in
response to a request by one of the Conferees that we
dwell on the dissolved oxygen problem in the lake, and
it was during that time when we traversed the lake about
a month ago that we made some observations regarding the
algae, 1 asked my people what levels of algae they
visually saw compared to last year and they said visually
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they looked greater this year. You can use that any way
you want, because the year before they may have been less,
or next year they may be less, because there is such a
great variation in levels of algae from year to year
depending upon the kind of things that Dr. Bartsch spoke
of.
I am not sure I can answer your question exactly
the way you want it, but these are observations here and
there of how the algae is doing this year.
MR. WEAVER: That is exactly what I was after.
I think your answer is very responsive. The reason really
for the question was: At least our Ad Hoc Committee has
not been aware of these "blooms'* and I think that was one
of the reasons for the basic question of who documents the
"blooms," and so forth, because we have not simply been
aware.
MR. KARLOW: Algae counts are documented, I do
know, every day at the Cleveland water intakes, and they
have been doing this for 30 years.
MR. POSTON: George, you talked about ten square
miles here. Does this mean
MR. HARLOW: Ten thousand square miles Lake
Erie.
MR. POSTON: Also what are some of the effects
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Questinns and Answers
of these algal "blooms" that are on now? What do you know
about this? How can you elaborate on this?
MR. HARLOW: I think there is a question later
on that talks about this. As a matter of fact, I think we
have already answered it to some extent about the fact that
during the summertime we are getting these tremendous
growths of blue-greens in the lake. These are the kinds
that seem to spring up very suddenly in the summertime
when the water gets warm and are the most obnoxious,
and these are particularly troublesome at water supply
intakes.
The blue-greens are also the algae in the lake
that give it this pea-soup color. Also, during the
summertime, we get these tremendous growths of Cladophora
along the shoreline wherever we have a suitable growth for
algae, for these clinging type algae. In fact, I would
suggest that each of the Conferees, if they could take some
time out, just might go swimming in Lake Erie. I did. I
picked out one of those beaches that I thought was safe
and I went swimming. In order to get into water that is
swimmable, up around waist deep, you have got to wade
through ankle-deep water for about 10 or 1$ feet that is
as thick as bread dough with algae. To me that is a
problem and we have got to do something about it, and it
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Questions and Answers
stinks something awful.
MR. POSTON: Does this affect the water supplies?
MR. HARLOW: Well, it is affecting the water
supplies right now in Cleveland.
MR. POSTON: How?
MR. HARLOW: They are reporting fairly serious
tastes and odors and I think I mentioned this previously.
MR. STEIN: Let me go off the record a minute.
(Discussion off the record.)
MR. STEIN: Let's go back on the record.
Dr. Bartsch.
DR. BARTSCH: I don't want to prolong this
meeting unnecessarily, but I think Mr. Weaver presented
to us a good opportunity to make an observation that I think
if you are not aware of it you ought to be. That is that
you cannot really tell too much by looking at the produc-
tion of algae for any given year, because like fishing and
many other things there are good years and bad year. If
you look at lakes not just Lake Erie but lakes in general
you will find that sometimes if you have a cool year with
a lot of rain, the amount of algal production is low.
When you have dry years and low water, the algal production
goes up. But if you have people development on the water-
shed or in the vicinity of the lakes, then you have a
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Questions and Answers
graphic situation which is something like the Dow Jones
average.
If you want to plot it out month by month and
year by year, you will find that there are ups and downs
along the way related to these local, seasonal and annual
conditions, but the general trend is continuously upward.
MR. STEIN: Mr. Eagle.
MR. EAGLE: Yes. I would like to comment that
as far as the staff of the Ohio Water Pollution Control
Board is concerned, we are very much aware of the algal
problem in Lake Erie. We know that it is a nuisance. It
is a very serious problem. It interferes with recreation;
it is unsightly; and on occasion it causes a difficulty in
our water treatment plants and our water supplies.
Certainly Ohio is very much affected by this, and we are
very much interested in trying to control and do something
about it.
Now, the purpose of the question, I think, is
primarily to bring out the fact that I think that we need
a better base line than we have at the present time in the
way of making a rather scientific observation and tests,
and so on, hopefully, as we move forward in the future
that we can be able to measure some of our progress.
DR. BARTSCH: I have no disagreement with that.
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Questions and Answers
I think that is a logical and reasonable point of view.
I think many times we have failed to do this thing when
we should have.
MR. STEIN: I would like to make a comment. I
would agree with that.
Now, it seems to me that we are faced in the
algal problem with a lot of problems we have in the water
pollution control field. When we do not have this precise
data, people sometimes think we tend possibly to almost
ask for too much because you need a safety factor, when
you really don't know. Now, it seems to me that then we
always have to equate what we are going to do in the program
in the gathering of data, whether we hold up the remedial
program until we have the data or we do the best we can
on the judgment we ha^e now the best scientific judg-
ment and gather that data and refine that in the future.
MR. EAGLE: That was not my implication that we
should hold up anything, but I do think we need better
measurements of the progress that we hopefully wish to make,
MR. STEIN: Yes. But, George, let me ask you:
What field in water pollution control don't we have that?
Right now and I will be specific we have a large
plant a large plant is going into St. Louis. For the
first time, as far as I know, we have an extensive stream
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Questions and Answers
survey for a year before the plant goes Into operation and
a year after it, and this is something that you would have
thought would have been done through the years to see what
a plant in a major city really did. As far as I know, this
hadn't really been done before. I hadn't been able to find
it.
The point is, what you are saying about phos-
phates and I couldn't agree with you more I find is
true about almost every area of water pollution control
that we deal with.
MR. EAGLE: In many places in Ohio this has been
done for many years. Cincinnati is an example. This has
been going on for 30 years where we have been taking
observations and tests on the river, and we have them for
extensive periods before and after.,, So it is being done
in many places, and I think that this is of such dire
importance in Lake Erie that every effort should be made
to get all of the scientific data we can.
MR. POSTON: I would say that I have lived in
Cincinnati and I have watched them study the water in
Cincinnati and the Ohio River, but I still go to
Cincinnati and I find out how that water tastes down there,
and I would submit that you have got to do more than study
it.
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MR. EAGLE: Well, it doesn't taste as bad as it
used to, Wally.
MR. STEIN: What we want to see is that Lake
Erie water doesn't deteriorate so far that there is only
one way to move and that is up.
If there aren't any other comments, then may we
go on with Question 4, please?
MR. HALL: Question 4: What are the "natural"
levels of phosphorus (soluble and total) in each of the
Great Lakes? Do the lakes with lower phosphate levels have
algal blooms?
MR. BOSTON: George.
MR. HARLOW: Answer: The "natural" levels (and
average levels) of phosphorus are difficult to determine
in lakes because of phosphorus* instability chemically,
organically, and physically. One can only estimate these
levels based on averages of analyses by FWPGA, Bureau of
Commercial Fisheries, and others, of midlake waters away
from source areas as follows:
Lakes Sol P. Total P (mg/1)
Superior < .01/.01
Michigan ^ .01/.01
Huron < .01/.01
Erie > ,01/>.02
Ontario .01/.02
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Questions and Answers
The lakes with lower phosphate levels do have
algal "blooms," in other words, in Lakes Superior and
Michigan, diatoms occur in sheltered areas and/or along
shore but the "blooms" do not anywhere near approach those
occurring in Lake Erie. Also, the phosphate levels con-
tributing to these blooms may possibly be higher than the
"natural level" in each lake.
MR. STEIN: Are there any comments or questions?
MR. POOLE: Mr. Chairman.
MR. STEIN: Yes, Mr. Poole.
MR, POOLE: I just want to comment a little
more on this "natural level."
I raised the question before and my original
definition would have been the same as Dr. Bartsch said
his would be, namely; if you are talking about natural
level, you ought to go back to the time we had the Indians
around the Great Lakes. Obviously we cannot do that, but
I want everybody to understand that we are including soil
runoff in natural levels, and this to me substantiates
Mr. Eagle's plea on the previous question that we get a
base line level here as quickly as we can, because I
think I am safe in predicting that as agriculture intensi-
fies, our natural levels are going to go up. If this is
the case, and if we don't find some way of doing something
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about this, it can only mean one thing, and that is that
we may be talking about 80 percent reduction for the
artificial levels today, whereas 10 years from now we are
going to have to think of 90 or 92 or 95, and so on, as we
go up the scale.
MR. STEIN: Are there any comments on that?
MR. HARLOW: I am interested in knowing what was
meant by the word "natural" here. George, you asked the
question. Are you talking about the levels if you exclude
domestic waste?
MR. EAGLE: Exclusive of domestic waste.
DR. STEPHAN: May I make a comment about this?
There is some confusion over this term of natural level
that is the reason we tried to place some explanatory infor-
mation in the answer to the earlier question.
I wonder if perhaps it might clarify for us to
use the term "background level" and "natural level," natural
being what Fritz and Blucher said: when the Indians were
here there was a certain amount of phosphorus in the lake,
and that was natural and unaffected by the white man's acti-
vities. "Background level" might be a better term for that
which is in the present state of development not readily
controllable. This would presently include agricultural
runoff.
MR. STEIN: Let me ask a question about that
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because I think that might be productive.
We use the term "background level'; in working
with radiation, as you know, but we are more stable. I
do think that Mr. Poole and Mr. Eagle both have a signifi-
cant point here in dealing with this, if we talk in terms
of "background level."
If we are thinking of including agricultural
land runoff and excluding domestic or industrial wastes,
it is not quite going to be like radiation where you can
stay at a relatively stable base. You are going to have
to project yourself an increment each year as we get in
agricultural activity in the runoff, isn't this correct?
DR. STEPHAN: I think this is correct, a natural
level by this definition
MR. STEIN: No. I am talking in terms of back-
ground.
DR. STEPHAN: Right.
MR. STEIN: But are you ready to buy a background
that will be X, and in 10 years will be X plus 10-A, A
standing for agriculture, and if you are ready to buy that,
then what becomes of an BO or a 70 or a 90 percent reduc-
tion in phosphates and what is the meaning? I think we
really have a very interesting problem.
DR. STEPHAN: I think the analogy you are making
with radiation is perhaps a reasonably adequate one. One
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would assume that the natural levels would remain constant
because that is something that occurred historically and
there it was. Background level, however, I quite agree, one
would expect to change. There will be a background level
this year and there was a background level 10 years ago,
and there is a background level that is going to be here
10 years from now.
The means for accomplishing effective pollution
control of the lake is going to have to take into account
a changing background level, as you will see in the answer
to one of the later questions. There will have to be some
account taken of it.
MR. STEIN: Are there any other questions or
comments?
If not, may we go to Question 5?
MR. HALL: Question 5: What are the phosphorus
levels in the tributary streams? Is it adequate to permit
a bloom to start in the tributary? Would such a bloom
potential be realized in terms of a bloom in the lake?
MR. POSTON: George.
MR. HARLOW: Answer: Phosphorus levels in south
shore streams, above lake-affected zones, based on averages
of biweekly FWPCA sampling in 196? are as follows:
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Stream Total P (rng/1)
Maumee River 0.42
Portage River 0.44
Sandusky River 0.49
Huron River 0.62
Vermilion River 0.10
Black River 2.22
Rocky River 2.30
Cuyahoga River 2.32
Chagrin River 0.17
Grand River 0.09
Ashtabula River 0.0?
Conneaut Greek 0.05
Cattaraugus Creek 0.12
The Detroit River, at the mouth in 196? from
data of the Detroit Program office averaged 0.09 mg/1
total P, but was widely variable across its width with
spot concentrations ranging from 0.03 to 0.35 mg/1.
Considering only phosphorus, the levels in all tributaries
are adequate to start "blooms." These bloom potentials can
result in blooms in the lake although the full potential
may not be realized because of the precipitation of phos-
phorus to sediments and the rapid dilution of inputs once
in the lake.
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MR. STEIN: Are there any further questions?
MR. POSTON: I would like to ask Dr. Bartsch to
comment on this, and I think it is significant here that
every one of these is higher than the concentration in the
lake, and where does this phosphate go, then, Dr. Bartsch?
DR. BARTSCH: I think one comment I would like
to make relative to this I am not sure what was intended
in the question when I read the question first I wondered
if it was asking: with these levels in rivers, why aren't
there blooms in the rivers?
If this was intended, then, I think I should say
this: that the kinds of algae which grow well in Lake
Erie -- and I believe at the present time judging from
some of the odor in the public water supply, someone said
that this is realted to an amoeba I don't know but
this kind of an amoeba, being an example, grows well in
lakes. It does not grow well in rivers. The planktonic
or free-floating blue-green algae, which are characteristic
of lakes customarily, do not grow well in rivers. The
slower the flow of the river the more like that these
kinds will be present. This means, then, that even though
there may be high nutrient levels, I would not expect to
find tremendous blooms of these planktonic blue-green algae
in the inflowing streams.
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I think your reference to the high levels, Wally,
would imply that this is a tremendous phosphorous input and
that one would expect to find near the mouths of these
rivers places where there might be fairly high production.
I think the answer to the question already has
indicated that some of this phosphorus does not become
involved in the biological cycle because if there are silt
loads, it can carry some of it down to the bottom. There
can also be some other mechanisms by which the phosphorus
can be dispersed or precipitated or made unavailable for
algal growth.
MR. OEMING: I just want to be sure I understood
you correctly. There are two paths of fate for these
things, their biological uptake and the sediment, is that
what you said, or did I miss something?
