WATERSHED
SUCCESS
IN REGION
FORUM PROCEEDINGS
-------
WATERSHED
SUCCESS
IN REGION 6
TUESDAY - THURSDAY
April 18 - 20,1995
Le Meridien
New Orleans, Louisiana
SPONSORED BY
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Region 6
Terrene Institute
The Lower Colorado River Authority
Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation
FINAL AGENDA
-------
WATERSHED
SUCCESS
IN REGION 6
Russell Bowen
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 6
Susan Branning
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 6
Carlton Dufrechou
Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation
Steve Gorin
Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation
Lisa Grayson
Terrene Institute
Cis Myers
Lower Colorado River Authority
Stacey Satagaj
Terrene Institute
Sheila Schayot
Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation
Lori Vitek
Lower Colorado River Authority
Karen Young
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 6
For additional information contact
Terrene Institute
1717 K Street, NW
Suite 801
Washington, DC 20006
202-833-8317
fx 202-296-4071
-------
SUCCESS
IN REGION 6
his conference will highlight the watershed protection
approach to meeting water quality goals, especially the
identification of all priority problems in the watershed and the
forging of partnerships with all parties who have a stake or
interest hi implementing solutions.
Participants will gain new knowledge of the full range of
methods and tools available for a coordinated, multiple
organization approach to problems, with special emphasis on the
analyses and solutions that are already bringing success to ongoing
watershed projects in Region 6.
The conference is designed to encourage watershed
management, address all significant problems in watersheds and to
show how we can use the resources and expertise of multiple
agencies to protect and restore water quality.
AQUARIUM OF THE AMERICA'S RECEPTION
Tuesday, April 18 from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. the aquarium will be open
exclusively for our reception, making this evening a great opportunity to
visit the aquarium at your leisure. Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation
members will be invited to the reception to give attendees the opportunity to
mingle with members and learn of their activities. The St. Clement of Rome
Jazz Band will be performing. The Aquarium of the Americas is located at
Riverfront Park just 2Vz blocks from Le Meridien.
LAKE PONTCHARTRAIN BASIN FIELD TRIP
The Lake Pontchartrain Basin field trip participants will visit several sites
demonstrating a variety of water quality activities unique to the
watershed. See page 10 for a more detailed description of the field trip. The
buses will depart from Le Meridien, Thursday, April 20, at 8 a.m., and
return by 2 p.m. A lunch break will be scheduled. Please wear
comfortable clothes and good walking shoes. The buses will load and drop
off at the Canal Street entrance.
-------
DESCRIPTION
C
oncurrent sessions are presented in three tracks that include important
components in support of the watershed protection approach.
TRACK A: Regulatory Programs
m The Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) Process
m Permitting, Basin Planning, Stormwater and Confined Animal
Feedlot Operations (CAFOs)
m Compliance as a Watershed Protection Tool
TRACK B: Federal and State Programs
° The Watershed Approach in the Nonpoint Source Program
° Ground Water in the Watershed Approach
° The Clean Lakes Program — Watershed Success Stories
0 Wetlands — An Integral Component
TRACK C: Widening the Circle — Involving all Stakeholders
in the Process
I Integrating/Streamlining Programs and Providing Grant Flexibilities
in Support of the Watershed Approach
I Tribal Water Quality Planning
I Watershed Team Building and Interstate Watershed Issues
I United States/Mexico Border Watershed Issues
WATERSHED
SUCCESS
IN REGION 6
-------
TUESDAY, APRIL 18
8 a.m. - 6 p.m. Registration
8-9 a.m. Continental Breakfast
lie De France Foyer
He De France Foyer
9-10 a.m. Opening Remarks: Watershed Protection He De France II & III
— Creating the Links
JaneN. Saginaw, Regional Administrator, U.S Environmental Protection
Agency, Region 6, Dallas, TX
Robert Wayland, III, Director, Office of Wetlands, Oceans and Watersheds,
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC
10 - 10:20 a.m. Break
He De France Foyer
10:20-11:45 a.m.
11:45 a.m. - 1 p.m.
Watershed Roundtable lie De France II & III
^"'Representatives from agriculture, industry, fisheries, local, state and
federal government will discuss pollution prevention and water quality
strategies in the context of a watershed case study.~
MODERATORMark Rose, General Manager, Lower Colorado River Authority,
Austin, TX
PANEL
Myron O. Knudson,P.E., Director, Water Management Division, U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency, Region 6, Dallas, TX
Mason Mungle, Executive Director, Oklahoma Conservation Commission,
Oklahoma City, OK
Ed Joiner, Chairman, Dairy Advisory Board, Louisiana Farm Bureau
Federation, Franklinton, LA
Cliff Glockner, Commercial Fisherman, Concerned Crabbers of Lake
Pontchartrain, Lacombe, LA
Richard Metcalf, Health, Safety and Environmental Coordinator, Louisiana
Mid-Continent Oil and Gas, Baton Rouge, LA
Robert Hastings, Director, Turtle Cove Biological Research Station,
Hammond, LA
Lunch
LUNCH SPEAKER:
lie De France I
Nancy McKay, Executive Director, Puget Sound Water Quality Authority,
Olympia, WA
-------
(continued)
1-2:30 p.m.
TRACKA
TRACKB
TRACK C
WATERSHED
SUCCESS
IN REGION 6
CONCURRENTSESSIONS
The Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL)
Process — Part 1
lie De France II
~This session will provide an overview of the Total Maximum Daily Load
(TMDL) process including a case study on Grand Lake, OK, and
information on preliminary coliform bacteria studies in the Tangipahoa
Basin, LA.~
MODERATOR/PRESENTERTroy Hill, TMDL Coordinator, U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency, Region 6, Dallas, TX
Russell Dutnell, Environmental Engineer/Water Quality Modeler, Oklahoma
Conservation Commission, Oklahoma City, OK
TEAMPRESENTATION:
Mike Waldon, Research Associate Professor, University of Southwestern
Louisiana, Baton Rouge, LA
Elizabeth deEtte Smythe, Research Assistant Professor, University of
Southwestern Louisiana, Baton Rouge, LA
Addressing Ground Water in the Orleans /Rosalie /St. Claude
Watershed Approach
~This session will discuss the role of ground water pollution and prevention
in the watershed approach including presentations on source water
protection in Roosevelt, OK, and the Edwards Aquifer.—
MODERATORtPatty Senna, Comprehensive Ground Water Protection Program
Coordinator, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 6, Dallas, TX
Wayne Jordan, Director, Texas Water Resources Institute, Texas A&M
University System, College Station, TX
Brad Cross, Team Leader, Source Water Protection Program,
Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission, Austin, TX
Blaine Reely, P.E., President, Envirotech Services, Inc., Enid, OK
United States/Mexico Border Watershed
Issues
lie De France III
"-This session highlights cooperative international efforts using the
watershed approach including a presentation on the Rio Grand/Rio Bravo
Watershed Alliance.~
MODERATOR:Terri Buchanan, Leader, Watershed Assessment Team,
Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission, Austin, TX
Don Cook, Director, Office of Rural Affairs, Texas Department of
Commerce, Austin, TX
Gary Levings, Program Manager, Rio Grande Valley National Water
Quality Assessment (NA WQA), U.S. Geological Survey, Albuquerque, NM
Gail Rothe, Coordinator, Regional Assessment of Water Quality in the Rio Grande
Basin, Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission, Austin, TX
Domingo Gonzales, Border Coordinator, Texas Center for Policy Studies,
Brownsville, TX
-------
2:30 - 3 p.m. Afternoon Break
He De France Foyer
He De France II
3 - 4:30 p.m. CONCURRENTSESSIONS
TRACK A The Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL)
Process — Part 2
~The second session of the TMDL Process will look at case studies
including Crooked Creek, AR, and Little Deep Fork Creek, OK.~
MODERATOR:Troy Hill, TMDL Coordinator, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,
Region 6, Dallas, TX
Martin Maner, Interim Deputy Director, Arkansas Department of Pollution
Control & Ecology, Little Rock, AR
Richard Smith, Senior Environmental Planner, Indian Nations Council of
Governments, Tulsa, OK
TRACK B Wetlands
Orleans / Rosalie / St. Claude
~This session will address wetlands issues and their unique role in
comprehensive watershed protection programs. It will also include
presentations on the Tensas Watershed, the Nature Conservancy Report on
the Lower Mississippi Delta Wetlands and the Barataria-Terrebonne
National Estuary Program.~
MODERATORfieverly Ethridge, Chief, Wetlands Protection Section, U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency, Region 6, Dallas, TX
Mike Adcock, Tensas River Basin Coordinator, Northeast Delta Resource
Conservation and Development Area, Inc., Winnsboro, LA
Lisa Creasman, Executive Director, The Nature Conservancy, Baton Rouge,
LA
Steve Mathies, Program Director, Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary
Program, Thibodaux, LA
TRACK C Tribal Watershed Activities
He De France III
~This session will address a variety of tribal water quality activities, such as
developing water quality standards, and it will include a discussion of the
Illinois River Watershed Pollution Prevention Project in the Cherokee
Nation.~
MODERATORPetuuche Gilbert, Tribal Councilman and Land Coordinator, Pueblo
ofAcoma, Acoma Pueblo, NM
Blane Sanchez, Water Quality Control Officer, Pueblo oflsleta, Isleta
Pueblo, NM
Linda Baker, Special Assistant, Native American Liaison, USDA Natural
Resources Conservation Service, Stillwater, OK
David Mullon, Jr., Director of Law and Environment, Cherokee Nation,
Tahlequah, OK
-------
(continued)
6:30-9:30 p.m. RECEPTION meet at the Aquarium
Aquarium of the Americas!
Riverfront Park, 111 Iberville Street, New Orleans
The aquarium is located just 21/2 blocks from Le Meridien and
is a short walk down Canal Street.
r^->
The aquarium will be open exclusively for our reception, making this
evening a great opportunity to visit the aquarium at your leisure. Lake
Pontchartrain Basin Foundation members will be invited to the reception to
give attendees the opportunity to mingle with members and learn of their
activities.
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 19
8 a.m. - 4:30 p.m. Registration
8-9 a.m. Continental Breakfast
9 - 9:45 a.m. General Session: Watershed Protection
and Property Rights
He De France Foyer
lie De France Foyer
He De France I
MODERATORCis Myers, Senior Environmental Coordinator, Lower Colorado River
Authority, Austin, TX
Martin Cancienne, District Director, Office of Congressman Billy Tauzin,
Gonzalez, LA
John Duffy, Counselor to Secretary, U.S. Department of Interior,
Washington, DC
9:45 - 10 a.m. Lake Pontchartrain Foundation Field Trip He De France I
Preview Presentation
Carlton Dufrechou, Executive Director, Lake Pontchartrain Basin
Foundation, Metairie, LA
10-10:15 a.m. Break
lie De France Foyer
WATERSHED
SUCCESS
IN REGION 6
-------
10:15-11:45 a.m.
TRACKA
CONCURRENTSESSIONS
TRACK B
TRACKC
He De France II
Permitting Activities Supporting the
Watershed Approach — Part 1
~This session will discuss how controls and permitting programs initiate
and support the watershed approach. The session will include a review of
whole basin planning and the ecoregion approach to water quality
standards.'^'
MODERATORLaura Koesters, Deputy Director, Office of Water Resource
Management, Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission, Austin, TX
Stephen Bainter, Environmental Scientist, U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency, Region 6, Dallas, TX
Mel Vargas, Project Coordinator for Watershed Texas, Texas Natural
Resource Conservation Commission, Austin, TX
Emelise Cormier, Program Manager, Louisiana Department of
Environmental Quality, Baton Rouge, LA
James Lewis, Water Quality Monitoring/NPDES Supervisor, City of Austin,
Austin, TX
The Clean Lakes Program and Orleans / Rosalie / St. Claude
Citizen Monitoring
—This session will present how the Clean Lakes Program and citizen
monitoring contribute to the watershed protection effort through
coordination and education.^'
MODERATORMike Bira, Clean Lakes Coordinator, U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency, Region 6, Dallas, TX
Gayla Campbell, Texas Watch Program Coordinator, Texas Natural
Resource Conservation Commission, Austin, TX
Keith Owen, Volunteer Monitoring Coordinator, Oklahoma Water
Resources Board, Oklahoma City, OK
Gregg Patterson, Director of WET Program, Arkansas Department of
Pollution Control & Ecology, Little Rock, AR
Clifford Kenwood, Project Coordinator, Lake Pontchartrain Basin
Foundation, Metairie, LA
Watershed Team Building and Interstate
Watershed Issues
lie De France III
~This session will share watershed team-building successes and new ideas for
implementing watershed protection activities in your community.'"-'
MODERATORCis Myers, Senior Environmental Coordinator, Lower Colorado River
Authority, Austin, TX
Nancy McKay, Executive Director, Puget Sound Water Quality Authority,
Olympia, WA
Patty Murto, Member, Board of Directors, St. Louis River Board, Duluth, MN
Richard Volk, Program Director, Corpus Christi Bay National Estuary
Program, Corpus Christi, TX
John Hassell, Director, Water Quality Programs, Oklahoma Conservation
Commission, Oklahoma City, OK
Bob Morgan, Engineering Supervisor, Nonpoint Source Management Section,
Arkansas Soil & Water Conservation Commission, Little Rock, AR
-------
AGENDA — WEDNESDAY, APRIL 19 (continued)
ll:45am-l:15pm Lunch on your own
1:15-2:45 p.m.
TRACK A
TRACKB
He De France II
CONCURRENTSESSIONS
Permitting Activities Supporting the
Watershed Approach — Part 2
~This second session on permitting activities will discuss stormwater
watershed controls and innovative controls for Confined Animal Feedlot
Operations (CAFOs).~
MODERATORLaura Koesters, Deputy Director, Office of Water Resource
Management, Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission, Austin, TX
Larry Caldwell, P.E., Director, Engineering, USDA Natural Resource
Conservation Service, Stillwater, OK
TEAMPRESENTATION:
Marnie Winter, Director, Environmental and Development Control Department,
Jefferson Parish, New Orleans, LA
Gordon Austin, Chief, Environmental Affairs, Sewage and Water Board of
New Orleans, LA
Nonpoint Source Watershed
Activities — Part 1
Orleans / Rosalie / St. Claude
~Nonpoint source pollution is one of the greatest threats to our nation's
watersheds. This session will share nonpoint source program case studies,
partnerships and successes from Region 6 and other parts of the country
including the Great Lakes, the Buffalo River and the Tangipahoa River.~
MODERATORRussell Bowen, Chief, State Programs Section, U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency, Region 6, Dallas, TX
Tom Davenport, Nonpoint Source Program Coordinator,
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 5, Chicago, IL
Sandi Formica, Inspection Engineer, Arkansas Department of Pollution
Control & Ecology, Little Rock, AR
Jan Boydstun, Nonpoint Source Coordinator, Louisiana Department of
Environmental Quality, Baton Rouge, LA
TRACK C Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation
He De France III
WATERSHED
SUCCESS
IN REGION 6
""The Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation will share the history of the
development and success of cooperative efforts in the Lake Pontchartrain
Basin.~
MODERATORiCarlton Dufrechou, Executive Director, Lake Pontchartrain Basin
Foundation, Metairie, LA
Steve Gorin, Program Director, Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation,
Metairie, LA
Anne Rheams, Education Coordinator, Lake Pontchartrain Basin
Foundation, Metairie, LA
Neil Armingeon, Environmental Director, Lake Pontchartrain Basin
Foundation, Metairie, LA
2:45 - 3 p.m. Afternoon Break
lie De France Foyer
-------
3 - 4:30 p.m. CONCURRENTSESSIONS
TRACK A Compliance as a Watershed Protection
Tool
He De France II
TRACK B
TRACKC
—A discussion of how positive change is brought about in watersheds
through regulation and enforcement. Presentations by the Lake Pontchartrain
Basin Enforcement operation and the Lower Colorado River Authority will
highlight regulatory and enforcement success.~
MODERATOR/PRESENTERterry Saunders, Chief, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma
Compliance Section, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 6, Dallas, TX
Pam Phillips, Regional Enforcement Coordinator, U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency, Region 6, Dallas, TX
Rusty Ray, Environmental Coordinator, Rural Environmental Outreach
Program, Lower Colorado River Authority, Austin, TX
Bruce Hammatt, Assistant Administrator, Office of Water Resources,
Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, Baton Rouge, LA
Nonpoint Source Watershed
Activities — Part 2
Orleans / Rosalie / St. Claude
~This second session on nonpoint source watershed activities will discuss
the USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service's role in watershed
protection. It will also characterize nonpoint source pollution sources in
coastal watersheds and provide a presentation on the Upper Highland Lakes
NPS Ordinance in Texas.'-'
MODERATORMike Bira, Clean Lakes Coordinator, U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency, Region 6, Dallas, TX
Carl Hutcherson, Natural Resource Conservation Service Liaison, U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency, Region 6, Dallas, TX
Tom Curran, P.E., Senior Environmental Coordinator, NPS Pollution
Control Program, Lower Colorado River Authority, Austin, TX
Frank Shipley, Program Director, Galveston Bay National Estuary
Program, Webster, TX
Programmatic/Grant Flexibilities in Support He De France III
of the Watershed Approach — Working Session
'-This practical session will discuss effective ways to streamline grants and
integrate programs to achieve your watershed protection goals.'-'
MODERATORRichard Hoppers, Chief, Water Quality Management Branch,
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 6, Dallas TX
John Janak, Manager of Federal Funds Coordination Section, Texas Natural
Resource Conservation Commission, Austin, TX
John deMond, Environmental Quality Coordinator, Louisiana Department
of Environmental Quality, Baton Rouge, LA
Russell Bowen, Chief, State Programs Section, U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency, Region 6, Dallas, TX
Kerry McCullough, Program Manager, Water Planning and Assessment, Texas
Natural Resource Conservation Commission, Austin, TX
-------
THURSDAY, APRIL 20
7-8 a.m. Registration
7-8 a.m. Continental Breakfast
lie De France Foyer
He De France Foyer
8 a.m. - 2 p.m. Lake Pontchartrain Field Trip
Buses depart Le Meridien at 8 a.m. at the Canal Street entrance
and return by 2 p. m.
t-**t
The Lake Pontchartrain Basin field trip will include the Bonnet
Carre Spillway, site of a proposed freshwater diversion; the adjacent
La Branche Wetlands, and the wetlands restoration efforts; the stormwater
drainage canals and levee system that protect the area
from flooding; a visit to an Orleans Parish pumping station; a ride
along the lake front; an overview of the fishing camps along the lake;
a look at the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet and its impact on the local
wetlands; and finally, a visit to a pumping station in St. Bernard Parish
to see the dramatic revitalization of stressed wetlands resulting from
the introduction of stormwater runoff. A lunch break will be scheduled.
2 p.m. Conference Adjourns
WATERSHED
SUCCESS
IN REGION 6
-------
WATERSHED SUCCESS IN REGION 6 CONFERENCE
April 18, 1995
Opening Remarks; Watershed Protection - Creating the Links (9:00-10:20AM)
Speaker: Myron Knudson, Director, Water Management Division, U.S. E.P.A,
Dallas, Texas
Good morning and welcome to the Watershed Success in Region 6 Conference. I'm Myron
Knudson with EPA in Dallas. I am happy to say that this event is being sponsored by, not
only EPA Region 6 but by the Terrene Institute, The Lower Colorado River Authority, and
the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation. So we thank all the sponsors for all the work that
they've been doing. We, at EPA, think that the states, river authorities, council of
governments, and local governments have done a tremendous job in our region, as well as
farmers, dairymen, and other types of confined animal feeding operations.
We have, we believe, a good agenda to exchange watershed information, and discuss success
stories, which is the goal of the conference. First, on the agenda, we'd like to have Stan
Meiburg, who is our new Deputy Regional Administrator, talk to you a little bit about
watershed protection from the Region 6 perspective. Stan was appointed in this month as the
Deputy Regional Administrator. Previous to that he was Director of the Air, Pesticides, and
Toxics Division in the region. Before that he was in Headquarters and also at our facility in
Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. He's had the privilege of being the Executive
Assistant to the EPA's Deputy Administrator and he's also had the distinct honor of working
in the Office of Policy Planning & Evaluation. Stan has a B. A. degree from Wake Forest
University and a Master's and a Ph.D. from John Hopkins University. Stan, welcome.
Speaker: Stanley Meiburg, Deputy Regional Administrator, U.S. E.P.A., Region 6,
Dallas, Texas
I really am glad to be here and to welcome you to this conference. I think it will be a
successful and productive meeting to discuss the Watershed approach to an ecosystem
protection. But what I thought I would use my time for this morning is to try to put this in
a little broader context of some of the overall changes and activities going on in EPA.
It has not escaped our notice that this is almost 25 years to the day since the first Earth Day
in 1970, and the goal of the original Earth Day was to demonstrate through education and
Page 1
-------
citizen action two key points. The first is that environmental problems are serious and they
affect all of us. And the second point is that we can all be part of the solution.
Now in 1970, things were a little easier in some ways because we could focus on obvious air
and water pollution. And, in 1970, it was pretty easy to do. We had cities who were choking
on smog. You had rivers that were catching on fire. You had threats to species like the bald
eagle that were very, very significant and important to many people. And these all came to
symbolize our national problem. Bob Perciasepe says that one of the things we can use to
measure our progress is that while we may not have made all of our rivers and streams
fishable and swimmable, at least they're not flammable.
And we've accomplished many other things to make the world a safer and a healthier place--
banning lead in gasoline, for example. We have banned many dangerous, widely used
pesticides such at DDT. We've helped to make recycling a household habit in many
communities in the country. We have reduced toxic air emissions and established tough
pollution standards for new cars. We've established strong public health protection for
drinking water. We have eliminated or virtually eliminated the direct dumping of raw sewage
into our rivers, lakes, and streams. We've cleaned up once dead waterways. Even in the
Houston ship channel, which is a pretty heavily used waterway, you can now find fish and
other aquatic life.
We have seen dramatic decreases in the levels of air pollution while we've expanded economic
activity and also expanded automobile use. If you look at vehicle miles traveled in cars, for
example, you find that since 1970 vehicle miles traveled have doubled, and the air pollution
for most cars is less than it used to be.
So if it sounds like we are very proud of EPA's roles in these activities, it's because we are.
We think we have a lot to be proud of. But at the same time, we still have plenty of work left
to do. Forty percent of our rivers, lakes, and streams are still not suitable for fishing,
swimming, or drinking. Two in five Americans live in areas that experience unhealthy air.
And many citizens worry about the safety of their drinking water or about whether former
industrial sites may be contaminated with hazardous waste.
But, in the face of these problems, we're finding that we are now running up against the limits
of what EPA can do. We're also finding that the nature of our work is changing. Twenty-
five years ago, we could point to the obvious need for clean ups at large industrial sources like
power plants, municipal treatment plants, petroleum refineries, pulp and paper mills, and so
forth. Now that many of these sources have been addressed, we find that our emerging new
problems are somewhat different. You have ground water issues versus surface water
contamination, stratospheric ozone depletion rather than billowing smokes from smoke stacks,
consumer versus agricultural pesticide use. We find, in many cases, that some of our biggest
Page 2
-------
pollution problems can come from indiscriminate use of such common products as lawn care
pesticides. You have problems, well known to this group, of non-point source water
pollution.
What's significant about all of these problems is that they require changes in behavior by
individuals, not just remote corporations. For example, we're now asking individuals to get
their cars inspected for emissions—a very controversial program. We're now looking for
individuals to recycle their trash or dispose properly of their household hazardous waste — all
those cans of paint thinner and old paint and turpentine and what-have-you solvents that you
have lying around the house that need to be properly disposed of ~ or used oil. People are
being asked to take their own actions to reduce wasteful water consumption habits. And we're
asking people to change agricultural practices that they've followed for many, many years.
These are significantly different things in that they involve individual changes and that change
can be both difficult and tune consuming.
In addition, when you look back 25 years, the political situation was quite different hi terms
of federal and state responsibilities and administrative capability. Twenty-five years ago, EPA
had to act because, in many cases, states had not established effective environmental protection
programs. Things are now quite different. You'll hear a lot in the course of the conference
about how states now operate substantial and, in many cases, very sophisticated environmental
protection programs of their own. The need for direct federal action is not nearly as great as
it was in the past two to three decades.
For us at EPA, it means that we are having to rethink what we do. And I'd have to say I
think we are struggling somewhat with these changed realities and the kinds of actions they
are going to require from us.
For many years, ever since the founding of the agency, EPA has been internally divided
between air, water, hazardous waste programs. Our main jobs have been the implementation
of prescriptive and rather lengthy statutes that have been passed by the Congress in each of
these particular areas.
Now as I discussed above, this has produced a tremendous amount of progress for the United
States in the quality of our environment. But at the same time, we need to ask ourselves if
this is the kind of agency we need for the 21st century. We're getting a lot of help in thinking
about this both from inside and outside the agency. Internally, we've been working on our
own strategic planning to adopt a plan that has seven guiding principles. Most of these will
be pretty obvious to the people in this room.
1) Ecosystem protection. We recognize that environmental problems are interrelated. Just
as an example, in some watersheds, they're finding that air deposition can be a major source
Page3
-------
of contaminants, both for pesticides, potentially in metals or other kinds of — or nitrogen
loading.
2) Environmental justice. We find that all people in our communities that are affected by
pollution must be involved in decision making about how these problems can be corrected.
3) Pollution prevention. This is really a central ethic of the agency based on the very simple
principle that it's easier to stop a problem from occurring than it is to clean it up later.
4) Strong science and data. We need meaningful baseline information and risk analysis.
Even if we recognize that we will never have as much as we would like, that's no excuse for
not getting all that we can.
5) Another principle is partnerships. We cannot go it alone. We must work together with
partners at the state level, local level, with industry, with consumers, all of whom can
contribute to achieving our goals.
6) Another principle that we follow is environmental accountability which recognizes that our
compliance and enforcement programs are part of what it takes to make sure that we're all
doing the job that we need to do. In particular, those who are doing their job and following
the law should not be penalized by people who are not doing that job and trying to save money
at their expense.
7) And finally, one of our key principles is to reinvent EPA management. We are embracing
the whole movement toward the reinvention of government and looking for ways to become
more customer oriented and results driven. Now this last point, about reinventing EPA
management, very much relates to activities EPA is conducting under the auspices of the
National Performance Review which is a very high administration priority for reinventing and
re-looking at the federal government. I would like to stress this because I think this is a trend
that we will be living with for some time which goes beyond this particular administration.
The public is clearly speaking to us and asking for a government that works better and costs
less. And EPA has an obligation as an agency whose actions affect the lives of almost
everyone in the United States in some way, shape, or form. It's amazing when you think
about it just how many ways EPA affects people's lives. With that role that we have, there's
a special obligation for us to look at how we can make the agency's processes work better and
cost less.
The first phase of this began over a year ago. It focused on how we could simplify some truly
bewildering regulations, eliminate the obsolete ones, and orient government towards customer
service. A tough word for government agencies -- customers. And finally, use common sense
and flexibility in how we do business.
Page 4
-------
Now, a month ago, this challenge was renewed by the President to EPA and he gave us some
very direct instructions for a second phase of this effort. And being good bureaucrats, of
course, we would let no initiative go past us without inventing an acronym for it. Since the
term for mis initiative was Reinventing Government P4me H—we now ^att it REG& II.
What this includes is a heavy emphasis on regulation reinvention as a way to better serve the
nation including line by line reviews of our regulations. Asking three questions: Is this
obsolete? What can be privatized or why is the government doing this at all? And if we are
doing it, can it be done better at a different level of government, be it state or local?
The President has also asked us in EPA, as well as the rest of the government, to actually get
out of our offices and go and talk to customers, our partners, and other stakeholders and listen
to their suggestions. We've been responding in this region by hosting a series of roundtables
to gather input from and listen to the stakeholders, industry groups, business groups,
environmental leaders, state and local leaders, city and county representatives. All of them
are trying to provide input on how we can better do our job.
EPA has also issued a report on regulation re-invention which lists 25 areas specifically that
we're working on as special high priorities. One area is effluent trading programs, which I
know you'll be talking about here in this group on watershed management, and which are
modeled on some of the emissions trading programs under the Clean Air Act. Another area
is refocusing our hazardous waste regulations on the highest risk waste. Other areas are
cutting paperwork requirements by 25% and using a new approach called Project XL, for
Excellence in Leadership, where we are going to be looking for pilot companies who want to
demonstrate that with increased flexibility in meeting their requirements they can actually go
beyond their compliance requirements and produce additional benefits for the environment.
We always hear about how people could do better if they just had more flexibility; this will
test where we can see examples of this principle and how we can make it work for the
environment.
We're also continuing to pursue our common sense initiative. The Administrator has
established a formal advisory committee structure in six industrial sectors to see if consensus
can be reached on common sense ways to both improve environmental protection and reduce
costs. And this isn't really new~this is something that's been going on for about a year now.
The six sectors include iron and steel, electronics and computers, metal plating and finishing,
printing, auto assembly, and one which Jane Saginaw, our Regional Administrator, co-chairs
is very important to this region of the country ~ petroleum refining.
Now believe it or not, I haven't catalogued all of the different initiatives going on in the area
of re-invention at EPA. But I think this will give you some sense of the scope and magnitude
of the kind of things that we're working on. The link among all of these things is that we are
trying to find ways to better use our judgment and discretion in how we do our work. We're
Page 5
-------
supporting a lot of experimentation and we're looking actively for suggestions about how we
can better exercise flexibility and our interpretation of regulations and statutes. We're also
trying to work very hard on our ability to listen.
I think this Watershed Conference today is really very timely in light of all of these other
initiatives and fits right into our commitment to want to learn, to listen, and to exchange
information. There are lots of terms used now to describe the watershed approach to
ecosystem protection. I've heard whole basin planning or ecoregion protection or geographic
focused approach or placed based protection. The common theme in all of these terms is the
focus on natural resources as a system and not as a bunch of separate components that we need
to protect. In its purest form, the watershed protection approach represents a renewed
emphasis by EPA on addressing everything that puts stress on hydrologically defined drainage
basins. In some ways, this is not a new program, I think, competing with on-going work.
In fact, this kind of sounds like Back to the Future, because it's reviving with far, far better
tools than we used to have, approaches that even pre-date the 1972 Clean Water Act. I think
the time is right now for us to use this approach to help refocus our own work efforts.
In the past, we've focused on permitting, enforcement and planning. We've made a lot of
progress on specific point sources of pollution. And in recent years, we have been paying
more attention to the non-point sources as well and recognize what kind of loading we're
seeing from non-point sources. I think we're now ready to begin to integrate these activities
on a watershed basis. When we've looked around the country at other areas, we've seen a lot
of positive results from many watershed oriented program activities. An example, of course,
is the Chesapeake Bay program as well as some of our national estuary programs in this
region. I think we've learned from them that we need to improve our own operations to make
them work better for state and local people.
Our vision for the watershed protection approach is for clean water and healthy sustainable
ecosystems that are a result of comprehensive and tailored water resource management
everywhere. We will have achieved this vision when our work is driven by environmental
objectives rather than program requirements.
There are a few key principles that I want to articulate before passing this on to the rest of the
speakers. One is obvious. When you're talking about watershed protection, you're talking
about a geographic focus. That means that we need to coordinate all our activities within a
particular geographic area. Second, we need to establish clear environmental objectives and
then drive our activities by those objectives — not by how many specific activities we can
conduct. Third, is we need to do this through developing partnerships with local, state, and
federal agencies. The final principle is that we need to have a good set of coordinated
priorities and a common set of integrated principles that we follow in all of our activities, so
that they are all well oriented towards achieving the environmental objectives that we set.
Page 6
-------
This last point is really critical to provide an integrated set of priorities and to use feedback
from real data on how our activities affect the environment.
The National Academy of Public Administration just released a report last week that
catalogued some of EPA's activities and how it's run, and one of the key points they make in
that report is that EPA's planning systems need to be tied together better in terms of the
environmental priorities that we're trying to reach. We need to set better decisions about what
those priorities are and get feedback on how what we're doing actually affects the real world.
And that's absolutely consistent with the overall theme and activities of this conference.
In closing, all of these are very noble sounding and worthy objectives and we fully support
them. But I must confess to you that (and this will not be a surprise to most of you who know
EPA) that we do not have all the answers and don't pretend to have all the answers about how
to achieve all of these goals. We are very much looking for your help. And again, that's one
of the reasons this conference is so well timed. I believe, we are ready to listen. And we are
anxious to learn from you.
Thank you very much.
Speaker: Myron Knudson
Thank you, Stan. Next I would like to introduce Dave Davis the Deputy Director of the
Office of Wetlands, Oceans, and Watersheds. Dave was previously in charge of the Office
of Wetlands Protection and Dave has a B.S. and M.S. in Micro-Biology and a Master of
Business Administration. So while he's a scientist, he's also an administrator and has done
a good job over the years.
Speaker: Dave Davis, Deputy Director, Office of Wetlands, Oceans, and Watersheds
It's a great pleasure to be here, despite the fact that it wasn't on my agenda until rather
recently. Bob Way land was looking forward to this and apologizes for not being here.
So without further ado, I do have some slides. Basically, what I want to talk about is the new
directions for EPA, something about watershed and other place based approaches, a little bit
about the Clean Water Act Reauthorization, something about EPA's activities to encourage
place based management. And finally, a little bit about progress and success.
With regard to new directions for EPA, I think it's really important to understand that as Stan
said, there's some re-invention of government involved here. But in fact, some of the things
Page?
-------
that we're talking about with regard to EPA really almost predate the current Administration,
which is not necessarily to take anything away from the Administration, but rather to point out
that these are not just ideas of the moment, but rather things that we've thought about for a
while. And I think first and foremost in that regard is this common sense approach, which
may be new terminology, but it's an old idea. And the idea there is that we really have to
approach things less from a theoretical or an abstract kind of way of dealing with them, and
get down to the way ordinary people deal with them and using common sense hi its simplest
terminology, and that includes clarity of purpose, stakeholder involvement, cost effectiveness,
realistic expectations, and a number of other things as well.
I think the second major new direction for EPA is this approach using ecosystems or places
as our primary orientation. And the place based approach really isn't magic. First of all, it's
comprehensive. We are looking at pollution control in all of its manifestations and resource
management. It's important to stress the latter. We are not talking about just chemicals. We
are talking also about fish and wildlife resources, forest resources, soil resources, water as a
resource, rather than water as a medium to be polluted. There's also a focus on the landscape
unit which is quite new for us. We really haven't done that as much hi the past as some other
agencies have traditionally. I know there's some folks here from some of our sister federal f
agencies and their state counterparts, for whom this is old business. But it really isn't for |
EPA. EPA has traditionally been a chemical pollution control organization. So focusing on
the landscape unit of one sort or another, which can vary both in its definition and its size, is
critical to the whole ecosystem or place based approach. Stakeholder involvement is really
a common issue there with the common sense approach. And finally, and I think Stan said
this too, it's goal oriented. Instead of dealing with prescriptive standards, we're trying to deal
with achievement of particular environmental goals.
Just to tell you a little bit about the watershed approach and how we got to where we are.
Certainly, the Clean Water Act itself sets up the basic objectives or goals with fishable,
swimmable, drinkable waters. There we've made substantial progress in dealing with all the
various municipal and industrial sources. But we've come to recognize that we need a more
holistic, a more ecological approach to include wetlands, non-point sources, biological
criteria, ecological risk assessment, and a host of other things. Things that really were not
taken into account, at least in any great detail or with great significance, in the earlier phases
of EPA's activities. And even though a lot of these ideas go back a long way, at least for the
EPA central policy apparatus, they don't go back very far. They only really go back to the
late 80's. !
In fact, to be a little more candid than I should be, it was in about 1987 or '88, maybe '89,
that we decided while meeting among the office directors hi the water program, what we were
going to do for the next year's budget. People were thinking of what are some nifty ways in
which we can maybe grab off some more resources. And somebody said, "Well, what about
PageS
-------
•watershed management. That's been talked about by other agencies and, you know, we
dabbled in it a little bit with the old 208 Program, and it seems like a good idea. Gee, maybe
we could package something there that we could sell to OMB." And it was about that
cynically that it first came up-.- So^ve tried it ^ut initially as a budget gambit. It didn't work.
But the more we thought about it, the more we realized it was the right thing to do.
So that was the genesis. Now what happened next. We also recognized that by focusing
almost entirely on pollutants that we really were losing sight of the resource itself. That we
were looking at factories. We were looking at discharge pipes. We weren't looking at the
forest, at the wetland, at the riparian vegetation, at the farm, whatever happened to be adjacent
to the river. We had a tendency to stand on the riverbank and look into the water, and so part
of the trick was to reorient ourselves a little bit to stand on the riverbank and look away from
the water at all the sources that were contributing to the problems within the water itself.
An idea that was slightly ahead of its time that captured many of the same notions was the
Section 208 Program — the Areawide Waste Management Program. Now a lot of people think
(hat was a failure. Some people think it was a success and it depends very much on where you
are in the country and what the local history was. But we think now the time is right. We
think that the tune is right to go back to this kind of approach. Well what's different? Are
we just going to repeat the same mistakes of the past? Well, unfortunately, we probably will
repeat some of them. That tends to be the nature of human civilization. But there are a lot
of things that are different.
First of all, we've got a lot of baseline pollution control behind us. We've already made a lot
of accomplishments in that area. We've also got better science and methods to work with than
we did in the 60's and 70's, especially with regard to ecosystem processes. We don't have
all the answers there by any means, but we know an awful lot more about them than we did
before. We've got a lot of better tools to work with. We've got geographic information
systems. We've got rapid information sharing through Internet and other kinds of systems like
that. Most professionals now have personal computers on their desk tops so that they can
manipulate and play with all of these kinds of things in ways that really weren't possible in
earlier times. We've got some new concepts and paradigms to work with. Things like
landscape ecology which has really come on us in the last five or so years for the most part,
which creates some whole new ways of thinking about things with regard to fragmentation,
corridors, connectivity, adjacent land uses, and all these kinds of things that really were not
the general stock and trade even of ecologists not so many years ago.
We've also got some new (what I guess I would call) political or social philosophies that are
different than in the early 70's. I think we've moved away from the good guy/bad guy
approach to the world, and to some degree from the pure command and control approach to
environmental regulation. There's a new sense, you know, that life ain't that simple. It never
Page 9
-------
was. But at least in those early days, I think a lot of people felt that was the only way we
could get there. We're also moving away from the single medium kind of idea of just dealing
with air pollution or just dealing with water pollution. We're moving away from the idea that
technology or hard engineering is the solution to all problems. And we're also moving away
from the notion that fixing the environment is government's job. For a long time, that was
the prevailing idea that only government could and should deal with environmental protection.
I think we now have come to recognize that it's everybody's business. It is absolutely
everybody's business. It doesn't matter where you sit, what you do for a living, how you
view the world, or whatever. It is everyone's responsibility.
Well, we've established some momentum now that we think is important. There has been
some outside impetus. Clearly, this didn't all happen from within EPA. Water Quality 2000,
which some of you recognize, was a large consortium of many different organizations and
points of view that tried to come together to figure out what the blueprint for the 21st Century
ought to look like in the water quality arena. Primary recommendations were, first, that they
wanted flexibility. There should not be prescribed any particular management form. Second,
' we should build upon existing watershed mechanisms. Let's don't completely start over. An
interesting quote is where appropriate watershed planning and management institutions should
be nested reflecting the multiple orders of progressively larger watersheds. And for those of
you who deal with watersheds and hydrologic units that's a very natural concept. It is a nested
hierarchy. Some people don't fully appreciate that. They think that these are things we just
make up by drawing lines on maps. But in fact, watersheds, as compared to ecoregions and
physiographic provinces and other things like that are very finite units. If you can find the top
of the ridge, you can find the boundary of the watershed. And most people can do that. You
walk uphill until you find yourself walking downhill and at the point that you've changed
direction, you've probably found the top of the ridge. Now it's not exactly that simple in all
landscapes, but at least the concept works. And little ones are within bigger ones which are
within bigger ones which are within the biggest. It is a fairly straightforward concept. Water
Quality 2000 was very big on that notion.
AMSA and the National Governor's Association have echoed many of these same things in
their proposals for Clean Water Act Reauthorization. And a lot of other federal agencies are
now working with place based management as well. I think virtually all the resource agencies
that we normally deal with are themselves embracing some form of ecosystem management
or watershed management.
There are obviously many existing watershed projects underway. EPA recently completed a
progress report that catalogs about 130 projects.
Here is a map that was drawn up from that inventory that we completed. What this is
designed to represent is those place-based ecosystem watershed kinds of projects in which
Page 10
-------
EPA has some significant involvement. It is by no means an exhaustive listing, because
clearly there are lots of other projects that are going on that we're not significant players in.
We don't pretend any perfection here. The little black dots are the smaller watershed projects
and then the big^olored or shaded areas are 4esigned to show the larger Mnd of ecosystem
level projects. You can see there are a lot of them within this general region; many of which
are overlapping. The pale yellow is the Gulf of Mexico program. The horizontal baring is
the Great Plains initiative. The brown is the Rio Grande, Rio Bravo. Some of the little dots
along the Coast are National Estuary programs. There's a light red vertical patching going
up the Mississippi River which is the forested wetlands initiative. There is a lot of overlap.
Clearly, none of these things are absolutely complete and comprehensive. But what the map
shows is that there's a heck of a lot of stuff going on out there and that's only the things that
EPA is significantly involved in. If we layered onto that all of the other things that you folks
are involved in and lots of people who aren't represented here, I think you'd recognize that
this isn't an initiative that somebody just thought of and someday we're going to start. This
is real life. This is already going on. It's not perfect yet.
The benefits of watershed management — let's turn to that for a minute. First of all, we think
that there's a lot more efficient use of resources with the watershed approach. And I think a
lot of that is probably fairly self-evident to people. By looking comprehensively at these
problems, you can recognize how you can start to put the pieces together in ways that are cost
effective. Not only from a dollar standpoint, but from the standpoint of people's time and
expertise. There are lots of economies of scale. Also, you get more resource efficiency
through promoting stakeholder involvement because you get more informed decisions. You
get better buy in. You get people pulling together rather than pulling in opposite directions.
We lose an incredible amount of environmental progress all the time by fighting each other
over things that, hi the end, don't need to have been fought over. They could have been
worked out in the beginning if we had approached our job a little differently.
To continue a comprehensive study of the watershed may also reveal some unexpected
information that's critical for action. Sometimes the problems that we think we're facing on
the surface are not really the problems or may even be the driving problems. For example we
found in a number of cases recently that atmospheric deposition of air pollutants is, in fact,
the major cause of some of the degradation of water quality. The Chesapeake Bay and the
nitrogen inputs is a classic example. Forty percent of the nitrogen input to the bay is coming
out of the air. It's not coming out of runoff like we suspected. You know, we figured that
was probably 99%. Well, it's less than 60%, because there are some point sources as well.
In Canaan Valley, West Virginia, a pristine high mountain southern boreal system which is
the home of the newest National Wildlife Refuge in the United States and the first and only
one for West Virginia, they found that an off-road vehicle race was a major contributor to
water pollution. The solution was to move the course about 100 yards. The thing was
Page 11
-------
running right along the Blackwater River and creating an enormous problem. They didn't
have to cancel it. They didn't have to completely relocate it. They simply had to move the
course a little bit. It was a really cheap solution to what was considered a significant problem.
In the Santa Anna River Watershed in Southern California, they found that a particular reed,
Arundo donak for those of you who are botanists, was actually a significant cause of the
problems there. So now they've set up a team to try to figure out how to eradicate this
particular exotic plant.
One other thing I want to hit on here is the Edgewater Consensus — so named because it was
a meeting that took place in Edgewater, Maryland at a Smithsonian research facility, a little
over a year ago. It was really the first time EPA's senior management team, including the
administrator, got together to decide that, as an agency, we were going to significantly
embrace the concept of what was then called ecosystem management — which sort of
transmogrified during that meeting to place-based management so that it didn't get too hung
up with precise ecological definitions, and has now changed again to community based
environmental protection to give us some political cover from a Congress that doesn't like
ecosystem management. So when you hear those terms, they're all kind of interchangeable.
They tend to be somewhat, either big "P" or small "p," politically motivated. But one of the
central tenets that came out of the Edgewater meeting for EPA was that every place on the
landscape, on the map, is a place. Every place is a place. Now what kind of nonsense is that?
The point is that we wanted to move away from the notion that what we were doing was just
focusing on a few high priority, high visibility areas, like Chesapeake Bay, South Florida, and
the Pacific Northwest. We wanted ecosystem management or watershed management to be
applied across the entire United States because every place merited that same kind of an
approach. Again, remembering that this is not EPA doing it. This is EPA supporting it.
Just a couple of months ago, the group met again to review progress and to talk about where
we were and where we should be going. The administrator articulated a little formula for how
EPA ought to operate which is now known as the 10-10-80 rule which I think a very good
approach. It recognizes that EPA doesn't have the resources, doesn't have the mandates, and
frankly, doesn't have the business of being in charge of everything that goes on in this country
that involves place-based management. Well, what she felt was that probably in about 10%
of the cases we really should be leaders. And I think we've probably already met or exceeded
that 10% where EPA really is in the lead on particular geographic projects. There's another
10%, probably, where we ought to be partners or major participants. We ought to be at the
table, major players. Again, we probably come pretty close to that. But the important part
is the 80% which is basically that we ought to help other people do place-based, watershed
management by doing three things. Empowering them through our own policies and
procedures. Developing tools and information they need to do a better job. And third, getting
Page 12
-------
out of the way, and not trying to get in there and muck around or run it. I think that's a very
significant new way, if you will, of looking at EPA activities.
Bob Perciasepe, the Assistant ^Administrator for water who is- the Presidential appointee
heading the Water Program at EPA, articulated some of his priorities this fall and placed
watershed management as the central theme of what the Water Program ought to be. Clearly
this is going to be a major theme for the Water Program. Some of the major opportunities
that we've identified are establishing goals and standards and I don't necessarily mean
prescriptive numerical standards. We mean the kind that help you move in the direction that
you want to go; help set priorities; and work with data gathering, management, and
assessment. A lot of that has to go on. Also, better or differently defining responsibilities,
implementation, and enforcement. And working more on communications, conferences,
publications, and training. The kinds of things we're trying to do, for example, with this
conference. We're trying to reach out to all of our partners to help them better do the things
that they need to do.
We're also developing programs — as in water, air, pesticides — and regional ~ as in EPA
Region 6 — strategies to implement this process. In other words, some more detail. The
Deputy Administrator has required those to have been completed by the end of March. The
idea is we're going to try to have a few iterations of feedback there to make sure everybody's
operating in the same direction. We're also going to try to recognize and redirect efforts
among different players, headquarters, regions, states, Indian tribes, local governments, and
other local stakeholders. Obviously, we've got to determine some funding and programmatic
adjustments that are going to have to be made to really facilitate the full carrying out of this
approach which is different and will require some adjustments.