DR. BARTSCH: Yes, there are more fates than
that, more mechanisms than that. The one I mentioned was
dispersion ,wnen the water- from a river empties into a
lake, ooviously it is going to disperse in the lake, So
that these high concentrations of phosphorus will by
dispersion produce lower concentration of phosphorus in
a large volume of water. In addition, the phosphorus
will be in part precipitated by sediment and other
mechanisms. The third is the uptake by the biological
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system itself.
MR. STEIN: Are those precipitated phosphates
lost to the biological system foreverraore?
DR. BARTSCH: I think, Murray, there is an answer
to that question in one of the later of the seventeen ques-
tions, but certainly not all of it is lost. Some of it is
made available, then, through the turnover and the resolu-
biliaation of the phosphate compound.
MR. STEIN: Are there any other comments or
questions? If not, let's go on to Question 6.
MR. HALL: Question 6: How was the recommended
#0 percent reduction determined? The technical committee
report assumed the per capita contribution of phosphorus
and also assumed full dispersion in the lake.
MR. POSTON: George.
MR. HARLOW: Answer: At the June 4, 1968, meeting
of the Lake Erie Conferees in Cleveland, &0 percent removal
of phosphate as well as 92 percent removal of phosphorus was
discussed by all the Conferees with no formal recommenda-
tion being made and no decision being reached. It was men-
tioned that the #0 percent consideration was based on
achieving a similar agreement to that which was reached at
the Lake Michigan Conference.
The BO percent consideration was supported by
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Mr. Oeming of Michigan and Mr. Poole of Indiana and a
general consideration along these lines was concurred in
by Pennsylvania. Ohio and New York, however, would not
consider such a proposal.
It is our best understanding that the &0 percent
recommendation for Lake Michigan was agreed upon because
this was thought, at that time, to be a level of removal
which could be achieved with assurance utilizing phosphate
removal technology which was actually available. This is
apparently also the basis upon which the State of Michigan
has made their recommendations both on Lake Michigan and
at Detroit.
MR. STEIN: Any comments or questions?
MR. OEMING: Mr. Chairman, I have a comment.
I am not sure that this is entirely responsive
to the question, or what the writer had in mind. This
only picks up in 1965, but if you will recall my earlier
questions this morning, if you go back and look at the
record of the conference, the original conference in 1965,
you will find repeated reference by the biologists, the
experts, that we needed .03 or less. That seemed to be
the figure that was most reliable at the time this is
phosphate <,
Then you left it up to the States to determine
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what they needed to do these Conferees and Michigan
went back and looked at the Detroit River and said in order
to reach .03 with the level that it was now, it would re-
quire SO percent removal of all of the contributors of
sewage and wastes to the river. This includes industrial
wastes.
Now, at that time and that was in 1966
the technology for phosphate removal was not at the level
it is today, and yet it was determined at that time that
for the Michigan situation we had to remove BO percent to
get to this level that the experts recommended. I think
that is the origin at least so far as I am concerned of
the BO percent removal, and it was not tied to what was
achievable at that time but what was necessary.
MR. STEIN: Right.
MR. POOLE: Question: Are you talking about .03
as what, PO,?
MR. OEMING: That is right.
MR. STEIN: My recollection coincides with that.
Let me check on that, because you recall when we talked
about the 80 percent we weren't quite sure that the
technology then could get it. In other words, we were
shooting for we put a figure down that presumably was
arrived at, where we would get concentrations of phosphorus
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Questions and Answers
which would reduce this critical nutrient and which we would
be below what we considered reasonable nuisance conditions.
Even though the technology hedn.Tt come up to that point or
we weren't sure of it then, we recognized that this had to
be done, I think, from some of the other information we
have. I hope they are right. Fortunately, the technology
has overtaken us now and we think we can do it.
MR. EAGEL: Mr. Chairman.
MR. OEMING: May I further comment, so I can
clear this up for the record here?
MR. STEIN: Yes.
MR. OEMING: That this SO percent removal was
based upon using one-third of the flow of the Detroit
River. It was not the total flow of the Detroit River.
And this is based on hydrological studies, and so on.
I just want to make it clear that the SO percent
that was established by Michigan here was felt, on the basis
of the conference record, to take care of Michigan's obli-
gation to Lake Erie, and I think that is where the SO
percent, so far as I am concerned, came from.
I don't recall that there was any SO percent
removal talked about in the original conference proceedings
anywhere.
MR. EAGLE: I would like to have Mr. Harlow
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Questions and Answers
explain how he arrived at his 92 percent that was dis-
cussed, I believe, briefly on June 4.
MR. HARLOW: That is answered very explicitly,
I think, in the next question, Question S, George.
MR. EAGLE: All right.
MR. STEIN: As a matter of fact, I think the
statement and correct me if I am wrong this 92
percent discussion by the Conferees, while it might be
technically correct, was at least to my recollection not
what I would call an extensive discussion.
MR. OEMING: No.
MR. STEIN: It may have been mentioned in passing,*
MR. EAGLE: Well, Mr. Harlow had it in his report
which was not presented.
MR. STEIN: Was not presented, and I don't know
-- you know, I grew up in the old fashioned school. When
you have a document in your pocket that you don't put in
the record, I am not sure that was a discussion.
MR. EAGLE: It was distributed but not presented.
MR. STEIN: Are there any other comments or
questions?
If not, may we go on to the next question?
MR. HALL: Question 7: The flow pattern of the
Detroit River into Lake Erie demonstrates a stratification
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Questions and Answers
of the discharges, Detroit along the west bank and Windsor
along the east. With an 30 percent reduction at Detroit,
what will be the resultant phosphorus concentration down-
stream unless there is positive dispersion provided to
insure utilization of the full river flow? Will it be
adequate to trigger an algal bloom?
MR. POSTON: George.
MR. HARLOW; Answer: Using 0.35 mg/1 (Detroit
Program Office) as the maximum phosphorus concentration
along the west shore of the river at the mouth, one could
expect 80 percent reduction of present loading to a ttain a
minimum concentration of 0.07 mg/1 total phosphorus in this
area decreasing to 0.03 at the center of the river. Con-
centrations in this range are sufficient to provide the
phosphorus requirement for an algal crop considered as a
"bloom" but not necessarily to trigger it. Further, the
"blooms" would be less severe, less extensive and of
less noxious species. One would expect these "blooms'
to be perhaps similar in density to those commonly occurring
now along the northeast Ohio shore.
MR. EAGLE: George, could you be more explicit
as to where these are commonly occurring? Gould you give
us a few for instances?
MR. HARLOW: Where what is commonly occurring?
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MR. EAGLE: What you said in the last sentence.
MR. STEIN: "One would expect"
MR. HARLOW: These are throughout the shoreline
waters from the area along Painesville or Fairport Harbor
east.
MR. EAGLE: Well, now, I would like to go back
to the answer to Question 1. I don't think that this
answer is quite compatible with the answer to Question 1,
where you say that "Therefore, serious consideration should
be given to greater than BO percent reduction, since this
is now feasible."
I would like to think we need to get it estab-
lished at this point what is technologically feasible on
a practical basis, I hope, at this time.
MR. STEIN: Dr. Stephan, do you want to try to
address yourself to that question?
DR. STEPHAN: We can certainly go into that now,
but t.hat is covered in question number --
MR. EAGLE: If you wish to hold it it is alright
with me.
DR. STEPHAN: I would like to hold that.
MR. STEIN: Why don't we hold that question
because I think ->-- and let me make this point I think you
have the questions developed in logical order, and I think
Question 8 should be a basis for that next one, if we could
wait. Thank you.
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Questions and Answers
Are there any other comments or questions?
Mr. Oeming.
MR. OEMING: Mr. Chairman, I think I am going
to have to take exception to the answer because, as I
mentioned previously here, a great deal of care and a
great deal of computations were performed to reach the
levels that are being required of Michigan industries and
municipalities. The levels, as I spoke of, the founda-
tion for this whole program on the Detroit River is .03
phosphorus as P04, and I cannot subscribe here to the
SO percent reduction which would result, in .07. I think
there has got to be another look taken at this.
Furthermore, we are not dealing in concentra-
tions entirely, but in fixed numbers of total poundage
of phosphorus* In addition to the SO percent removal,
the total poundage figure is put in there, so that whatever
percentage is necessary will not exceed the ceiling
figure.
Mn. STEIN: Mr. Harlow, do you want to comment
on that?
You know, while Mr. Harlow is coming up, I would
like to make one comment. Your remarks, Mr. Oeming, on
six and seven, I think, indicate to me at least procedur-
ally why a meeting like this is desirable, because I think
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Questions and Answers
with the modification you had in six and the questions you
had in seven, if those answers were left to stand and we
weren't together, we might be off and running and take a
long time to get us back. I think something like this can
keep us more on the track.
Mr. Harlow.
MR. HARLOW: The way the answer was formulated,
I think, is possibly an oversimplification to try to arrive
at a concentration at the mouth of the Detroit River. I do
know that Mr. Oeming did go through a rather sophisticated
set of computations to arrive at what he thought the level
should be. I cannot answer to his computations. I think
that in order to really get to the meat of that question,
you would need to know exactly how Mr. Oeming arrived at his
calculation, and I don't know how that is.
MR. OEMING: I bring this up at this time because
this is very significant here to this whole problem
attacking this problem, Mr. Chairman, in that this was
reported to the Conferees at least on one occasion and
the Conferees subscribed to the Michigan program as
adequate; and, secondly, I would like to question the
"minimum concentration" in the third sentence "to attain
minimum concentration of 0.07" with $0 percent removal on
present levels.
Do you mean minimum or did you mean maximum?
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Questions and Answers
MR. HARLOW: Actually the 0.0? is figured from
the 0.35 and SO percent reduction of the 0.35 will give
you a 0.07.
MR. OEMING: Well, if that is the case, Mr.
Chairman, all I can say, without prolonging this for
weeks here, is that I would take exception to this answer.
MR. POOLE: Well, Mr. Chairman, if I am correct,
the Michigan computation is on PO^ and the FWPCA compu-
tations are on phosphorus, and if that assumption is
right, well, we have got a considerable difference here
and I think this is pretty damned important.
MR. STEIN: Is that assumption correct?
MR. HARLOW: Yes.
MR. POOLE: Take 3.0 times .07 and you get .21.
MR. STEIN: Well, it would seem to me that we
should at least have computations for all of the times
that we are working this on the same basis.
Now, is there anything wrong with using the
PO/^ concept in working up your computations, or is it
the same basis?
MR. OEMING: I would agree with the P concept,
the phosphorus.
MR. STEIN: Now, the question I am getting at:
If you use the same basis for your computation, would
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Questions and Answers
there really be any difference between your statement
and Michigan's statement here? Is there a substantive
difference or is this just a difference in approaching
it?
MR. HARLOW: I really cannot tell, because, I
think, Mr. Stein, you have to go back to Michigan's
original computations. I think the way we computed it
is a very simplified approach, maybe oversimplified, and
it is straightforward, #0 percent reduction of 0..35 will
give you a 0.0? figure.
MR. STEIN: I don't mean to be legalistic, as
this is a technical meeting, I know, and we want to leave
this completely open and I don't mean to be legalistic,
but Mr. Oeming did raise the question. He came forward
with his computation. We looked at it. Our technical
people went over it. The Conferees and the Federal
Government endorsed the Michigan program.
Now, if there was doubt about their method of
computations other than translating that into probably
more universal terms, why didn't we bring this up before?
MR. HARLOW: I am not disagreeing with Mr.
Oeming's statement at all. I think what I am saying
here, if you followed it the way I calculated it, that
is the answer you will get. I think there are many, many
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Questions and Answers
ways you can go through the mechanism of calculating how
much phosphorus you should put in the lake to maintain a
certain level of the lake. There are many, many ways
you can calculate it to arrive at a level.
1 think perhaps we just went through different
ways of calculating and came up with different answers.
MR. STEIN: May I make a suggestion here, that
we are going to put this in the record in questions and
answers, that you attempt to get together with Mr.
Oeming's staff and we attempt to come up with an answer
to this, if we can, which both you and Mr. Oeming can
subscribe to at least in figures?
If we cannot do that, then we should know it.
But I think what we may be coming up here with is a dif-
ference which is caused by the way the calculation is
made rather than the substantive difference.
MR. OBMING: Well, I think, Mr. Chairman, while
I certainly have no objection to working with anybody,
I think there is a basic problem here that is not going
to be resolved by that, bec?use there is at least one
industry that has complied with the SO percent-plus
removal of phosphates already. Now, if we are going to
chancre the rules In the middle of the game, we are never
going to get phosphates out of that river,
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Questions and Answers
We already have people under order. We have
them working on programs. We are well along within
a year or a year and a half of actual construction,
in some cases, with plans drawn.
Now, how are we going to reverse this project
and say, "Boys, we made a mistake. We have to do this
all over again."
I am not happy with that.
MR. STEIN: I haven't heard the suggestion-
maybe it will come up later as to changing the rules.
MR. POOLE: Mr. Miller just reminded me that
we think, at least, without having been involved in
either of the computations that the discrepancies are
not as great as they appear.
I think Mr. Harlow's was based on the maximum
of .35 which, as I recall earlier, was the maximum that
was measured in the Detroit River, and we believe the
Michigan computations were based on annual averages
and this in itself could account for quite a difference,
you see.