In his statement about where the Clean Water Act ought to go, President Clinton did include
watershed management as a central tenet. The idea there was to vest the major responsibility
in the states with a federal role that would be supportive of the states, and to provide great
flexibility and some incentives with regard to the way we operate our regulatory programs to
make it worthwhile for states to seek and carry out such a role.
Let's turn to HR-961, the House Clean Water Bill. Bob Perciasepe, in a letter to the
Congressional leadership, referred to the Watershed Provisions of HR-961 as "hollow".
There was a little bit of a shell, but nothing that would really help us. Reauthorization would
be very helpful clearly in a lot of ways. But we don't believe it's critical. We think it could
build on the progress that we've already made, but we do think there's a lot of flexibility in
the Act already that will allow us to move forward with watershed management. We have
proposed to the Congress and elsewhere some funding accountability, flexibility in both of
those areas and some streamlining incentives. We believe that synchronizing the NPDES
Page 13
-------
permits, for example, can be done within the current law. We know that Texas and Oklahoma
already are moving in that direction.
The President has indicated that he is going to provide strong support for a good Clean Water
Act and that he's going to push back on private property notions which can get in the way of
watershed management. They have more severe effects on wetland regulatory programs and
endangered species programs, but it can also become an impediment to watershed management
particularly if some of the more extreme versions of legislation pass.
Then, finally, I just want to say a couple of things about the EPA region that we're in.
Region 6. Really should have said EPA Region 6, because obviously some of you in the room
have different regions. But there's already a lot of progress here and that's one reason that
we were pleased and honored to have the opportunity to join you uMhis conference. Let me
just mention a couple of things. Arkansas — the Buffalo River Watershed Project -- already
has a major initiative dealing with swine waste management problems in that area. The lady
who manages that project is here with you today.
There is a Lower Mississippi River Wetlands Conservation Plan that's being developed in
Arkansas. There's also, I think, some people representing that group here.
Louisiana is developing a general watershed strategy with Region 6. There are already some
important pilot projects in Lake Pontchartrain in the Tangipahoa River. Tangipahoa River,
for example, has a lot of cooperators working with it. The Louisiana D.E.Q. the Natural
Resource Conservation Service, formerly S.C.S., of the federal government. The major
problem there is dairy waste and that's one of the earlier Region 6 pilot watershed projects.
I should also mention that there's some important work going on in the Tensas, and there is
a gentleman here from that group, as well, that I met this morning.
Oklahoma is developing a Statewide Basin Management approach; and has been working in
the Illinois River watershed for several years.
New Mexico has the Gila River Watershed Project which involves mainly nonpoint source
problems from rangeland over-grazing. A lot of bank stabilization work is going to be
necessary there.
Texas is implementing the Texas Clean Rivers Act (which provides the kind of authorities that
we're talking about); developing a geographic information system and a good basin-by-basin
system. There are lots of folks here from the Texas state government, and I'm sure many of
them will be on the program.
Page 14
-------
Finally, many of the Indian tribes within the region are also doing some important work in this
area. In many cases, that involves initially getting water quality standards programs in place
that can help set the benchmarks and goals. But we're pleased that there are some tribal
representatives participating in this conference and that they're going to be making as much
progress as their colleagues in state governments.
And finally, very finally, what do we mean by success in watershed management? What is
successful watershed management? I think Stan touched on this a little bit. I just want to echo
a couple of points. First of all, we'd like to make watershed protection the norm, not the
exception. In other words, we're trying to get away from the idea that this is a little
showpiece kind of thing. It's a quote "initiative." It's a pilot. It's a demo. Again, it's
"every place is a place". We'd like every watershed to be treated comprehensively as a
watershed. And when I say we, I'm speaking kind of as the watershed management
community, not as EPA. Again, EPA is not running this. I hope that I haven't said anything
to confuse that issue. This is not a program. EPA is not in charge. Those are remarkable
words. I mean, you're probably not used to hearing them. This is a right thing to do that
most of you have already bought into, and I'm here trying to represent, if you will, a national
movement, more so than a federal agency, in some of the remarks that I'm making.
We also need to get beyond convening to action and results. A lot of people think that once
you form the Watershed Management Council you've done your job. Well, that ain't so. If
that council or committee or management entity, whatever, doesn't achieve something, then
the whole thing has just been window dressing. So we've got to move beyond that. Success
is also networking among practitioners. It's getting away from the days when the ground
water guy and the surface water guy and the wetlands protection folks and the fish and wildlife
people didn't even know each other within the same watershed. That won't do. We've got
to get to the point where all those people are working together as colleagues.
And finally, it involves integrating the programs themselves to achieve protection, which has
probably always been a goal, and restoration, which is a newer goal. Ultimately, bringing all
of the United States waters to their full potential from both a water quality standpoint,
traditionally defined, and an ecological integrity standpoint is the real goal. Many of us think
that watershed management is the way to get there.
And, I thank you.
Speaker: Myron Knudson
Now, if anybody would like to ask any of our speakers to elaborate upon their topics—I'll
entertain a couple of questions before we go on a break.
Page 15
-------
Question:
I somewhat hesitate to drop a hot potato on you, but I'll do it anyway. I noticed that
representative from Representative Tauzin's office was unable to participate. Do you know
why?
Response: Myron Knudson
Martin was planning to be here and he called our office Wednesday of this week, saying that
something had come up and he was unavailable. We tried to get some other folks. Only last
Thursday we were calling and seeing if some of the other Congressman or Senators could
provide a representative. They had already made commitments. So we apologize for not
having other people here, but that's the way it goes sometimes.
Speaker: Myron Knudson
%
Any other comments? l
Question:
You talked for a moment about providing increased flexibility and discretion, presumably in
applying rules. How do we square that with the need to maintain some minimum standards
across the nation so we don't have one state playing off against another to try to compete for
economic development?
Response: Stan Meiburg
I'll take that one but I'll use it probably more as reference to the Air Program and that may
help at least clarify some of what that means. Really when you're talking about flexibility,
you really have to start translating that down into particular activities before it starts to mean
something. In the Air Program, we have two sets of standards that really do apply across the
country. We have the national and the air quality standards that set consistent national levels
across the country of what constitutes clean air. And then we have requirements and states
develop plans to show how those areas are going to get to clean air. The Clean Air Act itself
is quite prescriptive about what the contents of those plans might be and what we've been
trying to explore in that area is to try to find ways to keep the goals the same way they are,
whether it's obtain the air quality standards, reduce toxic emissions by 15% between 1990 and
1996. But at the same time give states more flexibility in how exactly you get to that as long
as you get to the same environmental result. I think you'll see the same kind of consistency
that you need so that you don't have, as someone referred to it, a race to the bottom in
environmental standards, as long as the standards themselves, the pollution reduction
Page 16
-------
objectives, and the environmental quality objectives remain consistent. Where I think you can
find a lot more flexibility is that EPA with the great assistance of the Congress has gone into
great detail about specifying not only what to do but how to do it, and I think there's a lot of
room for us to give more flexibility in those areas.
Response:
And as translated into water, we're not talking about backing off technology based limits,
which is the same in the Clean Water Program as the Clean Air. What we're talking about
is how do you get to that next level in which many of the cities and some industries are having
to meet water quality base limits, which are more stringent than how do you do that and are
there other ways other than just regulating one industry to accomplish the goals for a whole
basin. As you know—the President a couple of weeks ago came out and said that we would
entertain the concept of trading, which Stan mentioned earlier. Well, a way we could translate
that is a city who is discharging, and working with farmers or with other city people to reduce
the amount of nitrogen coming from runoff, instead of taking the nitrogen out of the treatment
plant itself. Those are the kinds of things we're talking about.
We are not talking about getting away from protecting the basin. If you heard what Stan said,
one of the things he said was how much farther the companies can go from where they are,
but allowing them flexibility within their plant. In other words, bubble the plant and don't be
so prescriptive on what each process has to accomplish. And that's the way we do with
technology based limits. Just bubble the plant and say, "You've got this goal to meet. This
particular waste —plant might have twice as much because discharge, so to speak, but if the
whole plant has less discharge, that's okay." That's what we're sort of looking at.
Response:
Can I add just a little bit to that? To maybe describe in the context of a somewhat different
kind of program — the wetlands program. There we're not dealing with a sort of an absolute
standard that's as easy to describe perhaps as in the air and traditional water programs. But
the same kind of principle applies in that we're looking more at protecting the wetlands within
a basin using basin wide mitigation banks, for example, as a way of dealing with some of the
compensation, rather than the kind of site by site, discharge by discharge, approach that we've
traditionally employed. So even though the working operation in the field is different, the
principle is the same. It's how are we going to attain the same ultimate goal, but perhaps in
a slightly different way of doing it, that takes greater cognizance of the larger ecological
realities and not just the single site discharge pipe or whatever.
And then on a slightly different spin, there's another kind of flexibility that's important, too.
It's not just flexibility in terms of how we meet standards and limits, but also flexibility in the
Page 17
-------
way we administer a lot of things like grants, for example, paperwork requirements,
information collection and so forth. We're trying to streamline, consolidate, simplify all of
that in ways that will better facilitate management on a geographic basis.
Page 18
-------
Watershed Roundtable (10:30-11:45AM)
Speaker: Myren Knudson, Director, Water Management Division, U.S. E.P.A;
Dallas, Texas
We would like to start this session and this will be chaired by Kolleen Wilwerding, who's
representing Mark Rose. Kolleen is the Director of the Environmental Quality Division of the
Lower Colorado River Authority. She's been involved in water quality activities for the past
ten years and including not only LCRA, but the City of Austin. So with degrees of Bachelor
and Masters in Geography, she is well suited for this particular job and is also the Manager
of the Integrated Natural Resource Planning. Thank you for pitch hitting for Mark and I'll
turn the program over to you, Kolleen.
Speaker: Kolleen Wilwerding, Director of the Environmental Quality Division of the
Lower Colorado River Authority; Austin, Texas
Thank you, Myron. I guess you realize that I get to introduce you in a minute. I do want to
send Mark Rose's regrets. He is busy with the Texas Legislature. Something that we get to
track every couple of years, and he would have liked to be here, but he's got his hands full
there.
I'm pleased to be moderating the panel this morning and I would like to welcome all of our
panelists. In reviewing the bios on the plane yesterday, I have no doubt that we're going to
have a lively and interesting discussion based on the depth and diversity of the experience of
our panelists. What I'd like to do is briefly introduce each of the panelists this morning and
then run through the questions or the scenario that we've set up to facilitate the discussion this
morning. And then leave a few minutes at the end of the panel for some questions from the
audience. So if you want to jot down some questions or thoughts as we work through this,
that would be helpful.
Starting on my left, Mason Mungle was named the Executive Director of the Oklahoma
Conservation Commission on January 30, 1986. His experience as a dairyman, a
Conservation District Director, and an Oklahoma Conservation Commissioner gives him a
unique understanding of the problems agriculture faces, as well as an understanding of the
need to conserve and protect Oklahoma's natural resource base.
Bob Hastings is a profession of zoology and Director of the Turtle Cove Environmental
Research Station here in Louisiana. He was awarded the Conservation Educator of the Year
Award in 1993 from the Governor's Conservation Achievement which is presented by the
Page 19
-------
Louisiana Wildlife Federation and, in addition, the Conservation Award in 1995 from the
National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution. I also understand that he's the
State Chair of the Sierra Club.
Ed Joiner is a third generation dairy fanner. He has held several positions with the Louisiana
Farm Bureau Federation. He is currently the Tangipahoa Parish Farm Bureau President, State
Board Member of that association, Chairman of the State Dairy Advisory Committee, and also
the representative to the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation.
Cliff Glockner has been a conservationist for the past 20 years. Involved in the commercial
crabbing industry for the past 45 years, he has worked on various environmental projects for
the Lake Pontchartrain Foundation, including serving as their Fishery Advisor.
Richard Metcalf is the Health, Safety, and Environmental Affairs Coordinator of the Louisiana
Division of Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association. Mid-Continent is a trade association
which represents individuals and companies, who together produce, transport, refine, and
market approximately 90% of Louisiana's oil and gas. Mid-Continent has represented the oil
and gas industry in Louisiana since 1923.
And finally, Myron was appointed Director of the Water Management Division in May of
1979 at EPA. He is responsible for the implementation of the Clean Water Act, the Safe
Drinking Water Act, and Solid Waste Disposal Act in the Region 6 states. Before 1979, he
served as Director of the Environmental Services Division, Region 6, and as an Engineer with
the Federal Water Pollution Control Administration in Regions 1,4, and 6.
As far as the panel goes, what we've done in preparing these gentlemen is asked them to think
about several issues and questions relative to the topic of watershed management given the
following scenario:
The State Legislature has just created a new River Authority to manage a fictitious watershed.
I've just been appointed the General Manager. (That's what I really like about this panel.)
And my Board of Directors has asked me to draft a White Paper on the environmental
protection of the watershed. What I need from everybody this morning is some input from
the stakeholders or the interest groups in trying to help me develop this White Paper. The
goal is to reach a consensus that I can take away in drafting the issues on paper for my Board,
and I think we all know how difficult that is.
So let me just briefly run through the questions and then I'm just going to throw them out and
you all can respond in order or as you want to, and also just give you a sense of kind of where
we're headed with the discussion.
Page 20
-------
The first question is: can we agree on a common definition of a watershed or watershed
management and what does that really mean to the average citizen, to an industry
representative, to environmentalists, to regulators, and to policy makers? That might sound
fairly basic, andgiven Dave and StanVcomments mis morning, I think they flid afeirly good
job of laying out conceptually what that is. But, in my experience, it's obvious to me that
watershed management means many different things to many different people, and so I think
it would be rather interesting to hear from such a diverse group of folks about conceptually,
what does that really mean and how does that translate into strategies for water quality
protection?
Also, I'd like to hear some thoughts on what should our strategy or approach be on watershed
protection for this fictitious watershed? Should it be a regulatory approach? Voluntary? Land
use? Are we talking about ecosystem protection? Kind of the kicker, I suppose, of the whole
concept of watershed management is how do you balance — can you use watershed
management to facilitate environmental improvements and environmental protection at the
same time facilitating sustainable economic development? And I think there's an interesting
local issue, I understand, in the legislature right now about should we ban gill nets. I think
that's probably a good example of that kind of balance.
Also, is the concept of watershed management misused or misrepresented? I think we're
seeing an awful lot of changes, not just in Texas, but at the federal level relative to
environmental regulations and environmental protection. I'd like to hear about whether or not
the panel feels that ecosystem management or watershed management is just another way for
environmentalists to stop growth and development.
Finally, who pays for watershed management and how should it be paid for? If we don't do
a watershed management approach, then what alternative approaches should we be employing?
So with that, I'd like to throw open the first question which is hearing the various views and
definitions of watershed management. What it might mean to the average person. Mason?
Speaker: Mason Mungle, Executive Director, Oklahoma Conservation Commission;
Oklahoma, OK
Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here this morning. In Oklahoma, we have
concentrated our efforts in particular watersheds, priority watersheds, to work with the
landowners and other stakeholders within a priority watershed.
At the Partnership Meeting in Dallas last fall, I was frustrated to hear about the definition of
a watershed. You heard Mr. Davis this morning talk about walking uphill until you walk
Page 21
-------
downhill. You have to work within a manageable size watershed in order to achieve your
goals. You cannot look at the whole Mississippi River or Red River but prioritize smaller
tributaries to work within.
When you plan within a watershed for nonpoint source water quality, private property rights
should be a very high consideration. The voluntary approach should be the guiding principal.
Providing a good cost share program for the stakeholders in that particular watershed is very,
very, important in order to achieve your goals.
In Oklahoma, we have been involved in the small upstream flood control program since the
1940s. The only way that we were able to initiate a flood control program within a basin was
to work with the property owners in that area for watershed protection. With that kind of
history, we've been able to blend in a watershed approach for water quality much more
efficiently.
One last statement I would make is that there is different shareholders within individual
watersheds. You have the private properties, the dairies, the hog operations, the chicken
operations, homeowners, riparian management, all of those deal with the individual needs.
Then you have the larger ones such as municipalities and industries that are also contributing
to the water quality within the watershed, and if we don't look at all of the contributors or the
whole picture you may not be able to accomplish your goals.
Speaker: Bob Hastings, Director, Turtle Cove Biological Research Station;
Hammond, LA
I would first of all emphasize that in many places you have a very definite watershed, but in
Louisiana, you don't have uphill and downhill. You just have wetland. And so sometimes
it's very difficult to see the boundaries between watersheds. That certainly confuses the issue
here.
In response to the question about what the average citizen thinks of watershed management,
I would just emphasize that I think the average citizen has no idea what a watershed is and
certainly has no idea what watershed management is or should be. And so with this River
Authority, I would say one of the major functions that it would have to serve initially would
be education to tell the average citizen what is involved in protecting a watershed and
especially what agencies are involved. And emphasize, I think, that this is not a simple issue
of stopping pollution or protecting aquatic life or whatever. It's a very complex issue of
integrating many different agencies and their approaches to water protection, to wildlife
protection, to farm land protection, and all of this has to be coordinated in some way. So I
would think that this River Authority might have as its main function to try to coordinate all
Page 22
-------
of these different diverse activities to bring together a coordinated approach to protecting the
watershed.
Speaker: Ed Joiner, Chairman, Dairy Advisory Board, Louisiana Farm Bureau
Federation; Franklinton, LA
Being from the same flatland as Bob, when you're talking about watershed approach,
individuals may not understand that. We understand drainage down here. We understand
canals, ditches, and flooding. I've been of the contention that when you get back to water
quality in some of the local situations, people prefer dirty water in the river rather than hi the
house. And that, sometimes, conflicts with what we're trying to do as far as overall
compliances with current laws or developing future plans.
My understanding of the watershed approach would be that we take our limited resources and
try to identify our main sources of pollution and really try to address those issues rather than
take the shotgun approaches that have been used in the past. I think from the agricultural
community you would find a lot of agreement in that. We had, as Bob said, a lot of education
process to go through — not only of the citizens in the watershed that we're trying to develop,
but of the regulatory authorities ~ those who work with the local people to try to improve
quality. There's been misunderstandings and lack of understanding from the regulatory side.
As far as we can determine, sometimes, you're sitting in your office situations looking at a
regulatory situation and you may not have an understanding of why we're having a hard time
to develop compliance in an area.
I'm a dairy farmer and in our region to understand the situation that we have, you have to
understand the development of the dairy industry. The dairy farmers, in my area, are much
like the black athlete today in NFL or the National Basketball Association. Through working
through a specific area, you achieve economic progress. Both my grandparents started during
the Depression Era when there was no employment. Much of our industry developed in this
nature as a way to take a poor area, develop their own self-employment skills and industry,
and from that standpoint, that's how the dairy industry and the Florida parishes developed.
In West Texas, New Mexico, the background is completely different. You would find a
different economic base and reasons for dairying and probably a different way you would have
to attack those folks as far as getting them to understand their positions in this watershed
approach and driving their efforts to help your efforts.
Definitions, again, by location, you would probably have to have some education on both
sides of the fence to have success, and you would have to find who you could form the
alliances that you make to make these programs successful. There's probably a diverse group
within each watershed. I know that when we started out in our particular situation, Bob's
Page 23
-------
group and my group probably didn't see eye to eye on certain things, but as we worked
through some of our problems, I believe we learned to respect and work with each other's
groups much more closely with a common solution. So I don't know if there's any one
answer to all those.
Kolleen Wilwerding:
Let me break in for a second and as a dairyman and a producer, what does watershed
management mean to you? What does it mean in terms of how you manage your business?
Ed Joiner:
We're heavily regulated in many aspects and today it means compliance with the EPA
regulations first of all. How do we from the business standpoint do what we have to do to
bring ourselves into compliance? How do we afford to do it? How do we afford to maintain
that situation in the future? From an economic standpoint, some people are having to
determine whether they want to try to operate under that situation or change their operation
or go out. But first of all, it's going to be from an economic standpoint.
Kolleen Wilwerding:
Cliff?
Speaker: Cliff Glockner, Commercial Fisherman, Concerned Crabbers of Lake
Pontchartrain; Lacombe, LA
Watershed to the average person (I echo with Bob) it means very, very little. But to the
commercial fisherman the first thing he's going to think is this is another agency and how is
it going to effect my pocketbook. That's the first thing he's going to say. Education, I find,
is lacking in this state. A fisherman can tell you what water means to him, whether it be clear
or what we call druggy water or any other type of water that you get out of waters or
tributaries out of the Gulf. We know what this kind of water means to us because we use it
every day to fish. But the average person doesn't know what water really does hi our industry
and how it affects us.
One of those, I guess I can give you a for instance. There was the Bonnet Carre project which
was supposed to enhance wetlands and to increase oyster production at the Cabbage Head
Reef. That was going to completely destroy Lake Pontchartrain. The fishermen knew it, but
it seemed like the scientists couldn't come to a consensus. Even the environmentalists agreed
that this was a good project. It took us about five years to change their minds; that it was a
Page 24
-------
bad project. So it seems to me that a lot of scientists and a lot of environmentalists and a lot
of agencies really don't know sometimes what the systems needs or how much of it it needs.
Cause this time if they would have done it like it was originally planned, it would have
backfired big time. So it's--not only citizens mat have to be educated ^f what good water
quality means. I think agencies need to get more in contact with people that deal hi the
environment every day, such as commercial fisherman, before they make judgments. Because
we're the ones that have to live with it.
Speaker: Richard Metcalf, Health, Safety and Environmental Coordinator,
Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas; Baton Rouge, LA
I think in the industry it is bringing about a new mentality. I mean, I concur with what
everybody else has said. For roughly 25 years, we've been very end of pipe oriented
environmentalists. What was coming out of the pipe was the bottom line number. Nobody
really thought past that. And what it's now doing is it's making us look at the area as a
whole. This is where we live. You know, we don't just work here. We live around these
areas. We play in these areas. We fish. We hunt. You know, we do things. So it's
bringing about a different mentality, I think, within the industry, slowly but surely, to look
at the big picture. I think the thing that's most exciting to us is it will bring about, hopefully,
a more cost effective way to improve the environment. Once again, we've been very
selective; EPA, the states, whomever write rules, targeting certain groups, and there are
limited dollars. We could take those same dollars and put them in a pool and spend them a
lot more wisely. Get a lot more bang for the buck, and get a lot of improvement. We've
spent a lot of money and yet some people have said, "Gee, things haven't improved any."
Because they really can't see the improvement. Because we've probably not spent a lot of the
money the right way.
So like I said, it has brought about a new mentality in industry or is bringing about a new
mentality, and we see it as a way to more cost efficiently spend the few dollars that are out
there.
Kolleen Wilwerding:
Myron.
Speaker: Myron Knudson, Director, Water Management Division, U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency, Region 6, Dallas, TX
I guess I'm supposed to speak as a regulator.
Page 25
-------
Kolleen Wilwerding:
Also, Myron, if you wouldn't mind, I know you're going to give us your thoughts, but I'd
also like you to kind of summarize the concept and what everybody said at this point.
Myron Knudson:
I think that as a River Authority, the River Authority has the ability to do what Mason was
talking about. Bring things down to a more finite area — more finite than the state government,
certainly more finite than the federal government. A Council of Governments could do the
same kind of an operation. But I think the average citizen as Bob, Cliff and Ed mentioned,
doesn't really know what watershed means, but they do. And I think Cliff pointed that the
average person really knows what they are. I say average. I'm talking about the average
user. Those that are affected, like fisherman, know what is right and what's wrong. And
Cliff, I do confess, I do now know that Lake Pontchartrain needs to be protected. He was just
getting back at me for not understanding how important Lake Pontchartrain was. But we now
have religion and we're working with you.
Anyway, the average citizen is the one that pays the tax bills, if you will, and does keep us
going. They're the ones that really are the customers and so I think the River Authority, if
it's going to continue to exist should, provide a good, prompt service. Those that don't will
be sunsetted, so to speak. That certainly is the way it should be. I mean, if we're not
providing a good service, we bureaucrats and regulators, then we ought not be there. We
ought to move on to the new paradigm as Stan Meiburg was talking about. We need to change
the way we think and do business, and I think the average citizen will see that with this new
River Authority if the River Authority takes the position that its job is to facilitate the
understanding of the average citizen on what that citizen needs to do. That's what we're
getting down to. How the individual behaves.
Ed, you were talking about how it affects you. It's how you behave on your property. I
mean, that's what we're talking about, and we're helping a little bit. But there are a lot of
people who aren't big enough for us to help, so to speak, in issuing a regulation that says
"Thou shall." There are a lot of dairy farmers who aren't now necessarily covered by
regulations who are small operators; but with education, would do the right thing. We know
that they do that. Mason has been involved, in his organization for years, educating people
on how to apply the manure, chicken litter, or whatever to the land properly so that you don't
have the runoffs. So in essence, the farmer doesn't lose his cash product, which is out on the
land and he doesn't really want it in the stream or in the lake either. He would rather have
it on the land doing good than washed off. So I think if we change the way we do business
Page 26
-------
and education, and I think the new River Authority would do well to have that as a central
theme to help the public understand all these things.
KoHeen, I hope feat summarized. I teiow I left industry out, but industry has always — done
its thing, basically. They're in compliance with all the rules and regulations at the present
time in the U.S., at least in our region. Since 1977, industry's been in compliance. Cities
basically came into compliance in '88, and since then, we've been looking to see how to
improve the water quality on the margin. And we can't get there. As you just heard, EPA
and the states can't get there by ourselves. We have to do it a different way and I think the
River Authority could provide that mechanism to reach down into the communities and do the
work at the community level.
Kolleen Wilwerding:
Thanks, Myron. Listening to the comments, one of the things that struck me was one of the
key issues, it seems to me, is how do you set up an equitable process when you talk about
watershed management? Because private property rights are important, there's a lot of
different things to consider and balance. As general manager, I would like to hear your
thoughts on what process we should be running here? And secondly, what are the key
components of a watershed management plan? Are we talking about regulations or voluntary?
One of the things that I'm hearing is that there's not enough education out there. LCRA is
in the process right now, amidst all the regulatory reform, of trying to pass a nonpoint source
ordinance for one of our downstream counties. And you can believe that that's hot a real
popular idea. But we're running a fairly open process and it's been very difficult to even get
the issues on the table. So I'd like some advice on that.
Mason Mungle:
In order for the shareholders to understand what the watershed is, you must delineate the
boundaries. This should be a visual delineation, preferably a map. Using Geographic
Information Systems (GIS) will help with this visual identification of known information.
What is the past monitoring activities in that watershed? What is available through the
conservation districts and the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) as far as land
use and soils information? What are the additional needs within that system? By using this
delineation the shareholders may want to prioritize smaller watersheds within the basins in
order to accomplish their goals of water quality improvement.
The shareholders within a watershed must consider regulatory and voluntary approaches.
What industries or municipalities are permitted under a regulatory program?
Page 27
-------
Kolleen Wilwerding:
Mason, do you feel that the agricultural community has bought into the concept of watershed
management?
Mason Mungle:
Each particular watershed is different. We've had good education program with landowners
that bought in and those that didn't. Those that bought in, bought in big time. Up to 95 % of
the landowners within the watershed implemented practices. Those that didn't buy in, we
recognized a different mind sent plus a lot of landowners that weren't living on the land.
They were landowners that may be out of state, so we had a problem with communicating with
the landowners and the land managers. You must look closely at the problems of the
watershed plus the constituency of the watershed.
Kolleen Wilwerding:
Bob.
Bob Hastings:
I guess I'd like to address the question of what is the process of developing a watershed
management program. I'm not sure I can answer the question, but I think I can at least put
it in perspective, at least from my opinion. We're going to manage our watersheds one way
or the other. We're either going to develop a good comprehensive, well thought out
management program that works, or we're going to mismanage our watershed, which is also
a type of management, but certainly in the wrong direction. And it's going to result in a
management program that responds to crisis, not to the up front solving of problems before
they develop into a crisis. And I think we see that very clearly in this area; probably in all
areas really. It certainly applies to the upper Mississippi Valley as well as to the lower
Mississippi Valley and Louisiana. But if we don't manage our watersheds and we let people
develop and build houses or other developments in wetlands areas that are prone to flooding,
we're going to come back later on and we're going to have to bail out those people. We're
going to have to help them solve their problems of flooding and water pollution and wetlands
degradation. We're going to lose resources that we could have protected up front. And so
I think that a main part of this process, and the educational process that goes with it is to
convince people that we've got to do that management up front rather than waiting until the
end to try to solve all these crises.
Page 28
-------
Ed Joiner:
One thing that I believe you'll have to do up front in establishing a watershed is to identify all
the major players. If youdon^do this, either they will identify themselves and may develop
as an opposition to what you're trying to accomplish or you'll have to bring them in later.
Major players will identify themselves. You need as much grassroots participation from that
standpoint as possible. I know in our particular situation, when the agricultural industry got
involved, there was an initial confrontation. Later, we helped develop an education process
for our industry and promoted that particular process. I feel we were very responsible in
doing that. But we weren't in the initial emphasis in the Florida parishes. As far as
regulatory and mandatory against voluntary, from an industry standpoint, I think this is where
some of the mood of Congress has changed in that mandatory regulations, when you look at
property rights, a lot of individual's property rights, property owners look at regulatory
situation and mandatory situations as regulatory takings of property, and I believe this is where
a big emphasis is taking place in Congress. If a property owner has to go through an
economic expense for the common good of all, but as far as his business situation, very little
economic benefit to himself, it's a real disadvantage, and voluntary cost share is a viable
option. This doesn't rule out when you have a bad actor clause or whatever in the situation
for somebody who will not clean up his act. But again, if we're doing something for the
benefit of all, it should be a common expense incurred.
Cliff Glockner:
Let me tell you about a success story with wetlands, dealing with about 4,000 acres near my
house. For years, I watched these wetlands almost get developed — housing projects. I knew
one day somebody, somewhere, sometime, would come up with the money and all this
wetland would go. About 12-14,000 acres of it would be wiped out. But these people been
having these wetlands for years and years. I know them. I know the Parreters. I know the
Plaunches. All of them that own these wetlands. Been paying taxes for years. They lease
the land for trapping. They leased it for duck hunting to try to regain some of these monies
that they spend on the land every year. Sometimes it's barely enough to pay their taxes. The
majority of the time it's not enough. My personal feeling is I can't go up there and say to
them, "You can't do anything with your land to regain your money. Because it's valuable to
me as a commercial fisherman. This is where my fisheries come from." 1 couldn't do that.
These people got a lot of money invested there. So we did something new. We got businesses
to come together, environmentalists, sport fisherman, commercial fisherman, all, and we
worked with the foundation and we bought this property and set it aside. Made it a refuge.
Instead of fighting flash fires, stopping this person from developing just a little small patch of
wetlands, we chose to go the opposite way. Try to find the monies to buy thousands of acres
and put it on the side. Now business is elated with it. Because all these housing projects are
going to join up right up the Rails to Trails in a national wildlife refuge. The real estate is
Page 29
-------
going to boom in St. Tammany Parish just by doing just that, and I think these things can be
done in other parts of the country, too, not just in St. Tammany. We can put wetlands aside
and rivers aside and make it scenic waterways for the future generations. But we also have
to protect the land owners and we have to repay them some kind of way, whether it be some
kind of tax break or something. People have spent a lot of money over the years and they
need to recapture some of this money back, and I recognize it to be that way and I can
sympathize with them. We own 120 acres of marshland ourselves. There's no way you can
develop this land, nor do we want to. But we pay taxes on it every year, and we know what
a burden it can be sometimes to pay these taxes and get no money back.
Richard Metcalf:
I concur with an earlier statement that you really need to involve everybody and everybody
early. But you need to understand what their needs are in the area. In industry, what are
industry's needs. I mean, as much as some people don't like us, we need to exist. But what
are those needs and then what are their constraints? You cannot sit back and impose a
requirement that is outside the bounds of that industry or that group or that person to pay for.
So you need to really understand and get out on the table what is needed by the groups
involved and then what are their constraints. You also need to know where you are, where
you're starting from. A lot of times we've never looked at exactly where we're starting from.
What's the quality today. And then you need to set a goal of where you want to go. You
might not want to go as far as being able to swim in it, drinking water quality, whatever. But
some of you might; some of you might not. So I think you need a clear understanding of
where you are today and a clear understanding of where you want to go. And then you just
prioritize what are the things you need to get there? I would like to say that there would be
no need for regulation. I, as an environmental lobbyist, would be out of work if there was
no need for regulation, so I'm not that stupid. So I think there would be a need for regulation,
but it is a need for smart regulation.
There are concepts that are used in the air programs and non attainment areas where it allows
for new industry to come in, allows for expansion, but for every unit of pollution they add or
emissions they add, they take away 1.2 units from somewhere. Such that there's always a net
benefit to the activity. In a broad regulatory scheme like that where yes, you can come in;
yes, you can make changes; but when you make those changes, we want you to offset those
changes to some degree, not necessarily at your facility, in the most cost efficient manner, but
then take a little bit more away. That, I think, makes good economic sense, is a good
expenditure of our dollars, yet lets everybody still play and meet the needs that they have.
Myron?
Page 30
-------
Myron Knudson:
Well, process of watershed. Development, activities. Obviously, what we're talking about.
You just heard all Ae speakers say really we're talking about riow^oes everything relate «id
interact in the watershed—it's an interaction of industry and agriculture and people in living
our lives, and then how do we work as a team to manage that activity?
I think we have to adapt. The watershed approach in Oklahoma is going to be a little different
than the watershed approach in Louisiana, Southern Louisiana anyway. So again, I think
we're coming back to how do we provide that information so that the public can make
conscious decisions on what is best for their area. One of the things I'd be remiss in saying
is when we say watershed, as Dave Davis said, we're talking about things other than surface
water here. He talked about getting down the river and looking back up. Well, we're talking
about that. The habitat and the related activities that are adjacent to land are extremely
important.
Those of you involved in the wetlands know that if you plow right down to the edge of a
wetland and you farm all around it, that wetland isn't worthless, but it sure isn't worth very
much as far as wildlife is concerned. Because you need the uplands to go with the wetlands
hi order to provide that protection, nesting, and other related activities. So it's a more holistic
look.
Then the other activity that we shouldn't forget about is, maybe not especially here in
Louisiana, but in other parts of our region, ground water plays a significant role in the
watershed because that's the base flow in the stream; most of our river streams hi summer are
from ground water. So whatever happens to the ground water is also going to be picked up
in the bays, estuaries, rivers, and lakes.
So I'm really not adding anything because it's already been said. I just wanted to try to
summarize it. I would say that, bragging a little bit, we have a document out called The
Region 6 Watershed Strategy and if you look at the six guiding principles, these folks in one
way or another have touched on those. This is a little succinct document that I would
encourage you all to look at and we're going to give this to the new River Basin Authority so
that you as general manager will know how to do this.
Kolleen Wilwerding:
Thank you. Thanks, Myron. Well, a couple of things that I took away from those comments
were that it's real important to get everybody to the table in the beginning. That's not always
very easy. There's an awful lot of dancing around that goes on. So I think that what you've
noted, Richard, is real important, and that is that you really need to define what the issues are
Page 31
-------
up front an give yourself a goal to shoot for. What is the collective goal of the group in a
watershed management plan, and I think we spend an awful lot of time and money pursuing
the concept of the plan without really defining those goals up front. So I think your comments
are right on.
One of the things I'd be interested in hearing about, and then we'll hopefully open it up for
questions here in a minute, but who's going to pay for watershed protection plans and how do
you ensure that that's an equitable process as well? Myron, why don't you start on that
question?
Myron Knudson:
Okay. Typically, in society, since we're not a socialistic country, everything isn't going to
be equitable and even. I submit even in socialistic and even communist countries everything
is not equal either. As regulators, we tend to ask people who have the ability to pay to pay
more than those who are more diffuse. In other words, it's easier for a regulator to tax
discharge point sources than it is to tax the thousand — as Mason said earlier — the thousand
people hi the basin. It's a lot easier to tax those three or four that he talked about. So I think
it's inevitable that we will always have a user fee or permit fee to run the watershed approach,
just because that's the way it's convenient. I really don't know how to do it other than as we
do.
In some of the agencies, including EPA, we operate off of general funds, which in essence
taxes those thousand people. But I don't see that as the way that this particular mood of
government is going to continue. I think if we have a watershed approach, I think you'll have
to see how that is paid for more locally than from either the state government or the federal
government. So I think we just have to start being more realistic that if the people can see the
benefit I think they will do something.
I just mentioned one thing that is very expensive and that is a household hazardous waste
collection program. It's extremely expensive to cities to operate. But some cities have been
doing it for several years because that's what their public wanted and the public was willing
to pay for that. So I think those were educated communities where that occurred. We are
now helping people, so to speak. In several state agencies, most of our states now give small
grants to cities to set up a household hazardous waste collection program to try to get them
going. Get it started, and then it would be -- in essence, the people in the watershed would
pay for keeping out hazardous wastes that would get in the storm water or go down the sewer
line and eventually just go right through the treatment plant. So I think the watershed
approach is so many things. But I think household hazardous waste is a very good example
of what the public is willing to pay for out of their own pocket, even though it might cost a
$1.00 or $2.00 a month -- and they understand, if they're educated, that they would like to
Page 32
-------
have a way to get rid of what they use in the kitchen, in their yard, and in the shop in an
effective and easy way.
fo Dallas, Tm^till looking^er^ way 4o^et rid^f my antifreeze — there's some people that
collect oil and filters, but nobody will pick up antifreeze. And as you all know, antifreeze is
one of the most toxic things. You can kill the hell out of a whole stream by just pouring a
gallon of antifreeze in it. So I'm maybe a generator of hazardous waste. I don't know. I'm
getting so many bottles in my garage, but I'm looking for the day that I can get rid of
antifreeze. Dallas will, shortly, I hope, get religion.
Kolleen Wilwerding:
Richard, let me just preface your comments by asking you a couple more questions. How
does the oil and gas industry feel about how equitable you think the costs are distributed for
something like a watershed management plan or kind of environmental protection regulations
in general? Then secondly, I'd like to hear your take on the legislation that's been introduced
and has sailed through the House and Congress on cost benefit and risk assessment. Do you
think that's going to contribute to better regulations or is that just going to be another rabbit
trail that we're all going to argue about for the next two or three years?
Richard Metcalf :
I'm not sure which one's the easy one. Basically, industry, I don't think, has a problem
paying fees for "services rendered. " You need to get permits. Discharges basically are not
natural. You are creating them. And to pay a fee, basically, to exist, I don't think industry
has a problem with it. In fact, it's kind of funny. Louis Johnson, from the D.E.Q. is sitting
in the audience and we're battling over fees as we speak — proposed fee schedule increases.
Most of the industry's concern is where you're going to spend the money. If I'm going to pay
a fee, I want at least a good majority of that — knowing that this is not an equitable world —
to go to activities dealing with me. I don't' want pay a fee to hire an inspector who's going
to inspect municipal runoff or something that's not dealing with me, because then the fee starts
to become a tax. While there's an anti-tax mood, there's not exactly an anti-fee mood. And
so as long as the service — and although it doesn't have to be 100% — as long as roughly what
we're paying for we're receiving in services from the agency ~ site permits, guidance,
direction, management, whatever — we generally don't have a problem with fees. And I don't
think people have a problem with fees if they see progress, and I think that's been part of the
problem with this anti-tax mentality is they just don't see progress for the money they're
paying or benefit from the money they're paying. But I think if you go to the people with a
specific program like recycling or whatever, and say, "This is what I'm going to spend it for
and you're going to see something happen. " Then I don't think people have a problem with
fees.
Page 33
-------
Our basic position on money would be everybody should pay. Everybody who contributes
should pay, whether it's one for one; no, it will never be that. It's a lot easier to charge fees
on industry or people who are nameless and faceless. But like I say, as long as everybody
contributes to some degree, and frankly, we've gotten away from that in Louisiana at the
D.E.Q. The public's out of the equation. The general fund tax money has disappeared. At
one time there was roughly $14 million, up to a third of the D.E.Q. 's budget. Now it's zero.
I mean, it's EPA grants, your tax money coming from the feds, and it's industry or the
communities who pay fees
So to some degree, if everybody is involved, I think industry doesn't have a problem paying
a little more or a little extra. Once again, we want to see the money used efficiently, wisely,
not abused, and we'd like to see everybody contribute.
The legislation in Congress. There is also legislation in Louisiana's Legislature, as we speak,
put in by the multiple trade associations that represent industry. Will it slow down things?
Sure. I mean, I probably would be lying if I said, gee, it would be business as usual. I've
been in this business of arguing regulations for almost 12 years. It is very rarely the goal that
we argue about. You know, what are we trying to accomplish by a regulation? It's basically
how the regulation gets there. There's roughly an old adage that says, 80% of the reduction
can come at 20% of the cost. And it's generally that last little 20% where all the money is,
is what we're fighting over.
And so I would hope that the goal of legislation is more let's look and see if we're spending
money wisely. Are we giving people options to do other solutions? If your goal is to reduce
Benzene emission by 10%, are they given the flexibility to do it in the most cost efficient
manner? That has not been the case. We've been in a command and control mode. You will
cut it 10%. You will cut it this way andyou will put these bells and whistles on it. And we've
spent a lot of money where we could make the same 10% cut for a lot less money.
This is a personal opinion, I'm not involved in that legislation, but I think if it just allows
more flexibility in how we spend money and are we spending money on the right types of
things versus the easiest targets to pick on, then it's good legislation. If it is intended to
monkey up the works and slow things down and be another hurdle just to be a hurdle, then
I think it's bad policy; and as all policy and laws and regulations, it's in the hands of the
people who implement it. Let's just see how it turns out.
Kolleen Wilwerding:
Gentlemen, do you have anything to add to that? No? Yes, Mason?
Page 34
-------
Bob Hastings:
Yes, I'd like to comment on this question of who pays. I've always been sort of an idealist
whenit^omes to economic issues. £o maybe I'm not merest person to answer the question
of who should pay. But let me go back to what I said earlier and that is we're going to
manage our watersheds one way or the other. We're either going to manage them properly
or we're going to mismanage them. If we look at that in economic terms, I could also say
we're either going to pay for managing our watershed or we're going to pay for mismanaging
them. We either pay the fees up front to properly regulate industry, municipalities, individual
citizens, and regulate the pollution going into our waterways or we're going to pay to clean
up that pollution downstream. Or, if we don't clean it up, we're going to pay in lost benefits
such as recreational opportunities, fishery reductions, and aesthetics. Somebody's going to
pay.
I think this is one thing we really have to emphasize to the average citizen — we're paying.
I can relate a local example which is a perfect example of what I'm trying to say. I've been
actively involved with a local grassroots organization called Citizens for a Clean Tangipahoa.
The Tangipahoa River has been cited as one of the prime programs for EPA and we've had
a tremendous success record on trying to get the Tangipahoa River cleaned up. But if you go
back to 1987, the Tangipahoa River was worth $4.5 million to the local economy, and that's
a conservative estimate. There were tremendous recreational opportunities on the Tangipahoa
River. The camping, tubing, and swimming industry brought a tremendous amount of money
into the local economy. In 1987, the Tangipahoa River was posted. It was closed to
swimming and recreational activities. So in effect, $4.5 million was taken out of the local
economy and somebody paid that $4.5 million. We paid it in lost benefits as well as economic
benefits that we could have been enjoying on the Tangipahoa River.
Mason Mungle:
I would like to give you an example of shareholder buy in. I'm a dairy producer. I'm at the
top of the watershed. The river authority tells me that I've got to put in a lagoon. I already
have a small lagoon that's taking care of my dairy barn. I've got to put in a lagoon that's
going to cost me $10,000. I've got to put in a new septic tank. I've got to buy a new manure
spreader to spread the manure or to pump it out of the lagoon. The total figure is going to
cost me $50,000 to change my operation. I can barely send my oldest child to college, much
less the next two children. I have to get loans to send them to college. You're telling me that
I've got to spend $50,000 to help people that are 15-20 miles away or even downstream at the
end of the Mississippi River. I'm not buying into that. I'm not going to buy into that! I may
go out of business, go into town and get a job, and take my family into the city.
Page 35
-------
How do you get those kind of people to buy into a water quality program? There has been
some suggestions of trading of nutrient credits. If the regulatory and voluntary shareholders
consider trading credits, how does this transfer to funds for a cost share program? I'm willing
to help with the water quality. I'm willing to put in a system. I'm willing to do my part, but
I'm not willing to cough up $50,000 to do something that's going to benefit the public
downstream.
Ed Joiner:
You're misunderstanding why people are still dairying and you're out of it. We're doing it
for the fun of it. We love to get up at 2:30 or 3:00 in the morning and smell like a cow for
most of the day. But we don't have to deal with most people like you, except for issues like
this.
That is in the mind set of a lot of agriculture. It's a definite situation. Got to remember, now,
in agriculture, as far as the illustration that you just had, I don't know what it is in Oklahoma,
but in Louisiana the average of the dairy farmer is 60 years of age. It's an old industry.
Again, relating back to how I describe dairy farmers in our area. They have ascended the
economic scale through hard work, making it on their own, and, all of a sudden ~ even
though the situation's been the same ~ the rules have changed on them.
How do we pay for this? I was thinking something from my youth when I was trained in an
old Southern Baptist church. I remember a passage from the Bible. I can't remember where
it's from, but I know it's there. The poor will always be among us. How do you pay for all
this? We're going to have to utilize resources we have. But we also need to make sure that
we're killing the right dragons. The scenario that Dr. Hastings just discussed is true. We lost
a $4.5 million tubing industry. From someone who was raised on the banks of the Tangipahoa
River, a property owner, some property owners, I know, feel good about that. You look at
the river and about Tuesday the yellow tint in the river changes back to the natural color of
the river because all the Budweiser released during the weekend tubing activities has finally
passed. But that's a selfish motive as a property owner.
Located next to my farm is the Southeast Research Facility ~ the research dairy facility run
by L.S.U. They're running some studies on coliform as far as nonpoint runoff on their farm.
And they are using what they call a basin, a pristine piece of land that adjoins them, across
the road. There are no animals. There are no homes. There are no people. When there is
a rain event, and they take a sample, that pristine runoff is out of standard. I don't know what
pristine means.
When I was raised on the Tangipahoa River, we had a rule as far as swimming in the river.
When the river is up, you don't swim. When the river is down, you can go swimming. This
Page 36
-------
doesn't mean that the river is not showing signs of some pollution. But as the gentleman from
the industry states, the last 20% of the pollution, is it effective to kill that last 20%? Do we
have the resources to do a job completely because of some standard. I don't know. I know
swimming in the river 3ttimes4& not healthy, but at omer times, I don't feetlike there's a
health problem.
The dairy industry in Tangipahoa Parish is worth $300 million a year. For a $4.5 million
tubing industry, it's not worth killing a $300 million industry. That doesn't mean we
shouldn't have a tubing industry, cause I do enjoy tubing myself, and it should be an activity
for those people who don't have the opportunity to visit and live in a rural environment. I
don't think Bob and I are that far apart on it and we know there's some common solutions.
But within those common solutions, we need to make sure that they are feasible solutions and
that we can come to a determination of what's got to be done with the dollars we've got to
use.