MR. STEIN: Would we agree, Mr. Oeming, without
changing any of the rules or any proposal, that what we
should do, if we have a difference just on the basis of
computation, not on the basis of theory or difference in
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Questions and Answers
substance, that we should try to get these ironed out so
the figures will be meaningful to both groups?
I have the feeling the same way, that a good
portion of the difference here may be because the same
methodology was not precisely used in arriving at the
answer to the question.
MR. OEMING: Well, I would hope that was the
difference, and I hope we are not changing the rules in
the middle of the game, because that is fatal to pollution
control.
MR. STEIN: If we are changing the rules, the
Conferees will get together to do that. We are not going
to do it here. But I hope we are not getting in as
Joe Quinn used to say at one of the "technicating" sessions
he used to say, "Here go the boys again, trisecting a
BOD." I hope that we don't come up with that kind of
difference.
If you both are saying about the same thing,
let's try to see if we can get that together and maybe
he can endorse your statement. I would suggest that
before we go into eight, because this looks like a very
juicy one, we recess for ten minutes.
(Short recess.)
MR. STEIN: Question B.
MR. HALL: Question No. 8: The report
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Questions and Answers
distributed by Mr. Harlow at the June 4, 196&, meeting
recommended a 92 percent reduction. How justifiable is
this calculation? If the 92 percent factor is correct,
would the 80 percent program be ineffective?
MR. HARLOW: FWPCA would prefer to see all
phosphorus of waste origin removed from wastewater entering
Lake Erie. This is the only way to begin to return to a
"natural" phosphorus level throughout the lake. In arriving
at the 92 percent figure, FWPCA assumed, for reasons of
practicality, that the runoff contributions of phosphorus
will not be reduced but will probably increase from a
present load of 33,000 Ibs/day to a load of 42,000 Ibs/day
in the year 2020. That load of 42,000 Ibs/day was then
used as a base not to be exceeded. Assuming further that
the present in-basin loading is 137,000 Ibs/day, 95,000
Ibs/day must be removed and all of it from the municipal
and industrial loading of 104,000 Ibs/day. This means
then that this loading must be reduced to 9,000 Ibs/day.
Allowing Canada 1,000 Ibs/day of this amount, the United
States is left with 8,000 Ibs/day, and, hence, a 92 percent
reduction. With increasing volumes of waste, this goal
will require essentially 100 percent removal of municipal
and industrial waste phosphorus by the year 2020. It
will also be necessary to develop and employ procedures
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Questions and Answers
for reducing phosphorus runoff from agricultural and other
lands.
The calculation is justifiable on the basis
that (1) 92 percent is near the current maximum feasible
removal, (2) that attainment of a near-natural aging rate
of Lake Erie is desirable, and (3) that the highest
possible removal is now mandatory to stop the accumulation
in the sediments of a rapidly enlarging nutrient reserve.
It is felt that the reserve in bottom sediments is now
sustaining the phosphorus level in Lake Erie in midlake
from the islands eastward, mainly because this level is
so constant, does not decrease eastward, and is slightly
higher than the upper lakes.
The discharge from the lake is on the order of
40,000 Ibs/day. By reducing the inputs to that amount,
the western basin and shoreline waters should be brought
near the concentrations of phosphorus found in midlake.
If the inputs could be reduced to near that amount, the
available nutrient reserve in the bottom sediments could
begin to be drawn upon and algae populations would be
reduced to levels capable of being sustained by the
nutrient reserve. These populations will not be obnoxious
because they are not now in midlake.
The 80 percent factor would not now be
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Questions and Answers
"ineffective." Any removal at all would be beneficial
because it would reduce the rate of accumulation of
phosphorus in the lake. But lake improvement will not
be directly proportional to removal rate. As 100 percent
removal efficiency is approached, each percent of additional
removal will have proportionately much greater effect than
it will at lower removal efficiencies.
MR. STEIN: Any comment?
MR. EAGLE: Mr. Karlow, your present recommenda-
tion then is 92 percent we should be talking about 92
percent removal in the basin generally, right?
MR. HARLOW: Well, I think I would like to see
as much as you can take out in municipal waste.
MR. EAGLE: You say that 92 percent is feasible?
MR. HARLOW: I think this is going to be discussed
later on, on what is now feasible in municipal wastewater
treatment plants by Dr. Stephan.
MR. STEIN: Now, let's see if I remember this
record, so we don't get off.
I don't remember about the report distributed by
Mr. Harlow. The report was not put into the conference
proceedings, as I recall it, and the question of the amount
to be removed, I hope, is the kind of profound policy
judgment that will be made by the Conferees.
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Questions and Answers
Now, I think we are in the situation with this
phosphate removal involving some of the States here that
the Conferees have not had unanimous agreement on a percent-
age removal. Lake Michigan arreed on a minimum of $0 percent
removal. But since we have been working on this in Lake
Erie, the technical advances have made additional removals
more feasible. This is a question of equating what is feas-
ible and what it is going to cost, etc.
But I think that any recommendation made on what
should be removed should, if we follow our technique in
Federal-State relations, try to be made by the States and
the P'ederal Government unanimously. As far as I know, up
to this time, the Federal Government has not put forth any
recommendation to the Conferees as to a percentage removal.
MR. EAGLE: Well, Mr. Stein, I read the second
paragraph as a recommendation.
MR. STEIN: Well, this is precisely why I said
that.
No. The question here is and you know what
we do all our technical people present their notion of
what they are to do, as to their best judgment, except
when we have a joint report, and then it becomes an
institutional report. We have made no such recommendation
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Questions and Answers
as far as I look at the record on a percentage removal of
phosphates from Lake Erie. We did not put any specific
number into the official conference record. As far as I
see this, this is a computation made by Mr. Harlow, and
that is his view.
Are there any other comments or questions?
MR. BOGEDAIN: Yes, Mr. Stein. Bogedain, New
York.
Back in the Technical Committee Report, some
6000 pounds per day, as an input by New York and Pennsyl-
vania, is indicated. Could you give me what New York's
contribution is estimated to be? This figure was lumped
together. If it is not readily available, may I ask that
you confirm it to our department at some later time?
MR. STEIN: Can we do that?
MR. HARLOW: Yes, we can.
MR. STEIN: You can't do it now?
MR. HARLOW: No, I don't have the basic data.
MR. STEIN: May I ask the technical question:
Who is allowing Canada a thousand pounds a day?
MR. HARLOW: Maybe we should allow more for
Canada.
MR. STEIN: I mean how did we do that?
MR. BOGEDAIN: I only wanted to know if this was
confirmed with the Canadian Government.
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Questions and Answers
MR. STEIN: Right. Let's leave this on the
record. You know, I have been up possibly
I guess any guy in the State Department can
tell you this: Anything more difficult than Federal-State
relations is foreign relations. But when I visit our
Canadian friends, they get very sensitive about this
stuff, allowing them X pounds Okay.
MR. BOGEDAIN: Another question.
Could you elucidate a little bit further on
what you mean by the attainment of a ''near-natural aging
rate of Lake Erie"? What is the aging rate of Lake Erie?
MR. HARLOW: The natural aging rate?
MR. BOGEDAIN: Well, just pick any aging rate
if you will.
MR. HARLOW: I think perhaps here that the words
aging rate1' or the word ''aging'5 is a rather loose term,
and we have to go back to the fact that all lakes age
naturally. Lake Erie's rate has accelerated to the extent
that it is aging unnaturally. We want to go back to this
natural rate, the rate that existed as close to that
rate, anyway, that existed before we started using the
term "white man," and by reducing phosphorus to the extent
that we are discussing, we are going back as close as
we can to that near natural rate.
KR. BOGEDAIN: But that near natural rate has not
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Questions and Answers
been nailed down.
MR. HARLOW: Well, we don't know what it was
before the Indians.
MR. BOGEDAIN: Nor do we know it today.
MR. HARLOW: Well, this is not measured in that
kind of numerical value that you can say Lake Erie has
aged so much. It is aging unnaturally and by removing
phosphorus we want to go back as close to the level of
natural aging as possible.
MR. BOGEDAIN: In other words, it is purely your
estimate as to what these conditions are which prevail now,
or in the past, or at sometime in the future.
MR. HARLOW: I think it is anybody's estimate.
We don*t know how it existed before man came here.
MR. STEIN: Yes, Mr. Poston.
MR. POSTON: Mr. Chairman, you referred to the
Lake Michigan Conference, and back in February of this
year, Dr. Weinberger testified, and Dr. Weinberger indicated
that you could remove phosphorus at, oh, almost any rate
that you wanted to, up to a hundred percent if you used
all of the available methods maybe distillation, or
what-have-you. But the practical rate was 80 percent
was the figure that I remember he put out, and I would like
Dr. Stephan to comment on this if he would care to.
DR. STEPHAN: Once again, this is the subject of
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Questions and Answers
Question 15. I would be happy to go to it if you would
like.
MR. STEIN: No.
MR. POSTON: Maybe that would be the more appro-
priate time.
MR. STEIN: I didn't know you could distill
phosphorus! I wondered what you drank the last time you
came. (Laughter)
MR. RICHARDS: Mr. Chairman, I would like to
comment that during the considerations of the Technical
Committee, the Ohio represetnatives went through a calcula-
tion based on available information with respect to inputs
of phosphates or phosphorus to the lake, and it was
indicated that to attain a level that would meet the
.01 parts per million of phosphorus would require over
90 percent reduction of the controllable increments of
waste.
MR. STEIN: Does anyone want to comment on that?
Mr. Harlow, did you want to say anything?
Let me raise a question and I think we possibly
should bring this up while the 92 figure wasn't put
out, as I understood it, this was a computation based on
Ohio personnel which seemed to fit in with this. Is this
substantially correct?
MR. HARLOW: During the deliberations of the
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Questions and Answers
Technical Committee, the Ohio member came forth with a
calculation for removal of phosphorus to reduce the con-
centrations to the level proposed in the objectives, and
Earl Richards is correct. I don't recall the exact figures
because I didn't make the computations. It was in excess
of 90 percent. However, I do know that it was done a
different way from the way I made my calculations.
This material was not included, however, in the
report of the Technical Committee.
MR, STEIN; Well, let's --
MR. HARLOW: I think if we are going to go into
how it was calculated, I think you need to call on the
Ohio people if it is necessary.
MR. STEIN: Unless you want to are there any
further comments?
Let's see if we can go to Question 9.
MR. HALL: Question 9: If the algal bloom
problem is in the western lake, why is the contribution
east of the islands being considered in the calculations
to determine required percentage reduction?
MR. POSTON: George.
MR. HARLOW: Answer: The algal "bloom" problem
occurs in the nearshore area throughout the lake and
occasionally in midlake. Gladophora is a problem everywhere
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Questions and Answers
there is a proper substrate and depth, usually in nearshore
areas. The aim in reduction of phosphorus is not to make
the algal problem uniform but to lessen it everywhere.
MR. STEIN: Questions or comments?
Ten.
MR. HALL: Question No. 10: The proposed
percentage reductions were based on annual average concen-
tration for phosphorus. Is this realistic? Since the
contribution of wastewaters from municipalities is constant
throughout the year and the blooms are seasonal, the trig-
gering mechanism must be comething other than an annual
average concentration of phosphorus. What are the concen-
trations of total and soluble phosphate before, during and
after a bloom? How are these concentrations related to the
computed annual average reduction?
MR. POSTON: Could I ask Dr. Bartsch tc comment
on this?
DR. BARTSCH: Answer: The triggering mechanisms
that determine when substantial algal growth occurs are
largely related to physical characteristics of seasonal
nature, that is, solar radiation, length of day, temperature,
turbulence, and so on. The size of the crop is more likely
governed by nutrient availability. Nutrient availability
is related to the load of phosphorus discharged to the lake
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Questions and Answers
over a long period of time such as, for example, a year.
Therefore, it is the amount of phosphorus discharged
annually that is important and this is, of course, related
to the average removal efficiency achieved annually. The
calculations referred to in Question 8 lead to the con-
clusion that the treatment efficiency should average 92
percent annually. In fact, even high removals during
the period just prior to and during the g.rowing season
would be desirable.
The concentrations of total phosphate in the lake
should not change materially with or without a bloom.
Soluble phosphate concentration in lake water should be
higher before a bloom, low during a bloom and rising
after a bloom. Exact concentrations related to algal
populations in Lake Erie are not known. Calculations used
in reduction calculations are annual averages of analyses.
Their relation to average input reduction can only be esti-
mated. The concentrations before, during and after a bloom
have not been directly related to the computed annual aver-
age reduction.
MR. STEIN: Any comments or questions on this?
If not, thank you very much, Dr. Bartsch.
DR. BARTSCH: Mr. Chairman, as long as I am
here, with your permission, I would like to philosophize a
little on the last question and in particular the reference
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Questions and Answers
to anticipated increase in inputs from agricultural land,
for example.
I think that while it may be necessary to take
a dismal view toward this runoff increasing in the future,
I think it also points up the need that over the long range
this is an area in which we need to develop some control
procedures also.
In relation to the reference to natural aging
process, I think we should all pay attention to the fact
that we are in difficulty in many of the hundred thousand
small lakes in this country which have reached eutrophica-
tion stages which are objectionable solely as the result of
the natural process.
So far as Lake Erie is concerned, this means
then that over the long haul and weather, in three or four
or five generations from now, we are going to have to begin
to think about slowing down the rate beyond that which we
can consider natural.
MR. STEIN: Thank you.
Are there any comments or questions?
I hope you are right, Dr. Bartsch, that this
doesn't come to reality or just remains a dismal view,
because we liave an extensive area that we call the dismal
swamp back east.
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Questions and Answers
Will you go on with Question 11?
MR. HALL: The primary algal problems in Lake
Erie are blooms of Cladrmhora, blue-greens in August and
the "pea soup" earlier* Do the phosphorus requirements
differ for these? What is the particular triggering agent
for each? What is the role of the physical aspects of the
western lake (depth, light penetration, temperature,
anchorages, bottom composition, etc.) which might control
or promote the bloom in this area as compared to the
central or eastern basins?
MR. POSTON: Dr. Bartsch, do you want to comment
on that one?
DR. BARTSCH: Answer: Phosphorus requirements
do differ for different species of algae; however, the
concentrations found in Lake Erie surpass the limiting
requirements. For example, the phosphorus requirement for
blue-greens is relatively high while for Gladoohor^ it is
relatively low. The triggering agent for blooms is complex
and has not, as yet, been basically described. The science
of algal physiology has not yet answered this question but
it is apparent that the physical aspects are important:
Depth, related to light penetration, influences
the volume/area participation in photosynthesis and,
therefore, algal production.
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Questions and Answers
Temperature dependence is known only in a general
way. Increases in temperature produce two effects: changing
algal population composition and increasing production.
Temperature increases favor the growth of blue-green species.
Anchorages are necessary if Cladophora is to grow
in profusion.
Bottom composition is principally important in
relation to recycling of nutrients during periods of rapid
consumption.
There is probably not a single "triggering" agent
for each species of algae. If there is one, it is the
latest agent to reach an optimum after all other requirements
have reached an optimum level. That triggering agent can,
therefore, be any one of many (e.g., light intensity,
temperature, water motion, depth, phosophorus concentra-
tion, nitrogen content, pH, or any of a multitude of
required trace elements or compounds).
The physical aspects of western Lake Erie are
such that they promote greater algal growth than elsewhere
in the lake. The western basin water has a theoretical
average residence time of only about 50 days because of
its small volume and high inflow. This residence time is
reduced to much less than the average during times of high
flow in spring and early summer. During times of high
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73
Questions and Answers
inflow the concentrations of phosphorus in that inflow are
also high, leading to a rise in nutrient content in the
western basin. These times are also times of high silt
input coupled with increased wave-stirring of bottom muds,
therefore transparency is less. Wave stirring also brings
nutrients from the bottom into suspension. At the same
time the western basin water is warming rapidly. Under
normal circumstances the conditions of ideal nutrient
supply, temperature, calmness and water clarity are soon
set up and productivity is stimulated. Plankton will in-
crease rapidly and attached algae will abound on the
extensive shallow rock surfaces of the western basin.
The deeper, clearer waters of the central and
eastern basins are over most of their area much less or
not at all affected by similar physical aspects. Turbidity
is less, temperature rise is slower, wave-stirring of muds
is insignificant, retention time is long and shallow reefs
are scarce. However, along the shore, particularly the
south shore, conditions are approached which are similar
to those of the western basin. Algal production is thus
similarly stimulated.
MR. STEIN: Thank you.
Are there any comments or questions?
MR. FOGLE: I have a comment for clarification,
Mr. Chairman.
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74
Questions and Answers
I don't quite understand, Fritz, how you have,
say, during times of high inflow, a concentration of
phosphorus when the inflow is also high. To me this can
mean that it has to come from soil runoff if that is the
case.
DR. BARTSCH: I think it has reference to that,
yes.
MR. POOLE: But does the record actually indicate
that during high inflow we do have high phosphorus.
DR. BARTSCH: Yes, this is my understanding.
MR. STEIN: By the way, this was a tremendous
piece of writing, Fritz. We are going to give all these
people who sat through this a graduate degree. This is
very good.
DR. BARTSCH: I must admit with respect to this
question my input was only about one-third of the work.
MR. STEIN: Well, whoever did it, this is a
classic. Thanks.
Any other comments or questions?
Twelve.
MR. HALL: Question 12: The estimated discharge
from Lake Huron is 20,000 pounds per day. This means an
average of 0.02 rag/1 in the flow of the Detroit River. The
recommended limit for phosphorus in the western basin is
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75
Questions and Answers
0.025 mg/1 and in the central basin is 0.015 mg/1. Reported
concentrations in Lake Huron exceeded .03 rag/1. How do you
reconcile these objectives?
MR. POSTON: George.
MR. HARLOW: Answer: It is stated in the nutrient
report to the Conferees that the discharge from Lake Huron
is less than 20,000 Ibs/day. This figure was estimated
high intentionally. However, 196? data from the FWPCA
Detroit Program Office from repetitive sampling at the
head of the St. Glair River indicate that the estimate is
approximately correct for phosphorus. In Lake Huron,
phosphorus data from the same office indicate an annual
average concentration of about 0.01 mg/1. The recommended
limit for phosphorus concentration in the western basin
allows for a considerable additional input from in-basin
sources coupled with natural phosphorus precipitation
and algae utilization. The objectives are, therefore,
not inconsistent if the value for Lake Huron of .03 mg/1
is considered erroneous.
MR. STEIN: Are there any comments or questions?
If not, may we go on with Question 13.
MR. HALL: Question 13: Mr. Harlow's recommenda-
tion is to limit the municipal contribution to S,000 pounds
per day for all the basin states. With an #0 percent
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76
Questions and Answers
reduction in the Detroit discharge what would be the Detroit
contribution and how much of the $,000 pounds would Detroit
take?
MR. HARLOW: Answer: This is straightforward.
MR. STEIN: I hope all your answers are!
MR. HARLOW: Maybe too much so!
The Detroit metropolitan area discharge of an
estimated 40,000 Ibs/day reduced by BO percent is $,000
Ibs/day, which of course is all of the recommended limit.
However the question has combined two recommendations
as one. My recommendation also calls for 92 percent reduc-
tion, thus reducing the detroit area contribution to 3>200
Ibs/day. Its proportionate share of allowable discharge
would be approximately the same as its share of the present
total load.
MR. STEIN: Are there any questions or comments?
MR. EAGLE: Yes.
Is it true, Mr. Harlow, that if we stayed with
this $0 percent figure at Detroit, then everywhere else we
would have to go to a hundred percent to come down to the
$,000 pounds per day, right?
MR. HARLOW: I don't know, George. You said
everywhere else.
MR. EAGLE: Everywhere else on Lake Erie.
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Questions and Answers
There would be no allowable discharges from
anywhere else because the Detroit area would have used
the entire &000 pounds, right?
MR. HARLOW: If you adopted this #0 percent.
MR. EAGLE: Yes.
I wanted to make this point clear and
MR. HARLOW: This is only my recommendation. It
is certainly up to the Conferees to decide.
MR. STEIN: Can you answer the question though?
Is that substantially correct? If Detroit were to put
out this &0 percent, the other discharges would be required
to be reduced substantially a hundred percent in approaching
it.
MR. HARLOW: Well, if it was agreed upon that you
would reduce to #000 pounds per day, and if Detroit removed
SO percent, they would remove down to the &000.
MR. EAGLE: Just checking your calculations in
another way, this would be, according to your calculations,
a hundred percent for other discharges to Lake Erie if
Detroit only reduced by BO percent and you met the 8000
total.
MR. HARLOW: Based on the method by which I
calculated it.
MR. POSTON: Of course, this also assumes that
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78
Questions and Answers
the load coming down the Detroit River remains a constant
or coming down the St. Glair River.
MR. EAGLE: This is my second question then:
Does it necessarily need to remain a constant? Aren't we
reducing in the other Great Lakes areas also? Have you
made any calculations on that, George, what that might be
reduced to?
MR. HARLOW: In the other Great Lakes?
MR. EAGLE: Yes.
MR. HARLOW: No, I haven't.
MR. EAGLE: My question is: D o we have to
continue to accept this discharge from Lake Huron? I mean
is it logical to consider it?
MR. HARLOW: Whether it is going to stay 20,000
from now on?
MR. EAGLfi: Yes.
MR. HARLOW: I would hope that the level would
go down. As I understand it, there are other control
programs going on elsewhere that should reduce the level
of phosphorus throughout all of the Great Lakes.
MR. STEIN: I think it is fair to say here that
as much as we love Oeming and Remus in Detroit, the
likelihood of the Federal Government coming up with a
requirement that they only have to reduce 80 percent and
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79
Questions and Answers
the State of Ohio has to reduce a hundred percent is remote.
Now, what we are trying to do, and we know this
isn't perfect, but it is the kind of a thing with municipal
treatment anyway I would hope we would come up with a
uniform requirement that will apply to all, unless there are
persuasive reasons that make different classifications. I
have been out here, coming back and forth a long time, and
I can't really make a distinction between Michigan and Ohio
as to the kind of treatment they should put in when they
discharge to Lake Erie.
MR. EAGLE: Well, I think, Mr. Chairman, this
will explain a little further my reluctance on June 4 to
come to an immediate agreement on $0 percent reduction,
because I don't think that is enough. I think if we are
talking about controlling algae in Lake Erie, then we are
going to have to go considerably above 80 percent and we
are going to have to do a lot of other things, including
agricultural drainage, and so on. So, although I have
been accused of foot-dragging, certainly, believe me, this
is not Ohio's intent, and if we can arrive at a reasonable
program, certainly we will be in there with flying colors.
MR. STEIN: Well, I am sure no one ever said
Ohio is dragging its feet. But I think one thing we can
discount right here, and I think we can all do that, is
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80
Questions and Answers
that in the States getting together or the State and Federal
Government that we can't conceivably, any of us, live with
one requirement for a city in one State and another in
another State. I think we pretty much have to go down the
line on this together.
Are there any other comments or questions?
Question 14.
MR. HALL: Question 14: What documentation is
available to show the role of phosphorus in the bottom
muds in algal formation?
MR. POSTON: Dr. Bartsch was going to account
for No. 14.
DR. BARTSCH: Answer: The role of bottom muds
is that of providing a nutrient reserve which feeds the
overlying water. Although the release of mud-contained
nutrients is essentially incessant, it is by no means
constant in amount. Special conditions of EH, pH and DO
content near the interface can cause very rapid release.
These rapid rises of nutrients in overlying water occur
when the water is temperature-stratified and DO is low or
absent. Some of these nutrients migrate upward to surface
waters through the hypolimnion and some are mixed throughout
at the time of autumn turnover. The nutrients released to
the water stimulate algs1 growth wherever there is adequate
light, including the hypolimnion. There is much documentation
-------
References
SO-A
Attachment 1
1, Carrltt, D. and S. Goodgal. 1954. Sorption reactions and come
ecological implications. Deep Sea Research 1., 224-243.
2. Hayes, F. R. and E. H. Anthony. 1950. Lake Water and Sediment
I. Characteristics and v?ater chemistry of some Canadian Eact Coast
lakes, Litnnol. 6. Oceanog, 3, 305.
3. Holden, A. V. 1961. The removal of dissolved phosphate from lake
waters by bottom deposits. Verh. Internet, Verein. Limnol. 14.
247-251.
4, Jitts, H, H. 1959, The adsorption of phosphate by estuarine bottom
deposits. Australian Journal of Marine end Freshwater Research,
10, 7-21.
5. MacPherson, L. B., N. R. Sinclair, and F. R. Hayes. 1958. Lake
Water end Sediment. III. The effect of pH on the partition of
inorganic phosphate between v;ater and oxidized mud or ito ash.
Limnol. 6. Oceanography 3_, 318-326.
6, Morgan, J, J. and W. Stumra. 1964. The role of nultivalent metal
oxides in limnological transfoi .ations, as exemplified by iron and
manganese. Second International Conference on Water Pollution
Research. Section 1 Paper No, 6, 12.
7. Mortimer, C. H, 1941, The exchange of dissolved substances between
mud and water in lakes. J, Ecology 29., 322.
8. Olsen, S. 1964. Phosphate equilibrium between reduced sediments and
vater. Laboratory experiments with radioactive phosphorus. Verh,
Intemat. Verein, Limnol. 15.. 333-341,
9, Pomeroy, L. R., E. E. Smith, and C. M. Grant, 1965. The exchange of
phosphate between estuarine water and sediments, Limnol, and
Oceanography IP.. 167-172,
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Questions and Answers '
available to show the mechanics of release of phosphorus
from bottom sediments and its effect on algal "formation."
Delineating the role of bottom sediments in algal
production is the objective of a number of research efforts.
The ten references given in Attachment 1 relate to this
subject. In addition, FWPCA's National Eutrophication
Research Program will publish a critical review of the
literature on this subject area under title "Release and
Uptake of Nutrients by Bottom Sediments Chemical and
Physical Processes" in January 1969.
MR. STEIN: Thank you.
Are there any comments or questions?
MR. OEMING: I would like to ask Dr. Bartsch a
question.
You are aware, aren't you, Dr. Bartsch, of the
studies that were made back several years ago, which showed
I have forgotten how many thousand acres of area in the
bottom of Lake Erie opposite Cleveland that were oxygen
deficient in the bottom layer. Do you remember that, or
are you aware of that?
DR. BARTSCH: Yes, I am aware that there have
been these areas in Lake Erie which annually become oxygen
deficient. I do not know the details from my own knowledge.
MR. OEMING: There is some area out of there
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Questions and Answers
40,000 acres, or miles, or square miles or something.