Cliff Glockner:
I think every watershed has got to tell individual programs what the people want. How much
is it worth to the people hi the community? Just like the tubing industry out there and the
dairy industry. Both of them are important. I think they need to reach a balance. The fishing
industry and the oil industry. Both are important. The fishing industry was at one time —
billion plus. It's since gone down. One of the things that comes to mind when you talk about
money to pay for these things and who is liable. They put a channel through. It's called the
M.R.G.O. Destroyed 170,000 acres of wetlands in just a little over seven or eight years. It
went from pristine, fresh water and brackish marshes to pure salt. Totally unproductive. The
fishing industry collapsed in this whole area.
The people were promised that the ship channel would come through and it would be a big
boom. All of New Orleans would prosper. But it didn't materialize. But who pays now?
The taxpayers are paying $20,000 a ship, right now, to use the channel. The fisherman are
paying with their livelihoods. They don't have them anymore. They're going totally out of
business. Who pays for that? Does the responsibility fall on the whole United States, because
Congress said this is a good project? And everybody knew it was a bad project hi Louisiana.
I don't have the answer. I don't know who should pay.
Like the oil companies. Oil companies drilled in our state — natural gas and oil. We need oil.
I used oil getting to this place today. I use oil every day I go out. We all need it. We depend
on it. But these canals and navigation channels that cut through the marsh, that salt water
intrusion is coming in. Our fishery is depleted. Who pays for that? Every one of you comes
from different states. Gentleman, here from Oklahoma, has a dairy farm. Oil and natural gas
conies from here — keeps his lights going, tractors going, trucks going. Should he pay for it?
Page 37
-------
Maybe so. Maybe everybody should chip in to help rebuild what has been torn down in this
state. I've seen a lot of destruction in this state. I know we need the profits. But there's got
to be some balance, some thin line drawn so that industry can survive and natural resources,
renewable resources, can survive too. I know we need oil and natural gas, but we need these i
resources, cause they're renewable. One day the oil companies will be gone. It will be a dry f
hole. But we don't want our renewable resources to be gone with them. j
Kolleen Wilwerding:
Thanks, Cliff. Richard has one more brief comment.
Richard Metcalf:
Yes, I just want to make one brief comment. We're getting down to who pays and basically
we know we all pay. It's hi the prices of the products we buy; whether it be gasoline, whether
it be milk, whether it be shrimp, whatever. I mean, it's funny, but there's a lot of people who
say they're environmentalists, but squawk when the price of a gallon of gasoline goes up a
penny. So until the mentality of all of us, in this room and outside this room, changes and we
are willing to accept a little higher cost to do some of the things we need to do, we're going
to have the same debate we're having today. That's the only comment I wanted to make.
Kolleen Wilwerding:
Question? Comments? I know enough of you in the audience that I could call on some people
if we don't get any volunteers.
Question:
One of the things from this morning's talks that struck home was that we don't seem to have
a benefit going to the watershed approach that will stick to everybody — all the stakeholders.
We've talked about that the prescriptive method won't really work. Then we talk about the
costs and nobody wants to pay the cost or raise the fees. Is it possible that allowing more
flexibility and staying away from prescriptive approaches is really where the watershed
approach may be? Right now we have it where without some force to push us to do stuff, like
the federal government, everybody says, "Well, that doesn 't have to be done yet. We can wait
on that." Avoiding the prescriptive approach by either the federal government or the state,
is that a way that the watershed approach can really get implemented?
Page 38
-------
Response:
Let me see if I can deal with that a little bit. I think it's important to first look at the
watershed approach. I don't think, looking back to one of our flood control projects, that we
could have taken the whole Washita Basin and said we're going to have flood control unless
we went into individual watersheds and tried to prioritize where that flooding was coming
from. The same way with the water quality. We have to look at what the problems are and
where some of those problems are coming from. Certainly, they could be from a municipality
or from the agriculture sector. We should be able to bring those stakeholders together. That's
what we were talking about here — the River Authority can act as a sounding board for the
people; to bring them in and talk about what benefits it provides. Well, one benefit is
recreational economic development. Another benefit is providing jobs for industry, for
agriculture, and other people. So I don't think that we can afford not to take the watershed
approach and deal with issues that we need to deal with, because there are benefits. There's
a benefit to the general public. There's a benefit to the community that's discharging into the
river. There's a benefit to land owners within the watershed to improve their economic
situation through better technology and better land practices being implemented. So it's
multiple benefits and we have to look towards that goal.
Kolleen Wilwerding:
Can you make it quick, Ed?
Ed Joiner:
Yeah, to say the watershed approach may not be good or whatever, looks to me like from the
time that I started my involvement in this process that the watershed approach has taken great
steps forward in that type of approach than from a regulatory blanket issue ~ "we only solve
a problem by this" just doesn't work. It's a great advancement.
Myron Knudson:
Okay. I'll take over, if you don't mind, and tell everybody that we're going to lunch now.
Page 39
-------
Lunch Speaker; Nancy McKay (11:45AM-1:OOPM)
Speaker: Susan Branning
Nancy McKay is the Executive Director of the Puget Sound Water Quality Authority. We
asked Nancy here to talk about the unique watershed protection activities ongoing in the Puget
Sound Area. And so with that, if you would please join me in welcoming Nancy McKay.
Speaker: Nancy McKay, Executive Director, Puget Sound Water Quality Authority;
Olympia, WA
It's a real pleasure to be here. From listening to the sessions this morning I can tell that you
are concerned about many of the same issues that concern us hi Washington. I would like to
share with you what we've been doing hi Puget Sound.
Puget Sound is a very, very beautiful part of the United States up in the very northwest
corner. We border on Canada, so we have some interesting similarities there with those of
you from Texas and New Mexico, in that we are working very closely with the Canadian
government.
The Puget Sound basin includes 2,300 hundred miles of shoreline. It's like a fiord. It's very,
very deep, up to 930 feet in some of the deepest parts of the Sound. We work with 12
counties that surround the Sound, about 120 cities.
The Puget Sound Water Quality Authority is a non-regulatory agency that was created by the
state government in Washington in 1985. Why was it created? Because people were
concerned about what was happening to the Sound. There was increasing growth. There were
dead whales showing up on our beaches. We were seeing tumors in the livers of some of the
fish on the bottoms of our urban bays around 'the cities of Seattle and Tacoma. Citizens went
to the legislature and said, "Well, it's time to do something." The legislature created the
Authority. We were asked to look at the institutional setting. There were 500 units of
government—federal, state, tribal, local as well as, drainage districts, sewer districts, and
others. Each had a little piece of the puzzle of Puget Sound. Each has some control over
what happens to the Sound.
The legislature directed the Authority to develop a comprehensive plan to protect the Sound.
The Puget Sound Water Quality Authority is, hi essence, the think tank for Puget Sound. We
had to look at what all those different agencies were doing. We also looked at the science of
the Sound and we looked at what needs to be done to protect Puget Sound for the next 50 to
100 years.
Page 41
-------
We began our work in 1985. We were directed by statute to address a number of issues. The
first plan was adopted in 1986 and we've revised it three times since then. The plan covers
a number of different issues ranging from ambient monitoring to research, habitat and
wetlands protection, nonpoint source pollution, municipal and industrial discharges, and
contaminated sediments and dredging.
The priority problems that we identified includes toxic contamination; some of the programs
that I just mentioned address that issue. The growth of the Puget Sound region is another
tremendous challenge. Our growth rate was 23% in the last ten years. We now have about
3.2 million people living in the Puget Sound Basin and that number is expected to grow
another 23 % before the turn of the century—so phenomenal growth and all the potential effects
to water quality that come with that growth.
So what have we been able to do? We have adopted the first set of standards for sediment
quality in the United States under this plan. We have new standards for septic systems which
are being implemented by the 12 counties with which we work. We're doing a lot of work
on septics because, in our part of the world, septics are going to be the choice for sewage
treatment in the future. We can't really accommodate the kind of growth that we're facing
with traditional sewage treatment plants. Much of our new growth will rely on septic systems.
In addition many of the systems installed before 1973-74 are failing. We're working with the
State Board of Health and local public health agencies to improve operation and maintenance
programs, to improve installation of septic systems, and to study alternative technologies for
treatment.
Puget Sound is home to hundreds of thousands of boaters. We've been successful in getting
funding to put in pump-outs at marinas, state parks, and even several floating pump-outs.
Under contract with us, the Northwest Yacht Brokers Association that developed a prototype
for a portable pump-out, which is being used in various parts of the country now. We call it
the honey wagon, and it's much easier for boaters to use because they can yank it down the
dock, pump out, go back, empty the stuff, and they're done. Fifty of those little pump-outs
are in use.
Louisiana was the top shellfish producing oyster growing state in the Country. Washington
has now surpassed Louisiana. I've had oysters here and they're wonderful, and so are ours.
We have a $50 million oyster growing industry in Puget Sound. It is very important to the
future of the Sound. We view oysters as canaries in the cage that tell us whether we're really
succeeding in making a difference in water quality. When we began work in 1985, we had
very sad statistics telling us that we had lost 40% of our commercial shellfish growing area
to pollution and loss of habitat and wetlands. We have stemmed that loss. The rate of loss
has slowed considerably in the last 10 years, and for the first time in 30 years, six commercial
shellfish beds in the Sound were upgraded. I was listening to Stan and others talking this
Page 42
-------
morning about how we measure success. How do we measure results? We measure results
by exactly that kind of information. If we have shellfish beds where we couldn't harvest and
sell those shellfish, and now we can, that is success. In all of those areas where our beds have
been reopened, we faced^mix of sources of pollutants, and^ everybody—farmers, boaters,
landowners, local governments—had to step up and help out. And they have to continue to do
that. One of the things that's critical to continuing this is that we can't rest on our laurels. We
have to keep at it, especially in the face of the kind of growth that we're experiencing in the
Sound.
Storm water is one of the biggest threats to the Sound both because of growth and because
most storm water is untreated and goes directly into the Sound. When we started hi 1985,
three cities hi the Sound had storm water utilities. Now 71 % of the local governments hi the
Puget Sound Basin have these utilities. This might be a good moment to note that the Puget
Sound Plan is not mandatory and the Authority has no regulatory authority. What the
authority was designed to do, and I think does effectively, is to bring people to the table to
discuss various issues and seek solutions to address them.
We're effective because we're small and flexible. We have a staff of about 30 people and a
board of 11 people. Ten of the members are appointed by the Governor. What we have to
do is get people involved in the front end developing the solutions so that they're with us as
we march down the road to try to implement those solutions. Bringing people together, some
who you wouldn't have dreamed of putting in the same room—is absolutely critical to
protecting whatever you're working to protect.
So how do you measure success? We've been looking at that question for the last couple of
years. It's important to know what's working and what isn't working. You want to be able
to say, "Well, that approach to reopening shellfish beds really failed, so let's try something
different." We also want to measure results so we can talk about them. We can actually say,
yes, we've done something, or no, we haven't, if that's the case.
Measuring results is very difficult. I'm sure any of you who have begun to struggle with this
understand that you can take a plan, and you can even go back up to the process that you used
to create the plan and say, "Well, that's success. We got these people in the room together
and they talk to each other." Well, then they wrote it down. That's success isn't it? That
they could actually get it on paper in a 200-page document. That's pretty good. Well, is it
success then that you begin to get committees together in watersheds to begin to implement
some of those things in a basin? Is that success? Yes, it is. Is it success that you actually get
a rule adopted that sets new standards for septic systems? Yes, that's success. Are the septic
systems actually being upgraded? Did you get the money to help make that happen? Maybe.
Is that success or not? And finally, is the water quality improving? Have we slowed the loss
of habitat or not? We think it's important to measure at each level. There's almost a grid that
Page 43
-------
you want to go through looking at each one of those things, because improvement to Puget
Sound and improvement to water quality in the Sound is not going to happen unless you back
up the steps that I just described. You might say, "Well, those are sort of bureaucratic process j
steps," and they are. But they're critical to getting to the end which is the place we all want I
to be. Which is when we can say, "What we did made a difference." Now the toughest thing I
about all that is making the links back and forth. For example is the fact that the legislature :
created a Puget Sound Water Quality Authority really improving the water quality in Puget j
Sound, or would that have happened without an Authority. Those kinds of questions are very j
interesting. j
Building in steps to measure and evaluate as you plan and implement a plan is very important. j
Otherwise, you can't talk about what you've done or figure out where you should go next.
We've learned some other lessons. It's tremendously important to build partnerships, to
welcome in new players, to be looking for them, to mine creative ideas. One of our most
successful programs is one we call the Public Education and Information Fund. In our state,
a portion of our cigarette taxes pay for water quality projects. The authority received some
of that revenue and we've turned it around hi 200 contracts over the last ten years with trade
associations like the general contractors, the realtors, the dairy farmers, the dry cleaners, the
graphic designers and printers, the National Association of Industrial and Office Parks; groups
like the Audubon Club, the Sierra Club, and other environmental groups; schools; hospitals;
local governments; tribal governments; and others. All of those projects have been designed
to use the creative ideas and raise public awareness.
Many projects focus on peer-to-peer education. It's people who are members of the general
contractors association teaching other members how to manage construction sites to protect
water quality. Dry cleaners teaching other dry cleaners. The graphic designers are a
wonderful example. A couple of them got together and said, "We should be doing something
here to protect the Sound." They organized themselves and said, "We want to investigate
whether we can design beautiful brochures and posters without using toxics and by using
recycled products and papers." They found out they could do it. They designed four
beautiful posters. Each one uses a different paper product from a different paper company.
A different printing company produced each. There are graphic designers all over the country
and they're all participating in training programs that were seeded by this little idea that three
or four people had. That kind of creative energy is marvelous.
One other quick example. We had a group of kids, parents, school teachers, and artists who
live in one of the watersheds in Puget Sound who decided to pool their talents. We gave them
about $10,000. They built a 30-foot fiberglass salmon. It's huge. It's hollow on the inside
and it has all the flora and fauna of that watershed painted inside. Kids and adults—if they
crouch—can go inside this salmon and see what the watershed looks like. And the salmon is
Page 44
-------
a symbol of what protecting the watershed will preserve. We were so delighted with the
salmon that we bought wheels for it and it now rolls from school to school all over Puget
Sound. It's been on the ferries. It's been in parades.
When you're feeling like you cannot listen to one more person tell you why they can't do
something or why it's impossible to make any progress, go out and talk to somebody you
haven't talked to before and say, "If you were trying to do this, what would you do? Have
any good ideas? What would you try to do in your watershed? What would you do?" You'd
be amazed at the kinds of great ideas that people come up with.
Funding has been critical to our efforts to implement the Puget Sound Plan. We try to figure
out three different approaches to funding, and if two of them fail, you'll still have one left.
In our case, we've been successful in, as I said, getting cigarette tax money to support water
quality projects. That goes to local governments which are critically important to
implementing our Plan. We have federal funding coming in from EPA and from several other
federal agencies. State General Fund dollars fund 11 different state agencies to carry out tasks
under this plan. Storm water utilities have been created, as I said, by 71% of the local
governments hi the last 10 years. We also have some private money coming in through
foundations.
All of us are aware that there's competition for resources. In my state, right now, the
legislature's meeting and trying to figure out how it's going to stretch a budget over how many
needs. We need new prisons, schools, and better health care. There are clearly a lot of other
important issues that we face as a society. Therefore, wherever you're working on a
watershed plan or building a watershed protection effort, get to as many people in that
watershed as you possibly can and make them a part of what you're doing. I think that is what
is going to turn around places where we're having difficulties with pollution. I think that's
what's led to the successes that we've enjoyed in Puget Sound more than anything else. It's
just critical. If you don't have the people there, it doesn't make any difference. All the good
science and good ideas that the scientists have, which are critical, are not going to go
anywhere unless you have the energy of citizens to put things on the ground and make them
happen—for people to hang in there over the long-term.
So to summarize. Measure and evaluate what you're doing. It isn't painful; it's important;
build it in; get used to doing it; make sure you don't put all your eggs hi one basket; look for
a variety of funding sources, a variety of groups, a variety of approaches, and test them out
and be willing to say, "We made a mistake. This isn't the right way. Let's try something
else." That is not bad, wrong, or anything else. That's smart, positive, and thoughtful. Build
coalitions. Look for unique partnerships. Mine energy and creative ideas from anybody you
can run into who has them. And above all, keep your eye on what it is you're trying to do.
Page 45
-------
I wish each of you all the best in making progress and feeling good about what you're doing
and working with each other.
Page 46
-------
The Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) Process - Part 1 (1:00-2:30PM)
Moderator: Troy-HSU, TMDL Coordinator, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,
Region 6; Dallas, TX
My name is Troy Hill and I work with the Environmental Protection Agency, Region 6 out
of Dallas, and I'm the TMDL Coordinator for Region 6. We're going to talk a little bit about
TMDL's and how it fits into this watershed approach that we've all come here to talk about
today. What I will do is give a general overview of the concept, what we mean when we say
"TMDL", where does it fit in; and then, we'll have some case studies of some work that's
currently on going in this session, and then there's another concurrent session after this. What
you will find is that we're learning as we're going, and keep that in mind. These are not
perfect examples but they're perfect examples in the sense that we're learning from our
mistakes and we're gaming a lot of knowledge as we go. So keep that hi mind, and if you
have a question any time during my presentation, feel free to raise your hand. Speak loudly
or you can go to the microphone—whatever you're comfortable with. I'm going to try to keep
my comments to about 15-20 minutes with a few questions, and then we'll move into the case
examples, which are what we're really here for.
I work hi the Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) Program and a lot of people have different
understandings and ideas about what this critter really is. As we talk about water quality
problems, what I would like you to get from this little presentation is that it is a water quality
problem solving process. It is not a complex model. It is basically a problem solving process.
This isn't a new idea. Many of you hi this audience have been solving water quality problems
for many years. A lot longer than I've been around. There are some fundamental steps that
we all go through in trying to solve water quality problems, and when establishing TMDL's.
First we identify our problem. Then we establish a goal of what we're trying to do as far as
solving the problem. Then we determine existing conditions. What's going on in that
particular water body or watershed that would be causing the problem? Get an idea of what's
going on out there today. Then we determine what we need to do to achieve our goal, and
then we implement what's needed to meet our goal. Whether it be hard regulatory controls,
voluntary controls, or whether it be altering the physical characteristics of an unstable stream.
The TMDL process applies to the chemical, physical, and biological properties of a
waterbody. We want it to be able to do whatever you need it to do to solve the problems.
Where does the TMDL Process fit into the Clean Water Act? We start with water quality
standards and the States and Tribes have the authority to establish standards for their
waterbodies. The TMDL process steps in when a waterbody is not meeting water quality
standards. The process develops a plan for a waterbody to meet its water quality standards.
Then after we've got this plan hi place, we come up with the controls. This is where a lot of
Page 47
-------
people wish that a TMDL was a big stick, something that we could just come back with and
bop whatever is going on in that watershed into compliance with what we think is appropriate.
But in reality, the TMDL process is more a plan. It's a plan of what needs to happen.
When we talk about water quality standards, that's really the foundation of everything we're
dealing with and there are a couple of components in the water quality standards that I want
to cover just briefly. There are three parts: designated uses, criteria established to protect
uses, and then an anti-degradation policy. These are all components of water quality
standards, and each State establishes their own water quality standards.
When we talk about uses, we talk about fishable. We talk about shellfish protection. We talk
about wildlife protection. We talk about industrial uses of waterbodies. We talk about
recreational, navigational, and agricultural uses, and this is kind of a pun, if some of you get
that hi the audience. We don't directly mean the cattle are supposed to be in the stream, but
there are uses established by states to facilitate agricultural type uses. And there are a few
extra uses that some of our local people actually add to the waterbody and these are bags of
trash. I think everywhere we go there is a perception that waterbodies are used for
transportation of trash. But when we talk about these designated uses, this is really the
fundamental thing that we're trying to protect with the TMDL. Are we protecting the
fishable, swimmable, navigational, and industrial uses of a waterbody? This is really what
we're trying to protect and maintain.
When we talk about criteria, states also adopt criteria that are necessary to protect uses. They
can be numeric and they can also be narrative. A narrative would be free from toxics effects,
free from foaming, frothing. Things that are kind of hard to quantify are nutrients. Most of
our states do not have a numeric nutrient criteria, but we can use the narrative and say, well,
it should be free from excessive algal growth, and we can back into a quantifiable goal.
When we talk about an anti-degradation provision, this is something we need to look at. Can
the waterbody actually have any degradation? The states establish different tiers for
waterbodies. A Tier 1 waterbody would allow you to degrade a waterbody down to the
specified criteria that was established by the state. An example would be dissolved oxygen.
If you have a dissolved oxygen standard of five milligrams per liter on a waterbody, you
would be allowed to take that D.O. down to five milligrams per liter with the activity that
you're planning on allowing to happen in the waterbody. A Tier 2 waterbody is a little bit
higher quality waterbody, and it gives you a few more hoops that you need to jump through.
If you want to add a new source to the waterbody or add additional activity that would
increase load to the waterbody, you would want to make sure that it had an economic or social
benefit for that waterbody. The states have these processes established in their water quality
standards of how to jump through these particular hoops. A Tier 3 waterbody is a waterbody
that basically says there shall be no degradation. No degradation should be defined in the
Page 48
-------
states water quality standards. No degradation may mean 10% degradation; it all depends on
what the State's water quality standards specify.
One of the things feat1*4 lik&to^tress is that you need to start with^the State' & water quality
standards. Look at what uses waterbodies have. Look at the criteria that have been
established to protect the uses. In addition, see what type of anti-degradation policy applies
to the waterbody, so that when you're developing this strategy or problem solving process,
you understand and protect the water quality standards.
When we talk about TMDL's and TMDL process, there's a difference. And so what I'd like
to stress here is we're going to talk about the process of how we come up with a TMDL. The
Clean Water Act requires that every two years each state develop a 303(d) list. The 303(d)
list includes waterbodies that are not meeting water quality standards. In addition, the states
are required to prioritize the waterbodies and target them as to what they feel are the priorities
and the areas they need to work in. Now, how do states come up with this type of
information? They look at any current source of information they have—whether that be
ambient water quality monitoring data, whether that be intensive surveys, whether that be
somebody's professional judgment saying that waterbody should not be purple and we've got
a problem. That's how a waterbody can be added to the 303(d) list. One reason a waterbody
does not have to put on a 303(d) list is if there's some type of strategy already in place where
somebody has said, "We know this waterbody is not meeting water quality standards,
however, we have a plan in place to meet the standards and we're implementing it. And this
is it. We're laying it out." Basically, they are saying, "We have already developed a TMDL
for this waterbody."
The 303(d) list process also requires that the states take the list for public comment. This is
where the public gets an idea of where the State feels its priorities are, and they have a chance
to comment if they agree or disagree with what's going on there. Typically, we're not getting
much response from our public on our 303(d) list in Region 6. We get a little bit of interest
from the industries to see if their waterbody is on the list, but other than that, we're not
getting a whole lot of public comment. This is a chance for our public to become aware of
what we feel our priorities are and where we should be working.
This is an analysis of the 1992 303(d) list and you can see the problems that were targeted or
were included on those lists are basically the ones we've been working on for a long time.
We're talking about nutrients; we're talking about BOD; we're talking about D.O; we're
talking about turbidity—things that we're dealing with and have been dealing with for a long
time.
Now when I talk about TMDL, a TMDL equals the sum of all the wasteload allocations,
which are basically point source loads, plus the sum of all the load allocations, which are the
Page 49
-------
loadings coming from nonpoint source and background, plus a margin of safety. So if
somebody comes to you and says, "We have a TMDL for this waterbody," basically, they
have established a target and that target says that we are going to maintain—let's say it's
dissolved oxygen—we're going to maintain five milligrams per liter of D.O. in this waterbody.