This would mean, applying what you have said
here, that there is a nucleus of a problem right in the
central lake, in the central basin, I guess, isn?t it,
that is east of Point Pelee where you would have a
nucleus of a release of materials from the bottom sediments.
This would be quite a sizable contribution here.
DR. BARTSCH: I would consider this to be a
potential contribution which would be triggered by the
anaerobic conditions in the sediment surface and it would
then depend upon whether the current patterns were such as
to bring this phosphorus into circulation to the levels
where it could be utilized by the algae.
MR. OEMING: Don't go away. But, Mr. Harlow,
can you remember how much of the area in the central basin
was oxygen deficient from your studies?
MR. HARLOW: Twenty-five hundred square miles.
MR. OEMING: Twenty-five hundred square miles of
oxygen deficient area, and this is then the central basin.
We have been talking about the western basin which is bad,
but here is another potential area of trouble, isn't it?
DR. BARTSCH: This makes the very point that
one of several points that we attempted to make earier
that we have to consider the input on an annual basis
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Questions and Answers
rather than the existence solely at the time that there
are blooms. It also makes the other point that if we are
going to cleanse this lake, we have to create circumstances
that will bring the nutrients out of the sediments and get
them also out of the lake, or at least get them out of the
surface film of the sediment so that they are no longer a
participant on the total nutrient cycle.
MR. EAGEL: This was only below the thermocline.
I want to make this clear for the record that we are talking
about below the thermocline and not the total water supply.
MR. OEMING: Yes.
MR. EAGLE: I have a question. I would like to
ask Harlow, I guess. George, these studies that are being
carried on by the Corps of Engineers in connection with
their dumping of dredgings in the Lake Erie is the nutri-
ent phosphate problem being monitored or checked in connec-
tion with these studies, and, if so, what kind of discharges
are we getting from these?
MR. HARLOW: The nutrient content of the spoil
from the Corps of Engineers dredging program is being
monitored both by our agency and the U.S. Lake Survey.
Harbors were divided up. They took so many and
made measurements and we took some. Our office emphasized
the Cuyahoga area because it happened to be part of the
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Questions and Answers
pilot plant program of the Corps. This was an area in
which they had a pilot dike under study, and we did make
measurements of the nutrients that were contained
concentrations that were contained in the dredgings as
they went to the lake.
MR. EAGLE: Wouldn't these dredgings from the
Cuyahoga River be very high in nutrients?
MR. HARLOW: Yes, they are.
MR. EAGLE: And they are just being dumped into
Lake Erie, aren't they?
MR. HARLOW: The Corps is intending to put all
this inside the dike this fall and a portion of this was
put inside the dike this year.
MR. EAGLE: But it still leads into the lake,
doesn't it?
MR. HARLOW: I think most of it stays in the dike
and ends up in the sediment in the dike. The Corps is also
planning to build a new dike.
MR. EAGLE: I challenge that. Do you have data
to prove this that it does stay within the dike?
MR. HARLOW: We have data that leads us to
believe that a heavy load of the phosphorus that goes inside
the dike stays in the dike.
Now, I caution you on this kind of determination.
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Questions and Answers
This dike has only been built just recently and the data
were obtained just recently.
MR. BOGEDAIN: As the result of your determina-
tions, what order of magnitude are the orders of phosphorus
in these dredgings?
MR. HARLOW: I can't recall offhand.
MR. BOGEDAIN: You said they were high. How
high?
MR. EAGLE: You have got 2.2 in the Cuyahoga
River.
MR. STEIN: The question we always come around
to here and I wish a Corps man were her to speak for
himself but you don't only have to deal with the con-
centration in the dredging, when you compare the volume of
these dredgings dumped with what comes from the cities and
the industry it isn't very much, not that that shouldn't
be taken care of, but, again, we have looked at this in
Lake Michigan.
MR. BDGEDAIN: Mr. Chairman, you made my point.
Thank you.
MR. STEIN: I will give you my view on that. I
don't think that pollution from dredging is one of the
tremendous factors in pollution in the lake. Now, I have
made it also clear that my personal position on this is
that I don't think we should clean up the lakes just to
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Questions and Answers
make them a dump and every contribution, large and small,
has to be taken out.
Are there any oh, Mr. Poole.
MR. POOLE: Fritz, I want to come back to this
2500 miles in the middle of the lake, because as I said
in this document I got the impression that the algae
content in the central and the eastern portion of the lake
is much less than it is in the western portion, and, well,
we will say down almost to tolerable levels. As I read
through this yesterday, then, the question came to my mind:
How did we get this 2500 miles out in the middle of the
lake? Where did it come from?
DR. BARTSCH: Well, I may have to call on George
Harlow to assist me in an answer. But let me say at least
this much: That the development of anaerobic conditions in
the bottom of the lake are commonly an aftermath of the
production of tremendously large crops of organic matter,
whether they are good algae or bad algae, or animal
plankton, and these crops of organic material, when they
die, settle to the bottom and become a part of the sediment
itself. This organic matter drawing on the oxygen resources
of the water which becomes trapped in the hypolimnion is
set off from the circulations with the overlying water.
Now, perhaps one of the reasons for what appears
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87
Questions and Answers
to be a discrepancy here the low DO on the one hand and
the lack of tremendous blooms on the other is the dis-
tance of communication between whatever exchange occurs
in the bottom sediments and the area in which the algae
can grow.
Maybe George can comment further on this. I
think this is perhaps the best I can do,
MR. STEIN: Say, Fritz, before you get off,
what does "hypolimnion" mean?
DR. BARTSCH: Well, the hypolimnion is the name
given to one of the three layers which become establi shed
in a lake as the temperature increases in the summertime,
so that you have at the surface layer the epilimnion,
which is a layer in which the wind is able to circulate
the water, and the temperature in this layer is uniform
and generally it is the highest temperature you will find
in the lake. This is the area where the production of
algae typically is going on. Then, if you measured the
temperature with increasing depth, you would find that
there becomes a rapid drop in temperature, and by defini-
tion to be the next layer which is called the thermocline.
This temperature drop has to be one degree Centigrade per
liter of depth. Once you get through this layer, you
will find a layer where the temperature is uniform but
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Questions and Answers
lower than the surface water. This is the hypolimnion.
This is cut off by the thermocline from the wind and circu-
lation of the surface water. It becomes a sort of storehouse
for nutrients that are typically not put to use by the
biological system.
MR. STEIN: One thing I know, all these people
are smarter than I am! They used the terms before of Eh,
pH and DO. Do you want to explain that Eh?
DR. BARTSCH: Maybe George can do it better than
I can.
It refers to electromotive force of the electro-
motive situation in the bottom sediments as it is applied
here. If I remember the figures from some of my people
correctly, when you have a potential charge there of about
two-tenths of a volt someone will correct me if I am
wrong, I hope you have an electrical circumstance in the
environment that is conducive to bringing about solubiliza-
tion of the phosphorous compounds.
MR. STEIN: You know, it shows you how much you
learn. Before I came here, I thought Eh was a Broadway
show last year.
George, do you want to continue?
MR. HARLOW: I don't know if I can add to any-
thing that Dr. Bartsch said; he always says it so well.
I think, Blucher, however, a partial answer to
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B9
Questions and Answers
what you said: The reason we get the low DO in the central
basin and don't get it in the western basin is because we
don't ordinarily develop thermocline in the western basin
because the water is shallow. If we had a thermocline in
the western basin, I think we would get a similar DO complex.
MR. POOLE: I can buy all that, and I don't
want to belabor it, I know that the low DO comes from
all kinds of organics that are down there, but I can't
visualize the sludge from Detroit, and Toledo, and Cleveland
getting out there into the middle of the lake in such
quantity as to do this. So the only thing I can conclude
is that this 25 miles is due basically to dead algae.
Now, maybe that conclusion is wrong, but that has been
mine, and then when you come along and make the inference
that we have got tolerable algal levels in the central
and eastern basin
MR. HARLOW: Surface waters.
MR. POOLE: -- I begin to wonder if we have or
not.
MR. HARLOW: Surface waters in the central and
eastern basin.
MR. POOLE: Well, are they tolerable, if there
are enough of them that when they settle and start
decomposing they give you 25 hundred miles in the middle
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90
Questions and Answers
of the lake with no DO?
MR. HARLOW: A lot of the algae growing along
the western shore find their way to the hypolimnion in
the central waters.
MR. POOLE: I will accept it for the time being.
MR. STEIN: Fifteen.
MR. HALL: Question 15: What places in the
United States are now reducing phosphates as a routine
part of the treatment? What volumes, concentrations in
the influent and the effluent, and methods of treatment
are utilized? What are the unit costs, construction and
operation?
MR. POSTON: Dr. Stephan.
DR. STEPHAN: Answer: Full-scale from some
of your earlier comments, you have all been waiting on the
answer to this one.
Full-scale waste treatment plants designed and
operated specifically for high phosphate removal are now
in routine operation at South Lake Tahoe, California
(7.5 mgd), Prince William County, Virginia (1 mgd),
Amarillo, Texas (13 mgd), Chicago (Hanover Park), Illinois
(1 mgd), Las Vegas, Nevada (1 mgd), and Lansdale, Pennsyl-
vania (about .03 mgd) there is a typographical error in
the written answer Two small package plants (30,000 and
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91
Questions and Answers
SO,000 gpd) are also in fulltime operation at Kinzua
Reservoir, Pennsylvania. Full-scale plants at San
Antonio, Texas (24 mgd) and at Baltimore, Maryland (20 mgd),
while not specifically designed for phosphorus removal, are
also achieving high efficiency phosphorus treatment quite
routinely. In addition to these installations, pilot
plants for phosphate removal are in full operation at
present at Nassau County, Long Island, New York (.5 mgd),
Detroit, Michigan (.1 mgd), Washington, D.C. (.1 mgd),
Lancaster, California (.07 mgd) and Ely, Minnesota (.02
mgd). Further full-scale demonstrations have been con-
ducted and completed at Pomona, California (2 mgd),
Washington C.H., Ohio (1 mgd), Xenia, Ohio (1 mgd),
Grayling, Michigan (.3 mgd), and Lake Odessa, Michigan,
(.5 mgd); a^d full-scale operations are under design or
construction at Colorado Springs, Colorado (2 mgd),
E. Chicago, Indiana (.5 mgd), Dallas, Texas (.5 mgd),
Piscataway, Maryland (5 mgd), Lancaster, California
(.5 mgd), Santee, California (2 mgd), State College,
Pennsylvania (2 mgd), Grayling, Michigan (.3 mgd),
Holland, Michigan (4.5 mgd), Elkhart, Indiana (20 mgd),
and Rochester, New York (100 mgd).
The variety of processes utilized, flow rates
treated, geographic locations involved and feed
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92
Questions and Answers
compositions handled make it difficult to provide any
brief and simple summary of process costs and performances
achieved. In most cases also it is not clear how to
assign any definite fraction of cost to "phosphorus removal."
This is because the selected process may shorten conventional
detention time or improve other treatment objectives either
deliberately or as a side benefit. Also of importance in
costing is whether phosphorus control is to be incorporated
into existing structures or planned into the design of new
treatment facilities. It should be clear that the actual
costs encountered at any given location can only be
defined through an engineering analysis at the specific
site,.
For most of the cited cities as well as for a
number of other examples of phosphorus removal technology,
the processes utilized, costs and performances were
reported in detail at the two FWPCA Workshops on Phosphorus
Removal, May 1-2 and June 26-27, 196S, in Chicago, Illinois.
Copies of the programs for these two workshops are attached
and copies of many of the reports presented are available
from participants. These reports of actual installations
and available technology really provide the requested
details on process, performance and costs.
In summary, however, it may be stated that 80
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93
Questions and Answers
percent phosphorus removal may be readily achieved by a
variety of processes for a total cost, including capital
amortization, of 5^/1000 gal. or less. This statement
is conservative the workshop presentations indicate
that lower costs (perhaps 3£/1000 gal.) and higher
efficiencies (up to 95 percent removal) may well be
achieved. Using chemical precipitation with lime, for
example, a 90-95 percent removal can be accomplished in
a typical 10 mgd plant for less than 5^/1000 gal. beyond
the cost of a well operated secondary plant. The attached
figure summarizes the cost projections for this process.
If you will refer to two pages over, the chart
there indicating the treatment costs versus design capacity,
it has four lines. The line sloping upward sharply to the
right is the capital cost, (reading) capital cost in millions
of dollars. The other three figures relate to treatment
cost in cents per thousand gallons, the upper one marked
T being the total cost; the 0 and M, the operating and
maintenance cost; and A is
MR. STEIN: Thank you.
Any comments or questions?
(The above-referred to chart follows,)
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Figure
3. SOLIDS REMOVAL BY COAGULATION & SEDIMENTATION
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4 567H910
4 & 678910
1.0 10.0
Design Capacity, millions of gallons per day
100.
C = Capital Cost, millions of dcllers
A = Debt Service, cents per 1CCO gallons(^ 1/2 - 25 yr.)
0 & M = Operating and fcintanance Cost, cents per 1COO gallons
T = Total Treatcant Cost, cents per 1000 ga
-------
95
Questions and Answers
MR. BOGEDAIN: Yes, Mr. Chairman.
The factor of, let us say, 5f^AOOO gal. this
is a cost per thousand gallons actually treated, not
necessarily the rate of plant capacity, so this might mean
for a 1 mgd plant, what, $50 per day?