The TMDL will actually outline all the different components, the wasteload allocations, the
load allocations and a margin of safety in the plan. So you can see how all the pieces fit
together. It's very difficult for somebody to come in and say, "Well, our TMDL is five
milligrams per liter and it will never change. So we have a TMDL for that waterbody. We
don't ever need to look at it." The problem is our waterbodies are continually changing. Our
loadings are continually changing. The activities and management activities in a watershed
are continually changing. And our TMDL should be something that we come back and look
at. How does this particular activity fit in? If it comes in at this tributary, is it going to
impact the water quality standards and make it so we won't maintain water quality standards?
Or if it was to come in at this other tributary, would it be all right? These are the types of
things we want to see.
As I talk about TMDL's, a waterbody can have more than one TMDL on it. It can have a
TMDL for copper. It can have a TMDL for dissolved oxygen. It can also have a TMDL for
habitat, such as a riffle pool ratio. A waterbody can have a number of different TMDL's.
What we're trying to stress here is that you, basically, look at the different problems going
on in a waterbody and then prioritize which ones need to be looked at first, and go ahead and
try to solve these problems.
Some of the other problems we have when we establish TMDL's, is how are the loads
allocated? Who has the authority to allocate loads within a TMDL? That is a state call.
Some states have set policies and other states are a little more flexible. But the way it boils
down is that EPA cannot come in and say, "This industry receives this many pounds of a
pollutant and this activity in this watershed gets this many." That is a state call. That's
something that's done hi the TMDL and that's why the TMDL needs to be developed in a
local atmosphere with the local state agencies and local community involved.
Now, as we talk about TMDL's, you see how some of these steps fit right in with the problem
solving process. We contain a quantifiable measurable target. That's where we're identifying
our problem, setting our target, and our problem solving process. It specifies load reductions.
That's where we're determining what needs to be done in the waterbody. We figured out
what's going on and what needs to be done to meet that particular water quality standard.
Then we include some type of an implementation plan. What type of activities are necessary
for the waterbody to maintain the water quality standards that we're trying to protect. In
addition, we don't always have a good handle on the process that are going on in these
waterbodies. We may think that if we implement this activity or this management strategy that
we may reduce the load. However, the only way we're going to know is to go back out and
Page 50
-------
monitor, and monitor appropriately. If we're looking at habitat, we go back and look at the
habitat. Chemical water quality data won't always give us the answer. Whatever we're trying
to solve, we need to go back out and look at that particular area.
As I said just a second ago, we don't understand all the processes going on in the streams and
systems we're working with. So what we've asked people to do is make their best judgement.
This is what we're calling the phased approach. Use the best available information and data
that you have at this time. Go ahead and come up with a TMDL, allocating the different loads
to the different activities and point source discharges. After you do that, go ahead and
implement with the understanding that we're just going to see what's going on and see the
response of the system. Then, if we need to modify, go back through the process again and
modify it. It's an iterative process.
One of the questions that's commonly asked is if we do a phased approach TMDL, can we just
implement new permit limits on our point sources? Is that a phased approach? Well, if your
TMDL basically states that your main contributor is a point source and all you need to do is
put new limits on that particular point source and you'll meet your goal or your standard,
that's not a problem. But if your TMDL suggests you need to do some type of control
strategy on both point and nonpoint, the phased approach means you do both point and
nonpoint.
Now the schedule part is kind of interesting in that typically when we're looking at wasteload
allocations, after the TMDL's developed, the limits go into a water quality management plan.
Whenever the permit comes up for renewal, that's when the limits are put into the permit.
However, for nonpoint source, the TMDL, recommends some type of control strategy. We
recommend that you include some type of schedule for implementation. We understand that
the systems aren't going to respond next week. It's going to take a long time to get the
cooperation of the particular landowners, the different activities that are going on, and the
different groups that perform those activities. What we need is some idea from the people
who are proposing the TMDL as to the time frame to meet water quality standards.
In summary, when I talk about the TMDL process, I basically am talking about solving a
water quality problem. You identify the problem through the 303(d) list process that each
state does every two years. After you identify the waterbodies that have problems, you go out
and figure out what's going on in that waterbody. Then you develop some type of a strategy
to bring the waterbody back into compliance. This is basically the TMDL process. The
TMDL is a planning tool to meet the water quality standards in the stream.
Russell Dutnell will give us a presentation here on some work that he's been doing on the
Grand Lake Watershed. I met Russell a few years ago. He was working for the Oklahoma
Department of Environmental Quality. And since then, he has moved over to work with
Page 51
-------
Oklahoma Conservation Commission. Russell has a Bachelor's Degree in Mechanical
Engineering and we've talked many times about how he got hooked up in water quality
modeling. But since then, he is pursuing a Master's Degree in Environmental Engineering
or Civil Engineering trying to get a better idea and understanding of some of the things that
we're trying to deal with on a daily basis.
Speaker: Russell Dutnell, Environment Engineer/Water Quality Modeler, Oklahoma
Conservation Commission; Oklahoma City, OK
I'm going to talk about some work that we're doing up in Oklahoma on the Grand Lake. The
effort is to develop a Grand Lake Basin Management Plan, and in order to do that, we've
taken a phased approach to develop a TMDL. In the first phase we're trying to identify the
critical areas for future work and eventual implementation. It's a joint project between us at
the Oklahoma Conservation Commission and Oklahoma State University, funded mostly by
EPA.
Grand Lake is in Northeast Oklahoma in Mays County. One of the most interesting things
about it to me is it has the longest multiple arch dam in the world. It was built in 1940 at a
cost of just under $29 million, which is really a bargain if you've ever seen the dam. The lake
was constructed for flood control and recreation and hydropower with a shore length of 1,300
miles and quite a large drainage area of just over 10,000 square miles.
I have some pictures of the lake showing the bridge over on the north side of it coming over
the Neosho River. As I said, the lake is used for recreation. Sailing is popular on the lake,
as well are fishing, water skiing, and boating. The Grand Lake basin covers four states:
Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Kansas with the largest area occurring in Kansas. The
stream systems that feed the basin consist of the Spring River coming out of Missouri, in the
light orange, and the Neosho River coming out of Kansas, the Elk River that comes out of
Kansas mostly, but with some contribution from Arkansas, and then the Grand Lake Basin
itself, which is in Northeast Oklahoma.
The main objective of the project is to maintain or improve the water quality in Grand Lake.
Because that is quite a large objective, we needed to focus that a little bit. So the problem that
we're currently working on is deteriorated water quality in the lake, basically, as applies to
accelerated eutrophication or algal growth. Some previous work has indicated that the algae
growth in the lake is limited by phosphorous, so at this point we're keying our work on
phosphorous. That doesn't mean in the future we won't consider other parameters as well,
but at this time we're just looking at phosphorous. So we're taking the phase TMDL
approach.
Page 52
-------
As Troy pointed out earlier, all this is based on water quality standards and Oklahoma, like
many other states, does not have a phosphorous standard. So what we're doing is looking at
a narrative criteria, basically the nuisance condition. We have a provision that says that
waters can't be in a nuisance condition, and we^onsider accelerated eutrophicationte^ea
nuisance condition. The reason we looked at the phased TMDL approach is because, as Troy
said, it's a logical problem solving process. We're looking at all phosphorous sources, point
and nonpoint. The good thing about a phased TMDL is you can implement or take action
after the initial assessment. As you refine your TMDL, those actions may be modified, but
it's a process that you can start working now rather than putting it off until the science dictates
what you really need to do. The Phased TMDL approach also requires continuing assessment
and additional implementation if necessary.
So for the first Phase of the TMDL, work was done by Dan Storm, mostly, with some help
from the geography department—Daved Waites and graduate assistants. What they did is take
the whole basin and use geographical information systems. They determined land use, soil
types, and digital elevations hi the area. They put that into a GIS system and came up with
a sub-basin total phosphorous load from the nonpoint sources.
Again, this is the way they subdivided the basin to do the work. It really needs no further
explanation. So they got the land use classifications in it. Again, the land uses on the
previous slide were changed from this AVHLRR land use images, and the elevation maps
from the basin showing the elevation gains/losses. That's just an elevation and a loss. I
mostly put these in because I thought they were so pretty. I like looking at them. What they
came up with was the main phosphorous loading by watershed in the basin, and as you can
see, most of the sources—or the largest source is coming from right here in the southwest
quarter of Missouri and the southeast quadrant of Kansas, with some other sources coming
from down here and very minor in Arkansas.
What I did next is go through and do an assessment of all the point sources hi the basin and
added that to the GIS database; summed up the loading from both the point sources and
nonpoint sources; you could see the nonpoint source loadings are almost 80% and the point
sources contribute 20% of the almost 20,000 pounds per day of loading. That isn't the
loading to the lake. That is just the loadings coming from these sources at this point.
Breaking the loadings down by basin, you can see that Basin 8 & 9, which represent Spring
River, 1 through 4 is up in the upper end of the Neosho River. The outfall from Basin 4,
basically, is Lake John Redman Reservoir. Basin 5, 6, 7 are the lower Neosho. Basin 8 &
9 is the Spring River. Basin 10 is the Elk River. Basin 11 is just the Grand Lake Basin itself,
where water doesn't flow into any of those rivers, but flows directly to the Grand Lake.
Breaking the loadings up by point and nonpoint source, you can see that nonpoint source is
the dominant loading as the pie chart earlier indicated. The most striking feature to me is the
Page 53
-------
nonpoint source in Basin 9 and the Spring River is higher than any of the total loadings from
any of the other basins, and the point source loadings are significantly larger. It probably
would be more meaningful to have this on an aerial basis. That wasn't done. But the areas
in each of these basins are fairly consistent. There is some variation between it, but not the
significance that you see there.
So taking this point source and nonpoint source information, the output which was the
nonpoint source phosphorous loads. We combined the point source loads. We established
kinetic rates and hydraulic characteristics to do some water quality modeling to see what the
fate in transport of the phosphorous being delivered to the system was and how much of that
would end up in the lake. What we did is we started with the Qual-2E iterations, which many
of you are familiar with, and since we weren't addressing some of these other parameters right
now, we just concentrated on phosphorous. We took these phosphorous routines that are hi
here that address these factors: alga respiration rate, the growth of the algae, the settling of
the algae, any source of phosphorous that might be in the sediments or benthos, and organic
phosphorous settling rate, the decay rate in the phosphorous, and the phosphorous content of
the algae itself. I developed a spreadsheet with that iteration and the way the spreadsheet
functions is you'll take the output from the GIS that tell you about the point source and
nonpoint source loadings, and then each of these is a sub-basin, and each one is a separate
spreadsheet file, using Quatro-Pro. Basin 6 is an 8-meg file. This is the flow from the basin.
As I said, Dan Storm did the nonpoint source loading but those nonpoint source loadings did
not include flow. So the flows came from USGS.
So all that information was funneled into each basin. Basin 5, the output from Basin 5 goes
into 6, from 6 goes to 7, and then 7 goes to Grand, Basin 8 goes to 9 and down, Basin 10 just
goes straight into Grand, and Basin 11 goes into Grand. No further explanation is required
on that.
The results of all that are quite amazing in that I didn't really see what I expected at the
initiation of the project. This graph is somewhat difficult to understand. But what each one
of these individual bars represents is the loading, in this case, if the basin loading was reduced
by 0%. So this is Basin 1 through 4, if you don't reduce it, you get 100% of the loading to
the lake. Same with each one of those. On the other extreme, this pink one over here is if
you reduce the loadings in every single basin by 50%, you get approximately a 50% reduction
to the load to the lake, which is what you would expect. Coming across the other way, okay,
if you reduce the loads in Basin 1 through 4 by up to 50%, you can see, you don't see that
much reduction, and that's if you do Basin 5, that's if you do Basin 6, that's if you do Basin
7, and that's if you reduce the phosphorous loadings in the Neosho and every basin by 50%.
Well, that's not really attainable, because when you come back to these basins 1 through 4,
that's up above John Redman Reservoir, which we don't really have any control of. One is
its a stream model. We didn't really take into effect what was happening in the lakes, so for
Page 54
-------
that upper end, we just took what was coming out of the lake, the data that happened there and
was coming out. So we can't really address those issues.
If you look at Basin 40 & tt, whicfcare right here, mat' & Basin U, Basin -10-,- you 4on' t really
see that much reduction in the loading to the lake even if you reduce the loadings to those
basins by 50%. Where you do see some fair amount of reduction is if you start targeting
Basins 8 & 9, which are the Spring River. So for the 1st Phase of what we are planning to
do is take all this information, come up with a total phosphorous loading, and hopefully
eventually establish a phosphorous TMDL with that.
So what's next? We think we need to do more monitoring. The data availability is very
limited for phosphorous. From the wastewater treatment facilities, none of the facilities have
phosphorous limits, so they don't do any monitoring for phosphorous. So we don't have any
idea what loadings are actually coming out of those plants. For the study I used, National
Eutrophication Study results, as loadings for the different facilities. We also need in-stream
monitoring data, because there really isn't enough data existing to calibrate a model. So the
model that we have run so far to this date is just based on textbook values for the kinetic rates
and things of those sorts.
Phase II modeling—we need to implement to get a better idea of what's happening in the basin,
to better assess the loads, and the system response to those loads. We think one thing that
should come out of that is a phosphate ban based on the fact that even though the point source
loadings are only 20% of the loading to the lake, if you implement phosphate ban, again using
NES results, you get about a 7% reduction in the total phosphorous to the lake. This is quite
significant considering the whole point source loadings are only 20% to begin with. Another
thing we recommend is that phosphorous limits be set on current dischargers. It might be a
little preliminary at this time, but I feel the minimum we should do is at least monitor those
facilities for a year and maybe implement limits based on what they're currently discharging
and consider reducing those loads if future work shows that that's necessary. Again, the work
should focus on the Spring River.
The second phase that we envisioned at the onset of the program was to link GIS and water
quality modeling work. We're currently involved in a project with some people out of
Temple, Texas that are using the SWAT model, have linked the Qual-2 iterations inside of
SWAT and it all works within the GIS framework, and eventually this will result in a TMDL
for the basin.
And the next step, of course, is to go fishing, and we hope to preserve the lake for future
generations. And an added benefit of protecting the lake that isn't discussed very often is that
downstream sources will also be protected so you can continue to have beautiful sites like this.
Page 55
-------
Troy Hill:
Our next presenter will be Mike Waldon. Mike is a professor at the University of
Southwestern Louisiana, the Department of Civil Engineering Center for Louisiana and Water
Studies. Mike will be talking about some work he's done with bacteria fecal coliform which
is very interesting because a lot of people come up with waterbodies on their 303(d) lists that
have fecal problems. So Mike will share with you some data and information he's collected
on the Tangipahoa River.
In addition, Mike has quite a bit of experience behind him. Mike received a Bachelor of
Science in Bio-Medical Engineering in 1970. In 1972, he received his Master's in Bio-
Engineering and his Ph.D. in Systems Engineering in 1979. I know from looking back
through all the records that we have as far as modeling and survey activities in Louisiana,
Mike's name is always associated in one way or another with them. Mike has a lot of
knowledge about this area that we're visiting today and I think you'll learn some interesting
things from what he's going to present. Mike.
Speaker: Mike Waldon, Associate Professor-Research, University of Southwestern
Louisiana; Baton Rouge, LA
Thank you, Troy. Today I'm discussing the Tangipahoa River, which we heard a little bit
about this morning in the earlier session. Tangipahoa is a beautiful river. We think it's
especially beautiful here in Louisiana because we have so few rivers that really have good flow
and slopes. The Tangipahoa is a place where you can actually go ride in a tube and go down
river and flow along and you don't have to paddle too much. It's widely used for recreation.
It's captured in this picture that I pulled out of a DEQ publication. The caption says "The
Tangipahoa River was one popular recreation site for tubing, swimming, and other activities
as seen here in 1981." There are many activities on the Tangipahoa River. The impact of
some of those activities have been studied by us at the Center for Inland Water Studies at the
University of Southwestern Louisiana. Elizabeth Smythe, who is the co-presenter today, was
unable to attend today. Other members of our team include Dr. Paul Richards, head of our
center, Max Hebel and Madeline Rogers, our research associates who have done a lot of the
real hard effort to get this work done, and Gianna Cothren who was a summer student that
interned with us a couple of summers ago, who actually did the QUAL2-E model that I'm
going to mention as part of the work that we've done. In addition to this, I would really be
remiss in just saying this is the entire cast of characters who have worked on the Tangipahoa
River. In fact, there have been many people involved with the Tangipahoa and in solving
problems on the Tangipahoa. Faculty from Southeastern Louisiana University, a faculty
member from the Tulane School of Health, Dr. Ann Anderson, many citizens, and certainly
DEQ personnel have worked extensively here.
Page 56
-------
The work that we have done has been funded by the DEQ and EPA through grants to the DEQ
and to the Center. I will say, however, one of the things about asking a professor to talk is
that he can say things that nobody gets blamed for except him. So whatever I say today is
really my opinion and even my associates here should not share the blame.
The Tangipahoa River is located in the Lake Pontchartrain basin on the north lake shore. It's
a perennial river. It has about 1,000 CFS as an average flow and a median flow of 638 CFS.
So it maintains a pretty good flow for a little river, and it is perennial, so you can go there
anytime and see good flow. The land use is primarily agriculture, forests, and wetlands.
Very little urban area is in the Tangipahoa drainage, and there are only a few small
dischargers. You may have seen on a map the City of Hammond, however it is slightly
outside the watershed. So the only point source discharges are in the small towns like Amite
and Independence, a total of about 11 point source discharges.
Before 1987, there were 200,000 recreational users each year who were using the river.
Another use is waste assimilation for 242 dairy farms in the Tangipahoa Basin, and a cow
basically makes about two and half times as much fecal coliform every day as a person. So
when you consider a couple hundred cows on a couple hundred farms, they make far more
fecal coliform than the people in the very rural watershed.
Agriculture and forestry are the two major land uses. In the northern part of the basin you
would find a more dairy use. Just to show you what people think of when they think of
Tangipahoa Parish, this is a soil survey, and right on the cover they've got pictures of cows.
You think of the dairy industry when you think of Tangipahoa Parish as well as the
Tangipahoa River. We also think it's a beautiful place to canoe.
The problem: at times there are excessive levels of fecal coliform bacteria in the river.
Excessive in terms of current water quality criteria which is approximately, 200 fecal
coliforms per 100 milliliters as a geometric mean. So 200 is a good number to keep in mind.
This problem came to the public's attention in 1987. A student at Southeastern Louisiana
University, SLU, at Hammond, did her Master's Thesis and took samples from the
Tangipahoa River and found that there were elevated levels of fecal coliform in the river. The
Girl Scouts have a camp on the River, and questioned whether it is safe to swim in the River.
They also asked DEQ, "What are you doing about it?" So what happened in 1987 is the
Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) along with the Department of Health and
Hospitals (DHH) issued a joint advisory which said, "No, it is probably not safe to swim here.
You are advised that it may be a hazard to your health to swim in this river." This effectively
shut down all the primary contact recreational uses on the river. Shutting down all those little
Mom and Pop operations that were renting canoes and inner tubes to play in the river.
Page 57
-------
Since then, a lot of action happened at DEQ, at other agencies, and with other investigators.
What I'm going to talk about today is what happened among the people that I have worked
with, especially the Engineering Section of the DEQ Office of Water Resources. Also, there's
a nonpoint source pollution program which has done work, so you could almost say that
there's another half to this story. Jan Boydstun is going to be giving a talk tomorrow. She's
going to talk some more about the implementation of BMP's in the Tangipahoa. But what I'm
going to talk about today is the approach that we used in looking at the problem.
You know, one of the things that I was thinking as Troy was doing his presentation is that you
can logically think the TMDL process in these steps, but in practice — at least here at our
agency and I think probably in most ~ it all kind of happens in one big mixed up mess with
lots of different groups working the different parts. For example, some DEQ surveillance
personnel said, "I'll bet if we visited those sewage plants more often, they'd be sure to always
keep their chlorination operating." It was suspected that the sewage plants were often not
properly disinfecting. Inspections were performed and almost immediately water quality
probably unproved.
A milking parlor is also called a dairy barn. It is the building you think of when you think
of a dairy farm. The cows are sent in there twice a day for their milk. First the cows are
washed to remove manure or whatever material that might be on the cow. The cow would
also do what a cow does everywhere, lay manure down all over the place. So at the end of
the milking operation, they wash off the concrete stands and the really nasty looking water is
discharged. Previously the way the farmers were told to do it was to build your dairy barn
near a stream and wash the waste into the stream. Today, we hope that there will be some
kind of treatment that will occur prior to discharge.
We had some initial bacterial monitoring studies, especially at three DEQ monitoring sites on
the Tanguipahoa River. We have emphasized the downstream site. Recreational use is
heaviest near that site. We developed a GIS. It located where the point source discharges and
the dairy milking facilities were located. We selected a specific sub-basin for intensive study.
That was the Big Creek sub-basin. Finally, after all that was done, we planned for what we
thought we needed-extended monitoring, modeling, and TMDL development for the entire
basin.
Let me start with the initial statistical study that we did. One of the first things that I think
anybody would do when they look at a problem like this is say, "Well, let's get all the data
together, put it in the computer, and see what correlates with what." So here are correlation
coefficients between fecal coliform and stream discharge.
The USGS monitors stream flow or discharge daily at exactly the same location as our
downstream DEQ monitoring site, which is monitored monthly for fecal coliforms. Here we
Page 58
-------
find that there's a very high and significant correlation between stream discharge and fecal
coliform levels. There's a positive correlation. We also got a very long period of record from
a whole group of climate stations or weather station data from around the basin. We were
able {^construct what's called^ Thornthwaithe-Mather Water Budget, wnietis actually*very
simple runoff model and soil moisture storage model, which we found very useful in nonpoint
source modeling. It's very useful because it's a very simple model. It doesn't need hourly
data. It doesn't use a lot of complex information. It doesn't always give you really good
quantitative results. But it seems to give us results that are good enough for many of our
purposes. The correlation coefficient between Tangipahoa River discharge and fecal coliform
levels was 0.58, and 0.65 between calculated runoff and fecal coliform level.
When we correlated fecal coliform with total soil moisture storage, we found that coliforms
are somewhat correlated with total soil moisture and storage, but very highly correlated with
runoff. More highly correlated with runoff calculated from a water budget model than it was
to the stream flow, and we thought that was a clue also. Because it suggests that it's not just
the amount of water that's coming down the stream, but the water running off the land surface
that's leading to the high levels of coliform bacteria. Also there was a slight negative
correlation to temperature which is expected. Fecal coliform disappear more rapidly—at least
according to the literature—hi higher temperature water.
This is a graph of fecal coliform level. This is actually the common log of fecal coliforms
versus the log of discharge in the stream. You can see that, indeed, as discharge goes up,
fecal coliform appears to go up. When we looked at the log of fecal coliforms versus the
runoff calculated from the water budget model, which is based on temperature and
precipitation data, you can see that there's even a better correlation here between the amount
of runoff and the coliform data. Based on the water budget, we classified daily conditions.
We said that anytime the water temperature is below 20 degrees, we'll call it cool. When the
water is above 20 degrees, we'll call it warm. Now that's for two reasons. One is that's
about median temperature of the waters and that splits our data in half. But also and mostly,
people don't do recreation when the water is colder than 20 degrees. So it seems like a good
spot to split the data.
We also looked at what we called dry days and wet days. Water budget runoff continues to
happen after the rainfall has stopped and the runoff continues sometimes for a few days,
sometimes for a little longer, and what makes the difference there is how moist the soil is and
how much soil moisture you have as an antecedent condition to the rainfall. And also, what
determines it is how much evapotranspiration occurs. That's loosing water up back into the
atmosphere and in warm weather, you get a lot more evapotranspiration, so runoff doesn't last
as long as it does in cool weather. Dry is when the water budget calculates zero runoff. Wet
is defined as when we calculate that there is some runoff.
Page 59
-------
What we found is that with all the data you get a geometric mean of 694 colonies per 100 ML.
694, as you know, that's quite a bit over 200. But when you divide the data into cool and
warm, you get considerably more in cool weather than you do in warm weather. This is
logical because of the two things that I just mentioned here. The extra evapotranspiration
prevents runoff in warm weather, and because the disappearance rate is higher in warm
weather.
Another thing you can look at is the coefficient of variation. That is the ratio of standard
deviation divided by the mean value. The coefficient of variation with all the data is 355 %.
Now that's very important to us if we're designing a monitoring program. Because the power
of the statistical test is how good it is at seeing a change. The power of the statistical test is
often very much related to the coefficient of variation. So if you can find a way to decrease
the variability of your data, you can increase the power of your statistics. And we see here
that when we do divide the data up by classes, and here we've got it divided down to four
classes, the coefficient of variation is greatly reduced. Which means that if one of our
purposes is to monitor and see how much of a reduction we've made when we implement
BMP's or we implement other important actions, if you will take into account this
classification, you should be able to have a much more powerful statistical test that can
actually and specifically see the changes that are happening. If you just take all the data
together, I can guarantee you there's going to be so much variation that you're going to need
many, many, many more years of data to look at! So it's very helpful to be able to divide
your data up as we did here.
And finally, a point that I would make is that we can see that the geometric mean in the dry,
warm weather is only 137. Actually, quite well within the water quality criteria. So if I was
thinking that this is a good criteria for determining when to go swimming, I would say as long
as it's warm~you know, and I don't usually swim when it's cold~as long as it's warm and the
stream's down, it's probably pretty safe. Which is~I thought interesting—exactly what we
were told before the study began. A local user said, "Well, this is what my daddy always told
me."
This is the chronological graph of all the data that we have on fecal coliforms from 1978 to
1992. Here's the data that's just from the warm and dry period. You can see that a lot of the
variability (this is logged, so the y-axis this is 1,000, 10,000, 100,000 and so on) has gone
away. Then in warm and wet weather, we catch a lot of high fecal coliform. So we feel that
this really gives us a lot of clues about what's going on out in the basin.
A second project was a GIS development. In our GIS development, we set up a database of
all the dairy farms, including the name of the dairy farm, and the number of animals that were
on the farm as of the time of the study. This database is all geographically referenced. On
Page 60
-------
our map each dairy farm has a number over it, the map I.D. that leads back into the database.
You can see from the map that there are a lot of dairy farmers in the Tangipahoa Basin.
Big Creek is the sub-bashvia which we are 4oing our specM^tudies. We wanted 4a determine
in the sub-basin what was the actual impact of the BMP's in reducing the loading from the
dairy parlors by having a no discharge lagoons. Also, we wanted to see where the other
coliform bacteria were coming from in this basin. We chose Big Creek because there are no
point sources. There are some people that live there, but they're mostly just the farmers who
live on the farms and a few small schools and such. It's a very, very rural area. Big Creek
is also a very pretty stream. We wanted to develop an uncalibrated model to help us to
understand what's going on here. We also wanted to make this a prototype that could help
us test the way that we hoped in the future to build models of the whole Tangipahoa
watershed. We hope that the results from this will apply to our future Tangipahoa work.
In 1992-93, we went out and did all these different studies just in the Big Creek watershed.
This gives you an idea of the kind of work we're going to have to do to do the whole
watershed of the Tangipahoa River. Although, we hope that we can transfer some of these
results and we won't have to do this much in every little watershed. But it took a lot of work
to just do this preliminary work in the Big Creek Watershed.
The last study which I will present is located in Greensburg, and is not even in the Tangipahoa
Basin. This study was done at the LSU experimental dairy farm. The results I mentioned this
morning. We sampled the runoff that comes off the dairy farm that goes into their no
discharge treatment pond. So that's what we used to characterize the load going into streams
without BMP's. We also used our GIS to give us a list of all of the farms, and there were 38
dairy farms in this watershed. One of the things that we had to do was develop a way of
estimating the time-of-travel of water in the streams in the Tangipahoa River and Big Creek
basins. This is our calculated velocity versus our observed velocity using dye tests. You can
see that it doesn't do too badly, especially apparently at lower velocities, and I rationalize this
by saying that maybe at higher velocity the water is coming downstream pretty quickly and
it just won't matter that much whether it's a foot per second or a foot and a half per second.
That's very rough. We may need to do a lot more work on hydrology and time-of-travel in
the future.
We also looked at monitoring data that was available on Big Creek, and here are some of the
monitoring data that are available. One problem that we ran into here is that this is in part
most probable number (MPN) data. The first data that we used is MPN of fecal coliforms.
Those data tend to be incredibly variable by themselves. If you took two samples and ran
MPN on them — on two samples out of the same waterbody, you likely will find numbers that
are different by a factor of two. So there's a lot of variability that's inherent in the method.
The first work, we're graphing on a log scale here, so this is going from 100,000 at the top.
Page 61
-------
You can see, in general, when there's high flow in Big Creek, the station in Big Creek which
is at the bottom of our study area, MPN center around about 10,000 and at low flow, you get
a very great variability in value. At low flow, you can actually get some relatively low
values, but you can also get some high values. In fact, some of our highest values are at low
flow.
Also, when we looked at our studies looking at coliform levels coming off the different areas,
the pasture land at base flow had concentrations around 270, which were just above the
criterion. When there was runoff, typical numbers were 13,000, which is way above 200.
We were fortunate that there's a state wildlife preserve right there in the Big Creek Basin, and
coming off the wildlife preserve there's a little stream that just comes out of the wildlife
preserve and doesn't drain anything else. At base flow conditions, we found it down around
120. But when you get a real rainstorm, based on limited data, we estimated that the typical
value was about 12,000 fecal coliforms per 100 ML coming off the wildlife preserve. From
this we conclude that because we have criteria which are 200 per 100 ML, if the whole basin
was transformed into a wildlife area, we would observe counts of about 12,000. This is a
problem in doing a TMDL. If we went back to the most pristine land use, which I would say
would be that wildlife management area, we're not going to meet that criteria during rainfall
runoff. We need to decide, based on this, if criteria should be applied during rainfall runoff,
or if somehow the criteria need to be made more appropriate.
Based on those results, we estimated parameter values for a QUAL2-E model of the Big Creek
Watershed. The model was run at two different water temperatures, 15 degrees and 25
degrees. Estimated that the water coming off the milking parlors has 4,400,000 colonies per
100 ML in that water coming off the milking parlors. We estimated a total CFS per cow
passing through the milking parlors. The results are plotted against stream miles measured
upstream. At the upstream end, there's very little flow, very little dilution. As you get
further downstream, there's tune for the bacteria to die and there's also pollution of further
downstream dairy parlors and so we find that with no runoff and no BMP's these are the
model projections. But with BMP's and under the same temperature conditions and no runoff,
the model projects that concentrations are actually going to be very low.
With 1,100 CFS runoff, which is a pretty big flow in Big Creek, the model projects that it will
have higher numbers up at the head waters. With runoff numbers around 10,000 are
projected. That's not surprising because that's near the 13,000 which runs off pasture land.
With the BMP's present, this is what we project it would look like. We project that with no
discharge lagoons in place, we will see greatly reduced levels of coliform in Big Creek at low
flow. However, during periods of runoff we project little improvement will result from this
BMP.
Page 62
-------
All this work has led us to planning for what we want to do next. We want to extend the
monitoring on the Tangipahoa River to an event driven of monitoring design. Just as we do
in dissolved oxygen TMDL intensive surveys, we want to do some intensive studies on the
Tangipahoa Basin^dur4ng^Qmestorm^v£nts^^4uring^some base flow events. Right now
while we've got years and years of data from three stations, that's really not appropriate for
model calibration. We need to do some different kinds of studies, and we just need two or
three of those to be able to set a model up that will tell us a lot more about the system.
We need to have a much better understanding of how our streams flow and under dry
conditions. One of the reasons that we may be seeing some very low numbers at low flow,
may be because there's so much evaporation that many of the intermittent streams that the
dairy milking parlors are discharging to actually are dry in dry weather. That's important.
It's very important to our model. That means that essentially in very dry weather it's like
those milking parlors weren't there, because they would wash off the pads, the water would
dry up and it would never go anywhere. It never got down to our station, and that's probably
the reason we were seeing very low numbers as well as very high numbers at low runoff. We
need to have a much better understanding of that. One of the things that the model showed
us is the fact that "Oh, here's something that I need to know".
We want to go to a dynamic model. We need to consider the various sources of bacteria, and
we need to consider in our TMDL the temperature, rainfall, and runoff. Normally, I haven't
considered temperature and rainfall hi previous work on TMDL's. That modeling can also
be a valuable tool for improving the statistical design and the power of statistical studies and
monitoring throughout the BMP and TMDL development. Fecal coliform modeling can
provide management information that we need to better manage our systems.
We need to look at additional BMP's, perhaps or pasture land, and try to look at how we
might be able to reduce coliform levels during runoff. Perhaps some small weirs in the
intermittent streams that would delay the flow might be an answer. Maybe we need to put
more beavers in the stream and let them make ponds in some of those intermittent streams.
There must be some answers.
But also, we need appropriate fecal coliform criteria or a new and more appropriate
interpretation of the existing criteria. Obviously, if the wildlife management land has 12,000
during a rain storm, you're just not going to be able to meet 200 in the stream.
Nationally, we also need to look at coliform criteria itself. The coliform criteria was
developed based on human sewage contamination of lakes and swimming areas. Now we're
applying them to storm water runoff in agricultural areas and rivers. There just is no
epidemiological evidence that coliform bacteria levels are an indicator of health problems or
risks in the stream. We need epidemiological studies to determine if there are health risks
Page 63
-------
related to increased fecal coliform. We have high coliform levels due to runoff from
agricultural and wildlife areas. Certainly you can talk to farmers who tell you, "Well, I've
been wading in this stuff for years and it hasn't made me sick." On the other hand, there are
definitely diseases related to animal waste. Those are well established too. This is national —
states can't do this. EPA should pick up the ball here and do the epidemiological studies
needed. We need to establish a scientific basis for the criteria.
Troy Hill:
Thank you, Mike. Do you have any questions for Mike?
Question:
On segregating the storms, I've done some studies in the Austin area and we found something
similar — that similar segregations of the data, and you're right. I mean, undeveloped areas j
with no agriculture or anything would still have high fecal coliform. But one of the things I !
was concerned with, especially in your case, where maybe it's a smaller storm where maybe
you wouldn't even generate runoff from that wildlife management area, but maybe a half inch,
you know, three-quarter inch storm might generate runoff from the feedlot from the dairy
farm, not the management area. Then you would be getting an extra source there. That
maybe there's really a three-step segregation where you go base flow, small storm, large
storm, and you may find a bigger difference between the storms.
Mike Waldon:
That might be. We really need to understand better how much rain it takes to get the
intermittent streams flowing, and it may be different in an estuary than in a pasture land.
Comment:
I mean, if there's five inches of rainfall, you shouldn't be swimming in there. It's dangerous
to swim in there anyway. So it probably doesn't make a whole lot of difference. Those small
storms where maybe somebody could be swimming. You know, you may be getting runoff
from those dairies there.
Troy Hill:
We invite you to come back to second session. There will be some similar interesting topics
discussed. If you have any questions for any of the presenters, come up and ask them during
the break. Thank you.
Page 64
-------
Addressing (Ground Water in the Watershed Approach (1:00-2:30PM)
Moderator: Patty—Senna-,- Comprehensive Ground Water Protection Program
Coordinator, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 6; Dallas,
Texas
This afternoon we'll be discussing ground water in the Watershed Approach. Presently,
ground water fits into the watershed protection approach when the quality of ground water
contributes to the overall condition of a watershed, and may serve as a transport medium for
potential contaminants. Now it didn't seem like, in this morning's session, that very many
people understood that ground water was part of a watershed. You don't take ground water
into consideration very much when you hike up a hill and then hike back down again. But
thanks to Myron, he actually brought ground water into the watershed and he's been doing a
good job of remembering that ground water is down there.
There is a natural give and take between surface and ground water. An exchange, that in
many cases, forms a rhythm which responds to the climatic conditions. In other words,
during periods of high rainfall, water enters the ground, and during dry periods, water is given
back to the surface. The transfer of contaminated water between surface and sub-surface
environments is most obvious in the areas where the natural materials are highly permeable,
like the cavernous limestone areas of the Edwards Aquifer. In the Edwards, water may flow
back and forth between the surface and sub-surface several times. For those of us who don't
live in that area, it's hard to tell which is which.
To effectively address ground water in a watershed, we need to first delineate the boundaries,
and some of the people talked about that in this morning's session, to establish a watershed
management unit. If ground water provides a significant flow contribution to surface water
within a proposed unit, then the ground water recharge area should be defined and included
within the watershed unit. If the water sediments and dissolved materials in a watershed dram
to an aquifer, the aquifer and recharge area should be included in the designated watershed
protection unit.
Bob Perciasepe, Assistant Administrator for Water of EPA, said hi order to be comprehensive,
the watershed approach requires consideration of all environmental concerns including needs
to protect public health-drinking water, critical habitat (wetlands), biological integrity, surface
water, and ground water. Mr. Perciasepe recognizes that ground water is a critical part of any
watershed. Ground water/surface water interaction should be taken into consideration when
delineating these watershed management units, deferring to wellhead protection areas and
aquifer recharge areas when appropriate.
Page 65
-------
Dr. Elaine Reely, on our panel, will discuss the ground water/surface water interaction as it
occurred in the community of Roosevelt, Oklahoma. David Terry, from TNRCC, will discuss
the wellhead protection approach in Texas. As Myron alluded to this morning, nationally on
the average, 40% of the stream flow is from ground water. In some parts of the country, most
of the year, nearly all of the stream flow is from ground water. Dr. Jordan will discuss this j
relationship and how you can evaluate this using DRASTIC mapping. DRASTIC mapping, j
as some of you know, can be a valuable tool in analyzing ground water contaminants such as j
pesticides and their effect on ground water in a given watershed. In an attempt to include }
ground water activities into the watershed approach, TNRCC has been gathering ground water
data in the Rio Grande Basin and incorporating that into a geographic information system or
GIS. They're also looking at the potential contaminant sources in that area, and given the size
of the Rio Grande Basin, that's no small task. Steve Musick will tell us about that, in a few
moments, and about their new initiative Watershed Texas.
This afternoon we'll be discussing all these issues. So let's get started. We'll hear from each
of our speakers and then we'll open the floor to questions and discussion. Our first speaker
is Dr. Wayne Jordan. Dr. Jordan is Director of the Texas Water Resource Institute located
on the main campus of Texas A&M University in College Station. He received his B.S. and
M.S. degree from the University of Illinois and a Ph.D. from the University of California at
Davis. He's been with Texas A&M since 1968 in a variety of teaching, research and
administrative positions. He was Resident Director of the Blackland Resource Center in
Temple, Texas before moving to College Station in 1984 to assume the Director's role with
the Institute. Dr. Jordan is a Fellow of the Crop Science Society of America and the
American Society of Agronomy. In 1983, he received the Deputy Chancellor's Award for
Distinguished Performance in Research for the Texas A&M University System. His current
activities involve planning, implementation, and evaluation of water research programs for the
Institute and Texas Agricultural Experiment Station. Dr. Jordan.
Speaker: Dr. Wayne Jordan, Director, Texas Water Resources Institute, Texas A&M
University System; College Station, TX
Thank you Patty for the kind words of introduction. The workshop organizers asked me to share
a few thoughts with you about the difficult task of incorporating ground water into watershed
protection plans. How difficult the task can be will be illustrated using the Edwards Aquifer Region
as an example. Finally, I will use the DRASTIC map of Texas to support the need for special
consideration of alluvial aquifers adjacent to rivers and surface water bodies.
The Edwards Aquifer Region is one of the most unique water resource systems in the nation. The
Aquifer is about 180 miles long extending East from near Brackerville in Kinney County, Texas in
the West, to near Kyle in Hays County in the East. The limestone or kartic aquifer provides the sole
source of drinking water for the city of San Antonio with about 1 million residents. The Aquifer
Page 66
-------
is recharged by stream flow, springs and seeps from a 4,400 square mile area of the Edwards plateau,
known as the catchment area, organized into several major watersheds or drainage basins. Streams
and rivers arising in the catchment area flow southeastward toward the Gulf of Mexico, where they
provide iresh water inflows Jo^oipportseveral estuarine ecosystems. Qn4he way^these jdver^cross
the Balcones Fault Zone, a 1,500 square mile area of fractured and cavernous limestone exposed on
the surface allowing large quantities of water to recharge the Edwards Aquifer. Water flows
eastwardly in the Aquifer beneath surface watersheds to major discharge points comprised of wells
and springs.
Incorporation of ground water into watershed protection policies and plans for the Edwards Region
presents both technical and institutional problems. First, the legal right to divert and use surface
water differs from ground water. In Texas, surface water is property of the state while ground water
is subject to the right of capture by landowners. Separate institutions have evolved to manage
surface and ground water. River Authorities are regional governmental entities charged with
management and protection of surface waters. Underground Water Conservation Districts are
chartered separately under Texas water law and District boundaries may not follow aquifer
boundaries. This means that there is no single legal or institutional structure with responsibility for
conjunctive management of surface and ground water throughout the region. An Act passed by the
Texas Legislature in 1993 created the Edwards Aquifer Authority to consolidate aquifer management
in a single office, but the new authority still has no legal basis in dealing with surface water. As of
this date, the authority is still not a reality due to a legal challenge to the Act.
Secondly, flows in the Aquifer are rapid (by ground water standards) resulting in subsurface
interbasin transfers of large quantities of water. Both quality and quantity of water in the aquifer
are affected by activities on several surface water basins. The water is a fugitive resource
transmitting impacts of contamination rapidly away from the source. Sinkholes allow a variety of
contaminants to enter the Aquifer unaltered by the normal filtering action of soil. Since local flow
patterns are largely unknown, sources of contaminants are difficult if not impossible to identify.
Ground water emerging in distant watersheds as springflow creates opportunities for transfer of
contaminants regardless of policies and plans in the receiving basin.
Thirdly, water quality protection cannot be separated from quantity issues. As noted above, water
and contaminants are transmitted quickly to points of discharge. There is also concern that
overpumpage from the Aquifer will result hi salt water intrusion from adjacent formations. At this
time, legal authority to restrict pumpage is lacking.
While this may be a unique water resource system in Texas, karstic aquifers are widespread and
important sources of drinking water for this nation. Some of the issues cited above may be unique
impediments that Texas must overcome, but complex surface-ground water connections present
challenges for all who would incorporate ground water into watershed protection plans.
A more common example of surface-ground water interactions is one of alluvial aquifers
hydraulically connected to surface flows of rivers and streams. The hydraulic connection allows
Page 67
-------
water to flow to or from the aquifer according to river stage. Some estimates suggest that ground
water may contribute as much as 40% of dry weather or base flows of rivers. The fraction of surface
flows originating as ground water would be expected to vary widely, and estimates of local or
site-specific contributions rarely exist.
Globally, flood plains are some of the most productive agricultural regions and are farmed
intensively. Intensive farming is almost universally accompanied by applications of large quantities
of mineral nutrients and water as irrigation. These practices have led to contamination of shallow
aquifers by nutrients, especially nitrogen, and pesticides throughout the Midwest.
Hydrogeologic conditions where a high potential exists for chemicals applied to the soil surface to
leach to underlying aquifers are evaluated through EPA's DRASTIC procedure. An agricultural
DRASTIC map has been published for the state by the Texas Natural Resources Conservation
Commission (TNRCC). The map identifies river floodplains, especially in the eastern half of
Texas, as having a high potential for contamination from agricultural chemicals. While indicating
a high potential, it is important to note that this analysis says nothing about actual chemical use in
those areas. Unfortunately, there exists little direct information on site-specific agricultural
chemical use.
Incorporation of alluvial, riverine aquifers into watershed protection plans appears feasible. Some
of the same limitations noted for the Edwards Aquifer are issues here as well, especially ownership
of the water resource. Since the official ground water policy of the state is one of nondegradation,
TNRCC has the authority to protect ground water from contamination of all types. However, since
few private wells have been sampled for pesticides, especially in shallow aquifers, there is little
evidence of contamination upon which to base regulatory action.
A final point is worthy of mention. Upon discovery of chemicals in shallow, alluvial aquifers, the
presumption is usually that the surface landowner or operation is to blame. This is not necessarily
the case with those aquifers hydraulically connected to surface streams subject to flooding. High
water elevations in streams causes river water to flow into these aquifers so that the rivers
themselves may become the sources of contamination. Also, flooding may contaminate wells and
shallow aquifers if the floodwaters are themselves contaminated. For example, Atrazine was found
in floodwaters of the Mississippi as they spread across the upper Midwest. It is likely that Atrazine
will be detected in private wells and the alluvial aquifer throughout previously flooded areas even
though the surface landowner may never have applied the chemical.
If ground water is to be included in watershed protection plan, those responsible for regulation of
water quality must have the resources to resolve these issues and many others. Presently, this is not
the case in Texas where investigations of ground water problems remain complaint driven.
Presently, EPA funds to implement comprehensive ground water monitoring in all states are clearly
inadequate. More extensive, regulatory-mandated testing requirements of public drinking water
suppliers will provide some of the needed information on organic contaminants in ground water, but
shallow aquifers are often not included. Implementation of pilot monitoring programs as part of
Page 68
-------
EPA's Pesticide Strategy will again provide some information, but the extent of these pilot studies
is grossly inadequate to characterize water quality in the aquifers of most states.
In conclusion^ I believe we arejiisi now in the initial stages of thinking about how to develop
integrated, realistic watershed protection programs that incorporate ground water into the total water
resource picture. In Texas, we have both legal and institutional impediments to holistic
management of our water resources. In some instances, technical limitations preclude clear legal
separation of surface and ground water in alluvial aquifers near rivers. In others, surface waters
recharge aquifers that discharge into surface waters miles away creating jurisdictional problems for
existing institutions. The challenge to put hi place appropriate institutions and develop pertinent data
remains largely before us. Because of limited funding, alternatives to command and control policies
will be essential if our state is to adequately protect all of its water resources.
Patty Senna:
Thank you, Dr. Jordan. Our next speaker is Steve Musick. Steve received his Bachelor's
Degree in Geological Sciences from the University of Texas at Austin and began his
professional career as an Assistant Geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. He's been with
the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission and its predecessor agency, the Texas
Water Commission, since 1981, where he initially worked in the Underground Injection
Control program. Since 1986, he has worked hi the areas of ground water management,
ground water protection, program development, and the assessment of nonpoint source
impacts on ground water. His work included critical area ground water studies and water
quality protection and water supply issues for the Edwards Aquifer. Boy, a lot of people work
in the Edwards Aquifer around here. Mr. Musick is currently the manager of the Ground
Water Assessment Section hi the Water Planning & Assessment Division of the Texas Natural
Resource Conservation Commission. He will tell us about his work hi the Rio Grande Basin.
Speaker: Steve Musick, Manager, Ground Water Assessment Section, Texas Natural
Resource Conservation Commission; Austin, TX
What I'd like to talk about today is a project that I've been working on for the last couple of
years. I'm going to talk about a project that we have to assess the water quality in the Rio
Grande Basin of Texas. There are two interesting, major aspects that are important to our
agency and to the folks hi Texas. One is concern about water quality in the Rio Grande Basin.