Has any attempt been made to estimate the
overall costs throughout the basin for certain phosphorus
removal as to what could be incurred in, let's say, BO
percent phosphorus removal? Are those figures available?
DR. STEPHAN: You are talking about summing up
all of the treatment plants in the basin. I have not done
it.
MR. BOGEDAIN: The question would be: What would
our taxpayers be asked to pay?
DR. STEPHAN: While a total has not been made, it
could. If you equate this to a unit cost, per capita per
day, five cents per thousand gallons is roughly three-
quarters of a penny per day per capita.
MR. OEMING: Are you through?
MR. BOGEDAIN: Yes.
MR. OEMING: Mr. Chairman, there is a couple of
experiences here that we have been having you mentioned,
Dr. Stephan -- and while I wouldn't say that these were
high type installations, these were put in as interim to
see what we could do. They are full-scale but they are
-------
96
Questions and Answers
not designed and all set up and everything operating
perfectly. But I think this caution ought to be thrown
in, that while performances in the range of 90 to 92
percent were attained, this would not be a consistent
removal -- that is, if you are talking now about monthly
averages, and I don't know what we are talking about
here if we are talking 92 percent it has been thrown
out here as an objective.
Certainly that is going to be an average,
isn't it? In order to achieve that you are going to be
talking about 99-plus maybe, at the top, and 10 percent
below that, as a variation, and the thing that I want
to caution you about is when you are talking 92 percent,
if you are talking an average, I question whether you
are going -- we haven't seen anything that you are going
to get that yet, and in Detroit the same thing. Trying
limes and trying aluminum compounds and iron compounds
is a routine thing.
MR. STEIN: Mr. Stephan.
DR. STEPHAN: Right.
MR. STEIN: Doctor I am sorry.
DR. STEPHAN: One point I would like to make
clear: The degree of removal attained is dependent
quite highly on the type of treatment process that is
-------
97
Questions and Answers
employed.
Now, there are several generalized types of treat-
ment when you are considering phosphorus removal. One might
be characterized as the biological uptake or the biological
treatment process; typical of these would be the two I men-
tioned at San Antonio and at Baltimore, Maryland.
Now, there the removals have been, as you suggest,
quite variable at times. Again, forgive me, I don't have
the exact details in my head, but my recollection is at San
Antonio the plant removal, as mentioned, is from about 60
percent up to as high as 90, maybe 95 percent, and that is
quite variable. For that type of system, we donft know
enough about it at this point to control the level to any-
thing other than perhaps a long-term average of BO percent,
and I think we could probably achieve that but we couldn't
control it on any given day or any given season.
On the other hand, as you go into what I would
consider on the other extreme of the types of treatment, the
strictly chemical type of removal, and this is exemplified
by the one I chose to give for detailed example here the
lime precipitation as a tertiary treatment process following
existing primary-secondary. There I believe that we can
and, in fact, we are in pilot-scale equipment and I suspect
they are achieving it now at South Lake Tahoe in fullscale
we can achieve essentially whatever degree of phosphorus
removal you care to program into it, up to this maximum
-------
93
Questions and Answers
level of 90-95 percent. I think we could hold it at least
at 90 percent. I think we could go to 95 with no particular
difficulty.
Now, the reason for this is what when you get into
the chemical types of treatment, the parameters which affect
removal are much better known than they are in the biological
treatment of sediments. We know if we control the pH; and if
we control the dosage with respect to the alkalinity that we
can precipitate outin the type of system here all the
phosphorus in this 90 to 95 percent range, I think, with a
high degree of reliance.
The plant at Tahoe I have not seen their
data I was out there in May and they were achieving this
sort of removal quite routinely then.
MR. OEMING: But you did say, Dr. Stephan
and I listened very carefully that you were still
talking about the maximum that is achievable now, that
you have some certainty about. This is not an average on
30 days or 90 days or anything like that, except in a
special case in Tahoe.
DR. STEPHAN: I am not quite sure I understand
your question. At Tahoe the removals are in the 90 to 95
percent range.
MR. OEMING: But the ranges elsewhere are wider
than that.
-------
99
Questions and Answers
DR. STEPHAN: Yes, quite dependent on the type
of process, that is correct.
MR. OEMING: This is our experience, and I think
also there is this about it? That we are finding that in
certain cases, depending upon the type of sewage you have,
that you cannot just go out and say you have got to process
and go ahead and design it. I have in mind one particular
case in the Lake Michigan basin where we have a combination
of cherry cannery wastes plus sewage, and nobody has yet
found and I think none of us have any confidence of what
we know today without a demonstration project. We wouldn't
know how to design a plant to even achieve $0 percent on
the average.
DR. STEPHAN: Of course, I can't speak on
individual cases I am not familiar with.
MR. OEMING: I think you are going to have a lot
of indidivual cases.
DR. STEPHAN: I think my point would be the same:
Every one is an individual case. But I would say the vast
majority of indi vidual cases we are confident now that one
can achieve 80 percent removal without I would say
without any substantial question of success; 90-95 percent
removal only selected processes with achieve that, and
even those, I think, we have a quite high reliability that
-------
100
Questions and Answers
we would succeed. On an individual case, I couldn't
respond to.
MR. STEIN: Mr. Poole.
MR. POOLE: Well, I want to comment on this
because I think we are getting down now to the nub of
the whole thing as far as this meeting is concerned about
Lake Erie. I don't have the benefit of the June Work-
shop Conference, unfortunately, although that is just a
fault of ray own shop not getting the memorandum around
to me. But I am not convinced yet that on a year-round
basis, we will say, that you can go much above BO percent
and stay within the realm of what I call economic
feasibility.
Now, I have got some figures here that Mr. Miller,
who is our sewage man, did give me, and he said that
Pomona, California, got &2 percent reduction with lime at,
a cost of $45 a million. He says South Lake Tahoe got
&6 percent reduction with chemical treatment, and then
when they took the chemical treatment through a mixed
media filter after that, it went up to 93. But he also
says it cost $#6/million gallons to do it. One of the
Michigan plants got &4, and one at Grayling, he said,
got 92 and you have already thrown up a flag of
caution about this, and I think what little I know about
-------
101
Questions and Answers
it confirms what Larry and Dr. Stephan are saying that
there is going to be quite a variation between individual
plants. It seems to me that this has to be taken into
consideration in any conclusion we come to as to what
we are going to shoot for here in 1963 as far as Lake
Erie is concerned, and it is going to take some argument
to get me to go much above 80 as an annual average.
MR. STEIN: Well, do you have any comment on
that?
DR. STEPHAN: Yes. I would like to point out
I am sorry you weren*t at the two two-day workshops we
had in Chicago. I think they were quite enlightening.
The first workshop was handled by FWPCA Research
and Development personnel reporting on our own experiences.
The second conference, on the other hand, was a much more
meaningful one in that it was a conference at which the
various equipment manufacturers and design engineers and
consultants involved in the business of actually doing
this job, presented to the public at that point what they
believed the technology was that they had in hand to
remove phosphorus.
Again, as I indicated in my written answer, the
responses at that workshop and the materials and topics
covered were quite varied. There were some nine or ten
-------
102
Questions and Answers
different fundamental approaches toward phosphorus removal
considered. I think perhaps only one of them that I
recall claimed a percent removal less than £0, and I
believe all of the rest were claiming and I think rather
well assuring removals in the BO percent and up level.
I would also point out that most of the costs were
projected to a midwestern situation the Great Lakes situa-
tion were in the 5^/thousand gallon range or much less. The
Tahoe costs you quote are certainly correct. One of the
reasons for this is the fact that their multi-media filters
are aimed at accomplishing much more than phosphorus removal
because they are accomplishing 9&-99 percent removal of BOD
at the same time. Other minor factors are simply the loca-
tion of Lake Tahoe and the difficulty of bringing chemicals
in.
MR. POOLE: Well, this five cents a thousand, or
a quarter of a cent a day, or something, doesn't sound like
much, but I want to ask Mr. Wirts back here what it is cost-
ing Cleveland for activated sludge plants now.
MR. WIRTS: About that same figure.
MR. POOLE: This is the point I want to get
across.
We have got much smaller plants than Cleveland.
We have our cities in the fifty to a hundred thousand
bracket that are making contracts with suburban areas for
-------
103
Questions and Answers
$100 a million, and they are making a little profit out of
that. So we can say five cents a thousand, but actually
what we are doing here is that we are upping the cost of
sewage treatment from 50 percent to 100 percent depending
on the size of the installation.
MR. STEIN: Just treatment not amortization?
MR. POOLE: No, this is debt service.
MR. STEIN: Debt service, too.
MR. POOLE: Yes.
DR. STEPHAN: Mr. Poole, one comment on that is
this: The best cost data we can put together now on
typical or average costs of conventional primary-secondary
treatment in this country, let's say at a 10 million gallon
per day scale, is around eleven cents per thousand gallons
for a total plant.
The Easterly Plant here does not handle its
own sludge and I suspect that is one of the factors. In
addition, the efficient operation of John Wirts, of course,
leads towards a unit cost which is somewhat less, and
also it is a larger plant. But this, I would agree with
you, sort of treatment would add something on the order of
50 percent to the cost of conventional treatment that
is now practiced.
MR. EAGLE: This is my comment on Cleveland,
and I believe we would like to get this in the record
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104
Questions and Answers
about the costs, and we do have to consider them, even
though some people may not think they are very relevant.
But we are here in Cleveland, so let's talk about
Cleveland a little bit: roughly 200 million gallons of
sewerage a day, so we are talking in the neighborhood of
$10 thousand a day additional cost, and this is about
$4 million a year, or close to it. Then this would
amortize probably $40 million worth of bonds something
on this order. So we have already got a $211 million
program in Cleveland, and you add $40 million onto it,
and something has got to give somewhere, and something
is going to have to be slowed down or shoved in the back-
ground if we are going to go into this program. This is
a decision that we will have to give consideration.
MR. OEMING: Mr. Stein, I can't let go of Dr.
Stephan quite this easily.
Dr. Stephan, you have placed quite a little
confidence in the claims that were made at the Chicago
conference, I think all of us in the business know how
to put these claims into perspective, and that gets into
perspective pretty fast when you are on the front line
eyeball to eyeball with the person that says you have got
to do this, and he is searching for that fellow that said,
"Yes, I can do it," and that fellow isn't there then. He
-------
105
Questions and Answers
is there when you have a nice conference like this, but he
is not there when you lay the job on the table and say,
"All right, mister, now you said it, now you guarantee that
you will remove it." And I think I would like to put that
in the perspective, if you haven't already, that: don't
place too much reliance on this and you are a research
man, you know this is so. The proof is in the pudding,
and all I say is that when you project this much beyond
SO percent with what you have given us to work with today,
that you are stretching yourselves quite a little, and
we have operating experience, I think, that we feel is
pretty reliable.
DR. STEPHAN: I would like to point out, as I
am sure you are aware, the technology of phosphate removal
is very rapidly emerging. In 1965 we did not have any
technology for phosphorus removal other than conventional
systems, which I think at best would average around 30
percent removal of phosphorus. So, in the rather short
period between 19&5 an^ 196B, we have come to the place
where I believe you have indicated that SO percent removal
is pretty well agreed upon can be obtained. The 90 to 95
percent, I admit, is on the margin. It is in the area
where, I believe, we can attain it with one or two
processes, not with a large arsenal of techniques. Eighty
-------
106
Questions and Answers
percent removal, I am convinced, we can achieve with a
variety of processes, and of course I am familiar with the
number of full-scale and pilot scale activities now underway
where we are actually achieving this. I really have no
doubt in my mind the 80 percent figures at that cost.
MR. STEINJ Dr. Stephan, I think we may be
getting at the same kind of problem that we have had in
various aspects of pollution control.
Now, again, possibly some of us who have different
aspect of this business to look at share different views.
I know the notion of my going around the country
and looking at plants that are rated at 90-92 percent,
and seeing the days that they fall into the 70s, it gets
rather dismal sometimes. But I think this is to be expected.
Now, you pointed out, one, that you are dealing
with a chemical process and not a biological process.
When the biological process goes sour, you just have to
tinker with it until you write it up again and there isn't
enough money in the world that can do it.
The difficulty that I find and maybe some of
the manufacturers here, too, I am not talking in terms
generally I have not found in the past if we were deal-
ing in the chemical process, we were hitting the optimum
-------
10?
Questions and Answers
mark too much better. The point is you can control the
chemical process perhaps more than control the biological
process. Only one rub: You are going to have some more
chemicals and it is going to cost you money and these
fellows operate on a budget and the guy and this works
both ways as you know, with the biological and chemical
process, you put the biological process to work and it runs.
A guy gets a tight budget on running a plant on a chemical
process and the first thing you save is a little bit of the
chemical you pump in, and if you fail to meet your budget
that week the chemical doesn't get in.
I am talking here with administrators from five
States and the Federal Government and the people that we
have to deal with. So, I am not sure that we realistically
can talk in terms of a minimum, say, of 92, at this stage,
because they generally fall to the 80s. On the other
hand, if you say a minimum of 80, wouldn't they have to have
a plant that was capable of doing about between 90 and 95
to achieve that minimum of 80?
I am asking the question.
Do they have to hit that high a level?
DR. STEPHAN: Mr. Chairman, I don't think you
would have to go that high; 90 to 95 is the peak removal
-------
108
Questions and Answers
to average 80 with some of these processes. Certainly
with others you would. But you are quite correct, the
average of SO is obviously going to be attained by
averaging out some days, some hours, where the removal
is substantially less than 80 and some where it is sub-
stantially higher.
MR. STEIN: Now, let me ask one question here,
because I think this is the crux of it, and I think Mr.
Eagle and his group raised this.
With all of the figures, if we are talking
about terms, say, of a 92 or a 95 percent removal, and
the Conferees make that as their recommendation, would
we be kidding ourselves and kidding the public or could
we really attain it, given the state of operation of
waste treatment plants in the country today and the
midwest where we are dealing with the situation.
Is this realistic for us to say we are going
to get 95 percent removal and expect to come out 365
days a year and find we are getting it?
DR. STEPHAN: I think the simple answer to that
is no. I don't think it is realistic to consider the 95
percent removal you have suggested as an annually attain-
able average removal which could be assured at this date.
MR. POOLE: Of course, Dave, if we advance as
-------
109
Questions and Answers
much in the next five years as we have in the last three,
it could be realistic, couldn't it?
DR. STEPHAN: Well, we certainly are hoping to
improve the technology to where we can do that, but I
think you will find that the rate of approaching the optimum
is going to fall off as we approach the optimum. Where we
have come from 30 percent attainable removal in 1965 to
80 percent attainable removal now, we are obviously not
going to keep up at that rate of improvement over the next
three years.
MR. STEIN: Are there any further comments or
questions?
MR. RICHARDS: I think one other comment might
be in order, and that is: If you say 80 percent removal
and indicate that this is going to be satisfactory in
time, this is what you are going to get. I think it would
be better to say maximize the removal of
MR. STEIN: Oh, yes. Some of you may know about
this controversy that we are having with some of the
southern States on temperature removal, and some of the
people here the biologists, for example have talked
in terms of five parts per million of dissolved oxygen.
The notion that some of these people have who have
the operating programs in the south is : Give them their
-------
110
Questions and Answers
streams from time immemorial when the Indians came
or were here you couldn't get five anyway, you would dip
below five. Now, the argument that is made sometimes, if
we have a minimum of four parts for oxygen per million
of oxygenin order to achieve that four parts, they are
going to have to have five parts most of the time.
Now, there may be an approach made to set a
minimum here, and then say to maximize that when you can.
And I am just suggesting that because we have had to
do that in other fields when we have had these variables.
This may be a way that we will be able to handle this.
I don't know.
Are there any other comments or questions?
If not, we have two more questions, and it is
1;00 o'clock. You have to leave at 4:00, don't you?
DR. STEPHAN: I have to be on a plane at 4:00.
MR. STEIN: We have got to go on.
Let's take 16, and then we will decide will
you continue with Question 16, please?
MR. HALL: Question 16: Is data available from
these places to show what the resultant effect has been
in the receiving waters? Are these plants discharging
to lakes or rivers?
DR. STEPHAN: Answer: For the sites at which
-------
Ill
Questions and Answers
full-scale phosphorus removal operation or demonstrations
have been conducted, no data are available at this time to
show the resultant effect on the quality of receiving
waters other than to confirm the obvious: that less
phosphorus is in the receiving water than would have been
if treatment were not employed. To our knowledge, reliable
data to demonstrate a reduction in the frequency or
intensity of algal blooms as a direct result of the imposi-
tion of phosphorus removal treatment at these locations
does not yet exist. The reasons are varied: for South
Lake Tahoe, discharge is not to a natural water body but
rather to a man-made reservoir constructed solely to hold
the effluent prior to reuse; for Prince William County,
Chicago (Hanover Park) and Kinzua Reservoir, the plants
have only recently gone on-stream; for San Antonio and
Baltimore, the low phosphate effluents are mixed with other,
less well-treated effluents before discharge; for Pomona,
Washington, C.H., Xenia, Grayling and Lake Odessa the
demonstrations were of a short-term duration; while for
Amarillo, Las Vegas and Lansdale the effluents are not
discharged but rather are deliberately reused.
Nonetheless, there is substantial experimental
evidence that removal of phosphorus will have a beneficial
effect on water quality.
-------
112
Questions and Answers
Shapiro and Riberio (JWPCF July 1965) studied
the addition of secondary sewage effluent to river water.
They concluded that the river water alone was capable of
supporting small levels of algae but that the addition of
plant effluent increased their growth in proportion to
the addition.
Mr. Chairman, there are several pages of
similar citations which I can go through and read.
MR. STEIN: They more or less confirm the first
one, don't they?
DR. STEPHAN: Yes.
MR. STEIN: Thank you.
(The remaining part of the above-referred to
answer follows:)
In selective addition of phosphorus and
nitrogen they were able to show that both were needed to
stimulate growth of green algae but that phosphorus alone
could stimulate growth of blue-green algae. They were
also able to show that the removal of phosphorus from
the sewage effluent would control the growth of botn green
and blue-green algae to a degree commensurate with the
degree of removal.
Neil (12th Purdue Industrial Waste Conference)
studied unnatural fertilization of Sturgeon Lake in
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Southern Ontario and concluded that phosphorus does seem
to be the common denominator in most lakes that are regular
bloom producers. He also felt that to assist in the control
of blooms a large input of inflow low in nutrients would be
necessary to offset the addition of recirculated nutrients
from the sediments and the algae themselves.
Ohle, W. (1953, Vom Wasser Vol. 20) in his
study of eutrophiclakes concluded that phosphates must be
regarded as the initial factor in the development of
eutrophic conditions.
Sawyer (JAWWA November 19&5) has concluded from
his studies and literature search that phosphorus removal
from municipal wastes is the most practical means of
controlling growth of nuisance blooms of algae. Sawyer
(JWPCF May 1966) also concluded that waters having a
nitrogen to phosphorus ratio of less than 15 to 1 (which
is the case in Lake Erie) will have productivities that are
phosphorus dependent. He also concluded that restrictions
on phosphorus discharges can be shown to limit and alter
the nature of plankton growth. Furthermore, he stated
that although there are many factors such as depth, size,
shape, and geographical location which determine the degree
of eutrophication, in general the basic factor involved is
the algae nutrient budget of the lake and that the
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biological productivity is related directly to the
nutrients available. In conclusion he says that it is
axiomatic that a major factor in the control of eutrophi-
cation depends on limiting the amount of nutrients entering
a lake.
Oglesby and Edmondson (JWPCF Septmeber 1966)
reported on the control of eutrophication in Lakes Washing-
ton and Green in Seattle. They found that phosphorus was
the key element limiting the level of algal production
in regions where most nuisance conditions exist. They
proposed the removal of phosphorus at its source and the
dilution of phosphorus in lakes by the controlled addition
of water low in nutrients. This was done in these two
lakes and as a point of interest the dilution water was
added at about the same relative rate that Lake Huron
water is added to Lake Erie. From their studies they
concluded that algal growths could not be maintained by
fertilization from the sediments alone and that algal
production and water quality in the lakes improved
dramatically even to the extent that eutrophication was
reversed.
Missingham, G. A. (JAWWA February 196?) showed
that domestic sewage supplies a high percentage of nitrogen
and phosphorus and that a high degree of correlation exists
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between nuisance algal conditions and extent of sewage
fertilization. He warns that if nutrients from sewage
plant effluents are allowed access to the water resources,
then one can envisage increased algal growth, large
populations of zooplankton, a depletion of dissolved oxygen
in the hypolimnion, and replacement of game fish with the
less desirable varieties of fish. Recreational uses of
water have been and will continue to be reduced due to
algal problems, with attendant reduction in property
values. (This is just what has happened in Lake Erie.)
He further warns that the onset of overfertilization can
be so insidious that it often passes unnoticed until it
is too late. He was able to show that blue-green algae
will grow in the presence of a plentiful supply of
phosphorus and a deficiency of nitrogen and concluded
that phosphorus is a key element in the fertilization of
lakes.
A survey by an AWWA Task Force (JAWWA March 196?)
revealed that the major problem resulting from nutrients
was eutrophication or a stimulation of algal growths in
lakes and that human wastes and built detergents normally
are the greatest contributors of phosphorus, one of the
essential nutrients. They concluded that domestic wastes
and perhaps some industrial wastes appear to be the only
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sources in which the phosphate concentration is sufficiently
high to make removal feasible. Domestic wastes are a large
contributor of phosphorus so that removal from this source
should help significantly in reducing the rate of eutrophi
cation.
Fruh, E. Gus (JWPCF September 196?) states that
an algal bloom occurs when the number of algae per ml
exceed 500. He summarizes the results to date on Lake
Monona, one of the Madison chain of lakes from which
sewage effluents have been diverted. He states that
qualitative data show a marked improvement following
diversion and even though blooms still occur, the frequency
and nuisance intensity has decreased. He philosophizes
by saying that the reason for the preoccupation of the
sanitary engineer with nitrogen and phosphorus does not
lie in the underestimation of the cosmic importance of
photosynthesis, but rather in the recognition that this
process is for all practical purposes, beyond control.
Little can be done to alter light or C02 supply. By
contrast, nitrogen and phosphorus, which are important
in plant growth, are subject to control and modification
through diversion or tertiary treatment of sewage.
Gordon M. Fair in direct testimony before the
Lake Michigan Diversion cases in 1963 verified that
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phosphorus and nitrogen are the key elements promoting
eutrophication and that in order to arrest the growths
of algae the supply of phosphorus and nitrogen should be
cut off. He furthermore supported the work of Sawyer by
stating the Sawyer* s data support the conclusions that
the levels of phosphorus and nitrogen should be reduced
below certain concentrations in lakes in order to control
nuisance blooms of algae. Sylvester (1961, Algae and
Metropolitan Wastes) also reached similar conclusions
from his studies of the Seattle lakes.
Missinghara (196?) and Oglesby (1966) and
Shapiro have shown why phosphorus is often singled out
as the key to control of algal growth and eutrophication.
They say that:
1. Its supply naturally is low in surface
waters to the extent that nuisance conditions of algae
would not ordinarily exist and where it can be found in
waters in abundance it is usually added by man's activities
and therefore relatively controllable. Nitrogen, on the
other hand, generally is much more abundant in soils and
water and under aerobic conditions is much more soluble.
2. Phosphorus is more easily controlled than
nitrogen. Blue-green algae can fix nitrogen from the
atmosphere.
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3. The phosphorus requirement of nuisance
algae (blue-greens) is high.
4. Phosphorus will stimulate algae fixation of
nitrogen.
Inorganic fertilizer (10-6-4) was applied by
Ball, R. C. (194#, Transactions American Fisheries Soc.
Vol. 7$) to two lakes in northern Michigan. Heavy growths
of plankton and filamentous algae occurred and during
the second winter after fertilizer application, all the
fish died from lack of oxygen. Two nearby control lakes
showed no appreciable algal growths or oxygen depletion
and fish levels remained constant.
Mclntire and Bond (1962 Transactions of the
American Fisheries Soc. Vol. 91) investigated four newly
excavated ponds before and after fertilization with
nitrogen and phosphorus. After fertilization, chemical
and physical conditions were altered considerably by the
production of large quantities of planktonic and benthic
organisms. They found that the growths increased with
increasing applications of nitrogen and phosphorus. In
ponds that received nitrogen but no phosphorus, production
was low.
In a report titled, "Removal of Algal Nutrients
from Domestic Wastewater," by Rand and Nemerow of Syracuse
University (March 1965) for the New York State Department
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Questions and Answers
of Health, it was concluded that the "indications are
quite clear that the removal of nutrients from wastewaters
will often aid in solving eutrophication problems."
Other authors have shown the importance of
phosphorus in the control of lake eutrophication. A few
of these are:
Lawton, G. W. (I960, Algae and Metropolitan
Wa st e s)
Oswald, W. J. (I960, Algae and Metropolitan
Wastes)
Odum, E. P. (I960, Algae and Metropolitan
Wastes)
Lackey, J. B. (Sewage Works Journal, 1945)
Benoit and Curry (I960, Algae and Metropolitan
Wastes)
Hasler, A. D. (1947, Ecology Vol. 2B)
Mackenthus, K. (Fertilization and Algae in Lake
Sebasticook, Maine, January 1966)
Thomas, E. A. (Biological Problems in Water
Pollution Third Seminar, 1962)
Voss, W. (GasWasserfach, Vol. 104, 1963)
MR. STEIN: Are there any comments or questions?
If not, we can possibly go on.
One question I would like to raise with this
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one: you know you can always raise this question: you
can take Question 16 -- the data are available to show
what the resultant effect has been in receiving waters
after we put up conventional treatment plants either in
industries or municipalities, and I think we have a
shocking area of non information. I think Ohio is to be
commended on this, because any test of any plant we put
up is going to have to be what happens in the receiving
waters afterward and not that you just put a plant in and
another big monument to water pollution control which may
or may not be doing the job.
Are there any questions on 16?
If not, let's go to 17.
MR. HALL: Question 17: What data are available
to show the effect of more effective dispersal devices at
treatment plant outfalls?
DR, STEPHAN: The answer to this is delightfully
short.
We are actually unaware of sites where devices
have been used for more effective dispersal of algal
nutrients contained in treated sewage. At best, however,
it would seem that such devices would potentially
contribute only to a reduction in local concentrations
of nutrients and would not reduce in any way the nutrient
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load entering the water body in the discharge. As
explained in the answer to Question 10, nutrient avail-
ability is a key factor in determining the size of an
algae crop and nutrient availability is a function of
load discharged.
MR. STEIN: Are there any comments or questions
on that?
If not, thank you very much.
Now, does any of the Conferees or the technical
people they have invited or their advisors have any
comments or want to say anything while we have the experts
here?
MR. EAGLE: Yes. I would like to thank Dr.
Stephan and Dr. Bartsch and, of course, Harlow and others
who have participated here for the work they have gone
to, tc answer these questions. I think by and large they
did a very excellent job and we appreciate that.
Several of the members of my Advisory Committee
came here today and, by the way, they are the gentlemen
that are responsible for most of these questions. We
have only had one meeting but, believe me, it was a very
good meeting and we expect to have more to work out a
solution or solutions to this problem.
Now, I would like to ask if any of these
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gentlemen have anything they would like to say or any
comment or statement they would like to make?
Sharon Bresler is a member of our Ohio Water
Pollution Control Board and has been a very active member
of this committee, and Sharon at least I would like
to have you stand up so they can see who you are and if
you would like to say a few words
MR. BRESLER: I don't care to make any comments
at this late hour. I am sure everyone is very hungry and
so am I, but there is one thing in my mind that I haven't
quite had clarified here today.
I am very sorry that we didn't have the answers
to these questions earlier so that we could have studied
them and perhaps asked more intelligent questions than
perhaps this one is, and I am still a little bit confused
about the #0 percent and the 92 percent.
I heard at one point where we have this in our
pocket but we didn't use it at another meeting and there-
fore we concentrated on discussing the 80 percent.
I heard the Conferee from Michigan indicate that
they have definite plans to proceed on the basis of removal
of BO percent.
At another point I heard where if this is done,
in order to reach our objective, all other contributors to
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the phosphate concentration in the lake will have to remove
a hundred percent.
Now, somewhere along here, I am having a little
difficulty in my mind
MR. STEIN: Well, we can understand that. I
think we can answer that very, very rapidly.
One, no one had anything in their pocket that
was a secret. Some people made a computation some of
the staff people made a computation at the last conference.
I am sure you get that in the State. We get that in the
Federal Government for the various reasons that we heard
here today: 1) that 92 percent figure was not used largely
because it was felt that the BO percent figure was the
attainable one, and 2) as we heard again here today, as an
operating program and this is to give you something
we could not reasonably impose a limitation of 92 percent
and expect that to be achieved and there not to be a viola-
tion. The notion was that with the kind of approach that we
are going to make, an 80 percent minimum with an attempt to
maximize, this would give you a substantial reduction in
phosphates showing significant results and be achievable.
Now, on the basis of what we have done here in
the Lake Michigan Conference and you also have to
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recognize that we first had a conference on the Detroit
River before we started the one on all of Lake Erie
that Michigan has moved ahead with its program and has
incorporated this SO percent removal in its program.
The notion would be that if Michigan it is
a hypothetical question if Michigan would keep on with
that BO percent and we would ask 92 percent for the whole
lake reduction, all of the rest of the communities would
have to put in about a hundred percent, and the answer to
that is yes.
But this is just a hypothetical question. The
Conferees, it seems to me, have to come to the judgment
of whether they are going to: 1) ask for phosphate removal
or control at all, or 2) if we are going to ask for a per-
centage amount, how much? We have agreed in the past con-
ference that we were going to ask for phosphate removal.
Now, in Lake Michigan, we have asked for an SO
percent removal. The question here is whether you should
come up with any figure at all or whether you should ask
for SO percent removal or a higher removal.
At the first conference, three of the States on
Lake Erie Michigan, Indiana and Pennsylvania, as far
as I remember the record indicated that an SO percent
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minimum would be satisfactory to them. The Federal
Conferee indicated that would be satisfactory to him.
Ohio and New York had not had this resolved yet. As
you can tell, there are various difficult technical
points, and I think the issue is clear on the basis of
this. What do you think Ohio would recommend and want
for the program for the lake?
MR. BRESLER: Sir, if I may say this
MR. STEIN: Let me again state, I think because
Mr. Eagle points it out, money is a significant factor.
MR. BRESLER: Well, it was established I
believe that the goal was that a reduction to .01 milligrams
per liter as a goal that should be striven for. Is this
correct? Did we say this?
MR. STEIN: At the conference
MR. EAGLE: This report says so.
MR. BRESLER: I believe it was mentioned in the
discussion.
All right, what we are saying is our objective
has got to reach that goal, but to make some reduction in
concentrations of phosphate
MR. STEIN: No. Here is the way I understood
this and maybe I am incorrect in it we have a time
schedule set up for the installation of municipal and
industrial waste treatment facilities about 1970. Unless
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we fold in the phosphate reduction plants now, it is
going to be a lot more expensive and we are just not
going to make that schedule. We have to do this.
Now, the question here is: Given the state of
the art, whether you hold back the whole program and not
have the phosphate reduction in there, or you have some
measure of phosphate reduction, or we have a minimum that
we can fold in now to go ahead and make these gains.
I think part of the judgment that several of
the States had that you can meet this time schedule and
fold the phosphate reduction features into the plans if
you had an SO percent reduction requirement. Now, that is
not presumably going to get to the objective, but as they
point out, the technology is improving very rapidly. Lake
Erie is not improving in condition. Do we want to go ahead
with this construction program without the phosphate removal
features of the plans.
If we do want them in the plans, it seems to us
we have to come to some kind of policy and set a guideline
on what they should be. At least we should make a judgment
one way or the other.
Mow, these are the issues, and I also think that,
again, in this Federal-State-relation operation we almost
have to go in together if we are going to make it.
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MR. BRESLER: Thank you, sir.
No further comments.
MR. EAGLE: Anybody else?
Thank you, gentlemen.
MR. STEIN: Are there any other --
MR. BOARDMAN: To put Pennsylvania in the
record, we are here today. Unfortunately, we didn't
through some mixup probably in our own mail room, receive
a copy of the answers to the questions, so I was in the
same position that many of you were in that I didn't have
a set of the answers in front of me. But our staff had
looked at the questions and their answers were quite
similar, but maybe not as eloquently put as those that
were published today.
We, like Mr. Eagle, I think have the same
goalthat we would like to solve the pollution problems
of Lake Erie. We feel that probably &0 percent phosphate
removal is much better than 20 or 30 percent removal and
maybe isn't ideal, but we would like to see the Conferees
come to agreement rather rapidly on some minimum require-
ment so that we can get on with the job of at least start-
ing to take a crack at the problem in Lake Erie. So we
hope that this meeting will be the next step toward a
rapid resolution of this problem so that we can get moving
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on Lake Erie.
No further comments.
MR. STEIN: Are there any other comments?
Mr. Poole.
MR. POOLE: Well, first, I want to commend Dr.
Stephan and Bartsch and Mr. Harlow for putting this
together and sending it around. I got mine Friday after-
noon, and I think it has certainly expedited this meeting
here today, and you have done a top-flight job as far as
I am concerned.
I want a little clarification of some of your
remarks, Mr. Chairman.
You referred repeatedly to 80 percent minimum,
and I have referred to 80 percent as far as Indiana is
concerned. But I am talking about an annual average of
BO percent , I want to be sure you are not talking
about a minimum today of BO percent, because we get to
operating treatment plants and there is a lot of difference
And we are prepared to subscribe to an 80 percent annual
average with the understanding particularly with bigger
installations -- that they be admonished when they go
into this, that if the art develops and their experience
expands, if they can do it better than 80 percent we are
going to expect them to do it. That is presuming that the
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costs are reasonable. The time schedule of 1970 that
shocks me a little. I wasn't aware that we had ever had
any discussion of 1970 for phosphate removal around the
Lake Erie Basin. To be perfectly candid with you, if Uncle
Sam doesn't get his money up where his mouth has been for
the last four or five years, we are not going to meet any
1970 objective in Indiana, because these knuckle-headed
Hoosiers are very strongly resisting spending their money
when they think they can wait another year and maybe the
promises that were made in the Water Quality Act will come
through and they will get a grant. So I can't bind Indiana
to any firm date of 1970. I think I could for 1972, for all
of the major installations, and I have only one other
comment.
We are concerned right now with the little town
of Huntertown, which is up the river from Fort Wayne, that
has a 660 grant and a State grant to build its first sewage
treatment plant. I think it has about 700 population.
The plant is all designed. We wrote them back the other day
and said, "What about phosphate removal?" Candidly, I hate
very much to force Huntertown, Indiana, into being the first
phosphate removal installation in the State. I think we are
going to play footsie with you on these little installations
for maybe something longer than even 1972, because I do
believe that there is an element of realism that has to be
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worked in this program.
MR. STEIN: I think that most of the positions you
have stated, I could be persuaded possibly the Federal
conferee can. I don't think we are going to be far off.
There is one point of clarification, and this is the one I
made. With the dates we've set, we set those dates as you
recall for the conventional treatment plant, it would be a
tremendous savings in money for the design and the operation
if we could come up with a unified program and begin folding
those in now.
MR. POOLE: I agree with you completely. We are
asking all of our municipalities on both the Lake Erie and
Lake Michigan watershed if they are making plans now either
for plant expansion or for new installations, to include
phosphate removal.
MR. STEIN: And you know, I guess, we have gone
through this socio-routine many, many times. But when
you talk about those knuckleheads in Indiana and I can
sympathize with them about Uncle Sam putting his money
where his mouth is, I don't know who puts up their money
but the representatives in the Congress of the five States
represented here and including my State of Virginia and
any other State and I don't know who is skinning whom,
because wherever that money comes from, it is our money.
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We pay for it one way or the other, but I understand the
position.
What I think is abundantly clear, and I will make
this very clear: One of the major cities in Indiana, which
is the best example of this we had, acknowledged if we wait
and we don't get this program going, for every year we wait
it is going to cost a lot of money.
Mr. Poole got an order against one of his major
cities in Indiana, and they took him to court and fought
that for years. By the time they got around to building
that plant I think it cost them three times as much as it
would have cost them originally, and this is the point I
am making. Gentlemen, make this abundantly clear. We
have a multimillion dollar program ready to go on Lake
Erie. There is one item that may be holding this up,
and this is the agreement and the policy on phosphate
removal.
The sooner we get that resolved every day
sooner you get that resolved is going to mean a savings
of a considerable amount of money to get these things
going right now and not wait and fight this rising cost.
Are there any other comments or questions?
If not, now, we have several things we are going
to take up, and I don't think we have to keep everyone
here. One is the surveillance that Mr. Eagle talked about.
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I think we will have to work that program out. The other
is some of the problems you mentioned to the Technical
Committee which we revised, and hopefully we would like to
canvass the State Representatives here to get the Conferees
together as soon as we can in perhaps just a short session
without anyone except the Conferees participating, although
under the law, of course, you can bring anyone you wish to
participate to try to resolve, if we can, this phosphate
issue and get on with the program.
If there are no further comments
MR. POSTON: Do you intend to do this today?
MR. STEIN: No. We are going to adjourn sine
die pretty soon. If you have anything to say, say it.
MR. POSTON: Well, I would say that it appears
to me that we have been changing in this whole field of
waste treatment requirements from primary to secondary
and we are even talking about tertiary now, and this has
been over a realtively short period of time.
I think that at the time Detroit was involved,
the Enforcement Conference, at the request of then
Governor Swainson of Michigan, came up with certain
recommendations about phosphate removal, and then Gov-
ernor Rhodes called a conference about Lake Erie problems
because of his great concern not only locally but
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State-wide and internationally. He thought there was
concern, and this is the reason that he asked that a
Federal enforcement action be called.
I think I personally felt that we had gone a
long ways towards getting an action program going when
Michigan implemented certain suggestions and came forth
with an SO-percent-removal figure for phosphates from
Detroit, Michigan's waste discharge to the river in that
area, and when the Lake Erie action called for maximiza-
tion of the phosphate removal, I felt that until you get a
number that you can shoot for, maximization can mean a
lot of different things.
I think our technical people assure us and
they have done that again here today that 80 percent
is well within our grasp. I think my concern is Lake
Erie, to do something for the situation that exists there,
and I think the sooner we get on with this, the better it
is going to be for Lake Erie and for our use of Lake Erie
in the future.
I won't promise that we might not have greater
restrictions in the future because that is the way the
whole picture looks, from primary we didn't think of
secondary for a lot of plants in the past and now we are
talking tertiary, so I think it is pretty plain to me at
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least that we ought to move along with the program that
we have in our grasp here.
MR. EAGLE: Wally forced me to speak again --
1 can't let this go by that just because this group
doesn't set a figure here that nothing is being done in
phosphate removal. A lot is being done in phosphate
removal. We have three plants right here on Lake Erie
that are going to be constructed very shortly. I think
some of them are almost ready to submit contracts that
embody phosphate removal, and many more are on the draw-
ing boards that embody phosphate removal. So a lot is
being done on phosphate removal here in Ohio and the
program is moving forward. This is not to say we
should not have some agreement here. I donvt mean that.
On the other hand, I don't want the general conception
here that nothing is being done in phosphate removal at
this time, because an awful lot is being done.
MR. STEIN: Do any of the Conferees have anything
to say?
I want to thanK you all for coming. I know I
felt this was a very productive meeting. The fellows did
a magnificent job. They made a very good seminar. Thank
you all for staying with us. We hate to go this late,
and when we run a meeting this late you know, as the
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Questions and Answers
Governor of North Carolina said to the Governor of South
Carolina, "It is a long time between drinks!"
(Whereupon, at 1:33 P.M. the conference was
adjourned sine die.)
ft U. S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 1968 O - 326-932
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