As a part of another state program, we assess the total impact of discharges, both nonpoint
source and point source, in the basin. Our agency is committed to looking at water quality,
both surface water quality and ground water quality in terms of assessing what the water
quality is, what the problems are, and eventually management practices to address those
problems. The second part of this project, which is interesting to me, is that we're using the
Rio Grande Basin as a test case to figure out how to integrate ground water concepts into the
Page 69
-------
watershed approach for basin management. This integration effort is what I'm going to touch
on today rather than a lot of detail on the Rio Grande Project.
The Rio Grande Basin covers 50,000 square miles, includes 30 counties, and has five major
cities on the Texas side. It includes El Paso and Juarez across the border, Del Rio,
Brownsville, Matamoros, Laredo and Nuevo Laredo on the other side, Midland and Odessa.
It is a significant economic area for the State.
The approach that we took in the Rio Grande Basin was to begin to look at how you integrate
ground water into a basin approach. What we're working on is a simplified approach and
basically one that involves taking existing water quality data, geologic data, ground water
availability data, and data on man's activities, and mapping this data. Mapping is used as the
tool to overlay or integrate the ground water data with the surface water data. And what
we've done, hi the first step is to focus on the ground water data and put it on the map of the
basin. We can then use the mapping as an integrative approach and one to analyze the
situation in terms of a basin approach to ground water.
The problem with integrating ground water and surface water approaches the different
hydrology. The basin is obviously oriented with the natural flow of surface waters from the
northwest to the southeast, and the orientation of most of the eight digit watersheds are in that
direction. The ground water, however, trends in a crescent from southwest to northeast. We
have five major aquifers and seven minor aquifers that are mapped and there are quite a few
shallow near-surface aquifers that have not been put on this map.
The point is that it makes for a very complicated situation. We have a lot of ground water
resources. Many of these are aquifers~the Hueco bolson and the Edwards-Trinity Plateau
aquifer—radically different aquifers. They behave differently in how they transmit water and
how you get water out of them when you pump from a well. Then they also differ in where
the water is actually flowing. So while you have the surface water moving this direction, the
ground water may be moving another direction. The differing flow paths make for a
somewhat complicated picture.
One thing we want to do is try to make the approach simple. We decided to look at the
aquifer resources and then look at the activities that would impact the water quality of these
resources. One of the approaches is the linking of the mapping of the aquifer and the data.
There is not just the area that's shown on the map, but also the ground water availability of
that aquifer. How much ground water is there that can be produced? How much is
recharged? We're also looking at the quality of that ground water and it will vary
considerably from one aquifer to the next. Then we're also looking at water levels and the
ability to get that water out. That is the value of GIS mapping of the resource and having
Page 70
-------
access to the information hidden there. We don't see it on the map, but it's attached to the
delineation of these ground water areas in the GIS data base.
The second concern that we have, of course, is what are the potential sources of
contamination? In other words, where does man's activity fit into this particular picture? And
then, how do you relate those two? Well, our approach on this has been to map the resource.
Then map man's activities which are primarily going to be point sources. A good link which
we are employing on this project is aquifer vulnerability mapping. Dr. Jordan made mention
of the DRASTIC methodology and showed a map that we have for the whole state. What
we've been doing most recently is mapping on a county level. And the vulnerability map
allows us to link the resource that we're protecting with the kinds of activities that may be
taking place and giving us an idea of whether those activities may potentially impact the
aquifers.
These counties, Terrell, Val Verde, Webb, Hidalgo and Cameron, are counties where we have
done county level DRASTIC mapping. We've also done one in El Paso, but we do not yet
have the data in our GIS. So we're gradually working our way through the basin to map the
vulnerability. The areas that are yellow, red-orange, the brighter areas are the ones that have
the greater vulnerability. The Rio Grande alluvium, right along here, shows up to be the most
vulnerable aquifer. So the DRASTIC maps give us a technique for looking at the aquifers and
then prioritizing them based on their pollution potential. We can then focus our monitoring
or our data gathering efforts or our management efforts first in those places with the greatest
vulnerability.
This is our regional map of man's activities and this includes the Colonias which are in white.
There's quite a few down in here. Those are residential communities or groups of people that
have no water or sewage service and are very low on the economic scale. Then we have
public water supplies in red. You'll see there are quite a few in El Paso and they are all over
the place. Those are areas where, even though you have a regional ground water source,
you've got a point where you're taking that water out and using it. So it's important to know
where those points are in relation to other points, such as landfills, toxic releases, SuperFund
sites, which are also mapped on the area. Unfortunately, when you overlay these, it gets real
busy. So we're not going to show too much of that.
Let me focus in on El Paso County for just a moment here. This shows a broad outline of the
county here with the Hueco bolson and then the blue lines here are showing streams. So
we've overlapped geology, the county boundary, the actual streams that are in the area, and
then the orange line is the magnified~or at this scale, that's the eight digit hydrologic unit area
(HUA). So this begins to show us where we can focus our work on taking a surface water
area, the HUA, and then finding out where the streams are in it and then where the ground
water resources are in it. So then we come in and we put in man's activities here as point
Page 71
-------
sources. Yellow are public water supply wells. David Terry will talk a little bit more about
this when he talks about wellhead protection, because that's a technique that can then be used,
once you have this information, to go in and identify in more detail the contamination sources
and also identify and work with local government to develop management techniques for
addressing those problems. Blue here is potential sources of contamination which could be
landfills or PST's. In any case, this gives you a relatively succinct picture of El Paso County,
the aquifer as a whole, the exact points where water is being taken out, and potential
contamination sources.
What we have done, in this set of slides, is to take the resource and then overlay the point
sources of possible contamination. Now we're going to change the scale. So we have started
with the Rio Grande Basin. We've got a regional picture, and now we've blown that up and
we've come down to a particular set of two eight digit watersheds that we can focus on in
more detail. Here the yellow dot is a well. So it's very specific. And the blue dot is a very
specific contamination source. So the map gives information for both our agents and local
government as to possible problems and where we focus our efforts.
Let me switch gears here for just a minute. What I've gone over summarizes our project to
date. We've been working about a year and a half to review data and possible ways of
presenting it. Our next step is to go to a finer level of detail. The importance here, and Dr.
Jordan eluded to it and I've seen it discussed in other places, is what is the exact on-the-
ground site specific relationship hi the ground water/surface water interaction? Because if you
take it down to a spring or a well, then you have a point source. Is the water moving from
the point source to that well or, if there is ground water contamination at that point source,
is it moving towards the surface water body? And is there a likelihood that ground water will
discharge into the surface water and cause a contamination problem? To answer that, you
have to have more detailed information.
What we're hoping to do in our next effort, in the Rio Grande Basin, is to more clearly
identify specific areas within those aquifers where you have either recharge to the ground
water from title stream or you have discharge from the ground water to the stream and focus
on that particular interaction. This slide is a pretty good example from the Seymour Aquifer
in North Central Texas—north of Abilene, closer to Lubbock than to Dallas/Ft. Worth. What
we have here in white is the Seymour Aquifer and it's a water table aquifer. The water level
hi the aquifer is shallow. The red dots and these numbers are particular wells that have been
located and are in use hi the aquifer. Then we have the depth below the surface to the water
table. So you see, we've got 18-feet here, 23-feet here, 27' over here, 37', and 29'. So you
see that the water level in the aquifer is higher in this area and shallower here. So the water
is moving in that direction.
Page 72
-------
We have also mapped the spring discharges in this particular area and, of course, the springs
are near streams. You see them located here along these streams. This is the major watershed
in the area through here and those are tributaries coming down from this higher ground where
the aquifer is. Se this slide presents a good depiction ef *he ground water, surface water
interaction. This area is a very significant recharge zone. It is a sandy, very permeable
aquifer. It has shallow water levels, so you have a short travel time from whatever activity
you may have at the surface to the ground water table, and then a very short travel towards
these springs. The then springs discharge to these smaller creeks which then find their way
into the major ones. This slide illustrates what we would like to do with a lot of the areas in
the Rio Grande. That is to be able to take this data, generate it on maps, and be able to use
it as an assessment tool.
In summary, these mapping techniques (and we're lucky enough to have a good GIS system
and we're also lucky enough to have a large amount of data for a number of aquifers in Texas)
enable us to take the data, a wide range of data, both water resource data and man's activities
and overlay them. We can then prioritize our efforts both in terms of further monitoring and
further assessment. One can also prioritize activities in terms of management practices to
address these problems, and then gradually refine the detail of it. One can then analyze the
data comprehensively to see if we are having success stories, if we are cleaning it up or not.
The mapping techniques give us the basic data and the tools to do that work. Thank you.
Patty Senna:
Dave Terry received his B.A. from Texas Christian University in 1985 and his Masters in
Environmental Science from Miami University in Ohio in 1988. Since that time, David's
worked in the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission and again, its predecessor
agency, Texas Water Commission. Administering the National Flood Insurance Program, and
since 1989, the Wellhead Protection Program. Mr. Terry provides technical assistance, public
education, and guidance to local communities who are interested in wellhead protection. He
also trains volunteer groups like the Retired Senior Volunteers to conduct contaminate source
inventory surveys for wellhead protection programs.
Speaker: David Terry, Environmental Scientist, Texas Natural Resource
Conservation Commission; Austin, TX
I want to talk to you about the wellhead protection program. I'm going to avoid the details
as best I can and just give you an overview of how wellhead protection can fit into a
management routine of a watershed basin. Now we have been doing wellhead protection for
almost nine years in Texas. It's a voluntary program. The state provides technical assistance
and guidance. Implementation is done at the local level. Now on that note, be forewarned
that in Texas the only folks who have any enforcement powers whatsoever are going to be
Page 73
-------
cities. The majority of water systems that use ground water are going to be entities like water
supply corporations or MUD's who do not have enforcement power. So we have to be very
flexible and very receptive to innovations at the local level and how to implement best
management practices.
In addition to implementing the BMP's at the local level, that's where the actual work is done
in cataloging what potential sources of contamination exist. That's important, as you recall
earlier when Myron mentioned the relationship between ground water and surface water, and
of course, the presentations by Dr. Jordan and Steve on the potential contaminants and
mapping. We rely on the local level to provide us that information in establishing a wellhead
protection program.
Now the first thing we do, with respect to a wellhead program and especially with respect to
a watershed basin, is delineate wellhead protection areas around the public water supply wells
for a given community in a watershed. Now what we're trying to do is identify the area
around the public water supply well that is most susceptible to contamination. We use a five-
year time of travel to define that. Now once we identify that area, we need to identify
the potential sources of contamination. The wellhead program is a preventative program. It's
not a reactive program. Basically, the best way to keep your public water supply wells safe
from contamination is to identify anything that could potentially contaminate it.
What we do is delineate these water protection areas and train volunteers to inventory areas
for potential sources of contamination. Once we get this material back, we will access Steve's
data and we're just now starting to access GIS technology. This is where I'm going to be
tomorrow to try and put together a database of potential contaminant sources and some
recommended best management practices. An example of what we recommend is if they've
got a leaking underground storage tanks, get it registered with the commission, and remove
them. This has been a rather hot item at times, given the frequency of leaking tanks in Texas.
In Lubbock, we have confirmed several cases of free contaminant plumes floating on the
ground water. We're getting ready to do a full scale project where we do GIS and GPS to
identify every one of these plumes. This will give the city a management tool with which to
better protect their drinking water supply.
We can recommend steps such as removing underground storage tanks, overseeing the
operation and installation of these things. As an example, the City of Sweeney, which is a
little town of about 4,000, was able to shut down a gas station which had some leaking tanks
by using a wellhead protection ordinance. And by doing that, they had the tools at hand to
limit whatever contamination was occurring. As a result, they were able to curtail any
contamination of the ground water.
Page 74
-------
Contingency planning is vital especially in areas like the Galveston Bay watershed. There is
a lot of petrochemical processing industry down there and a lot of shipping. If you have one
well incident, you're going to have a major one. What we tell our folks is the wellhead
program is ttesigned^to prevent contamination, but accidents can and will happen. Tnewise
thing to do is to have a contingency response plan in place—if contamination does happen,
have a plan of action.
We have some communities which have developed contingency plans which we provide, with
their permission, to any community that's interested for their adoption. That way we kind of
spread the wealth of knowledge, and in the cases where it has been put into action, it has
worked. There are always some things that need some tweaking, but we've been able to put
in different communities' hands a response plan. We hate to see it when they have to use it,
but when it has been called into play, it has functioned well.
The average citizen has got to be pulled into your wellhead protection program if you're going
to make it work. Again, this is a voluntary program in Texas. This is not an enforcement
approach. We have to have public support in order to put this in place, and the way you do
this is to make it worth their while. You've got to show them the benefits. You've got to get
them involved. What we do is pull into the program citizen volunteers, and in this case here,
we've got a group of volunteers up in Lubbock out doing their inventory, bedecked in then-
official wellhead protection program volunteer T-shirts. What we're doing here is not making
this a state program. It's a local program. It is being operated by citizens. It is being
implemented by citizens. When they're going door to door, talking to folks, doing this
potential contaminant source inventory, they're not asking on behalf of the state, they're
asking on behalf of their own community.
Another management tool we have to put in place are just some road signs. We found that
if you just put your hands on a road sign or something that physically marks the perimeter of
a wellhead protection area, you've given the citizen, you've given the public something that
he can deal with. If it's just on a map, that's a little bit too abstract. If it's sitting in an
office, then it's virtually useless from a public point of view. To get the public involved and
to get them behind your wellhead efforts, you've got to put it out there to where they can see
it.
Steve and Margaret Hart, Jeff Blass, and I were able to put some signs together and were able
to put out a collection of these things to a few communities statewide to see how they faired.
The folks loved them because they had something they could use. These things have been
provided without charge just to see how well they operated, and so far, I haven't heard
anything negative.
Page 75
-------
Now once we identify all of these recommendations for minimizing or preventing
contamination, there are going to be some areas which fall into kind of a grey shaded area,
and one of those areas is old pesticides and old pesticide containers. What are you going to
do with them? Well, one of the aspects of the wellhead program is to try and link up with
other programs to maximize the benefits of these programs and to get them out of the waste
stream. What we try and do is get folks in the wellhead program to participate in the empty
pesticide container recycling program. The State comes out and holds a collection event.
These containers collected are chipped, bagged, recycled, and turned into things such as
plastic railroad ties. The old pesticides such at DDT, chlordane, etc., are collected and
incinerated or landfilled in approved facilities.
Public education. We do seminars all over the state. Again, we've got to build support and
get people behind the program. But we've also found that you have to maintain a fairly high
profile. The issue attenuation cycle dictates that what is current today will not be tomorrow.
It will be put down at the bottom of the list. So we have to maintain a constant exposure to
keep the program alive and keep people behind it. And in communities that have adopted the
program in very sensitive watersheds, such as the City of El Paso, they have one of the most
successful wellhead programs hi the country, having now gone across into the City of Juarez,
and in Houston, which is now expanding and attempting to go into the entire watershed.
I'm going to turn it over to the next speaker, thank you.
Patty Senna:
Our last speaker, but certainly not least, is Dr. Blaine Reely. He's a partner with Envirotech
Services and his corporate offices are located in Enid, Oklahoma. He received his B.S. in
geological engineering, M.S. in civil engineering from the University of Arizona in Tucson,
and a Ph.D. in civil engineering in hydrology from Oklahoma State University. Over the past
20 years, he's been involved in a broad spectrum of environmental programs. For the past
10 years, he's focused his efforts on the area of water resources and water supply systems
managements. Dr. Reely has been actively involved hi designing energy management systems
for water and wastewater utilities, and recently participated in a review of the water supply
system for the kingdom of Jordan. Dr. Reely served as a project manager for two EPA
wellhead demonstration projects in the state of Oklahoma that I worked on with him. One was
the City of Enid and the other the town of Roosevelt, Oklahoma. The town of Roosevelt
derives its water supply from three supply wells located on islands in the Tom Steed
Reservoir. There's a lot of ground water surface water interaction in there, and Blame's going
to tell you about that right now.
Page 76
-------
Speaker: Elaine Reely, P.E., President, Envirotech Services, Inc., Enid, OK
The town of Roosevelt, Oklahoma, is located in Kiowa County and has a population of
approximately 350 people. Duringihe process of gathering information for inclusion in the
application to be submitted for the demonstration project, I conducted an on-site visit to the
Town of Roosevelt to inspect the water system and the wellfield. The wellfield is located in
the middle of Tom Steed Reservoir, which is a fairly large lake in southwestern Oklahoma.
It is necessary to drive on a very narrow levee road out to two (2) of the wells. However, a
rowboat is necessary in order to reach the third well. Originally, these wells were actually
drilled in the terraces of a fairly large stream in the late 1970's or early '80s. When the
Bureau of Reclamation announced their intention of building a dam, they agreed to provide
islands and levees to insure sufficient access to the wells. Therefore, there is obviously
historical evidence of a ground water/surface water connection. When the proposals were
prepared reflecting this ground water/surface water connection, the EPA awarded a
demonstration project to the Town of Roosevelt.
We began this project by studying the topographic mapping, and it appeared that the watershed
for the Tom Steed Reservoir was somewhat manageable. It fell on the Otter Creek Watershed
and after closer inspection, we determined that a diversion structure and canal were built as
part of the Tom Steed Reservoir and it diverted a much larger watershed, the Elk Creek
Watershed, into the Tom Steed Reservoir. After delineating the watershed that actually
contributed water to the Tom Steed Reservoir, the watershed was in excess of 700/sq. miles
and extended from the Town of Roosevelt to the north approximately 60 miles. It is 58 miles
long and 5 to 18 miles wide.
Basically, we followed the traditional approach that is utilized in a wellhead protection project
and applied it to a watershed evaluation and management study. We characterized the water
supply system as well as delineated and characterized the wellhead protection area. This vast
watershed incorporates a significant number of industrial complexes, military complexes, and
a broad variety of other activities. Generally, the watershed is about 85% agricultural. There
is a significant amount of wheat and cotton grown in this area, as well as cattle grazing. Since
this area is located on the western foothills of the Wichita Mountains, there are also some
rugged and undeveloped primitive areas in the watershed. Approximately five percent of the
total land use is devoted to various municipal, commercial, and institutional purposes.
Therefore, the watershed is primarily controlled, from a water-quality perspective, by
nonpoint source contaminants, i.e. agricultural sources.
Initially, we felt that we were going to be dealing primarily with nonpoint source problems
resulting from fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides. To inventory contaminant sources in a
700/sq. mile area was a major project hi itself. However, we utilized available federal, state,
and local databases, and we relied heavily on word-of-mouth networking in the rural
Page 77
-------
community which allowed us to have one-on-one communications with the various parties
associated with the watershed. This communication enabled us to have a very good
understanding of activities taking place within the watershed and specifically, potential
contaminating activities.
A contaminant transport analysis (or well developed surface water drainage system) was
developed. Essentially, a surface water tributary transects every square mile of the watershed.
The contaminant transport mechanism in this watershed is, should a spill occur, in a stream
within a very short period of time (i.e., hours to a few days.) Once in the stream, it is
washing downstream into the Tom Steed Reservoir and therefore, it can potentially impact the
water quality of the town of Roosevelt.
Upon completion of the transport analysis, we developed a contingency and management plan.
We relied and borrowed heavily from the contingency and management plan which was
created by the State of Oklahoma, with the prime author being Mr. Mike Houts. We, then,
customized this plan for use by the Town of Roosevelt.
We recommended water quality monitoring be performed that could easily be incorporated
into what the Town of Roosevelt was currently doing; public education which could easily be
incorporated into what the state and county were already doing; and continued updating of the
contaminant inventory so the databases in the state were so efficiently put in-place that they
can be easily accessed and updated. Also, a specific recommendation was made that there be
information transmitted to the local farming community to transfer information on "Best-
Management Practices" (BMP) for agricultural chemical usage. In the state of Oklahoma, the
OSU Extension Service and the State Department of Agriculture are very involved in this
continuing education process. In fact, the results of our water quality analysis and
conversations with the farming community indicated that BMP's were currently being utilized
and put in place and therefore, we detected no major concern with regard to the existing water
quality.
The future outlook appears very promising from the perspective of the Town of Roosevelt.
There are a number of larger communities using water from the Tom Steed Reservoir. The
Town of Roosevelt is currently working on creating a task force among all of the water users
in an effort to bring communities together to work collectively on facilitating the short and
long term recommendations.
Patty Senna:
We have a few minutes for questions if anyone has any questions for any of the panel
members. I probably can't answer them, but our panel members can.
Page 78
-------
Question:
How about this volunteer involvement? How do you address liability?
David Terry:
What we have typically done is gone through the Retired Senior Volunteer Program (RSVP).
In terms of liability, while the volunteers are working on an RSVP sponsored project they are
covered by that organization's liability insurance. In terms of training, I physically come out
and train the volunteers. What I ask of the community is that they set aside a time and date
for me to come and do a training seminar. It takes about half a day. And I'll go through the
routines of explaining the program to them; how they fit into the big picture; what the benefits
are they hope to receive; and how to actually do the inventory. Now hi terms of quality
control, what we do is take the inventory forms and do a random sample to double check the
inventory results. After having done this for the past five years now, we have seen that their
results are very accurate and it's quality work.
Patty Senna:.
The RSVP in Texas have put together a how-to booklet also. Communities all over the
country are using the booklet on how to do this.
Patty Senna:
New Mexico is starting a very active wellhead protection program. The lady who coordinates
it is Jennifer Steinbaugh. She works for New Mexico Environment Department, and I don't
have her number off the top of my head, but if you'll see me later, I'll get your name and
phone number and give that to her if you'd like the information. I'm sure Dave would be
happy to supply you with a copy of the RSVP's booklet.
Page 79
-------
Page 80
-------
The Total Mam'i^i^n Daily Load fTMDL) Process - Part 2 (3:00-4:30PM)
Moderator: Troy Hill, TMDL Coordinator, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,
Region 6; Dallas,TX
Is there anybody new in this session that wasn't in the last session? Okay. Briefly, I'll talk
about the TMDL process and how we're approaching it and that will lead right into Martin's
presentation.
We're looking at the TMDL process as a problem solving process, in that we're focusing on
water quality standards being our goal that we're trying to achieve and maintain. Historically,
we have focused just on point sources and coming up with a strategy to meet water quality
standards. But now we're expanding to include nonpoint sources and focus on the chemical,
physical, and biological aspects of the stream. So we could be looking at a chemical criteria
or a goal of habitat or maybe biological diversity, depending on what we're trying to achieve.
With respect to that, Martin Maner, who is now the Interim Deputy Director of Arkansas
Department of Pollution Control & Ecology (ADPC&E), is working in conjunction with the
numerous staff from ADPC&E, Mike Rogers being one on a TMDL, which we're calling a
non-traditional TMDL, looking at the actual physical side of the stream and what's going on
there. Martin has been working in the water quality field for a long time. He is one of the
people at ADPC&E who has a lot of knowledge and experience hi things that are happening
now and have been happening for a long time. He's a good resource. Martin is doing some
interesting things, not only as the Interim Deputy Director, but as an engineer in the
Fayetteville area. So with that, Martin, we'll turn the time over to you and move forward.
Speaker: Martin Maner, Interim Deputy Director, Arkansas Department of Pollution
Control & Ecology; Little Rock, AR
Thank you, Troy. Troy went over the TMDL process and this project doesn't fit the normal
Total Maximum Daily Load concept. This all started when Troy set up a conference about
a year ago with Dave Rosgen. He's a stream restoration specialist and a fluvial
geomorphologist who works out of Colorado. If you remember the National Geographic
water issue out about a year ago, he was featured hi it. He was sitting on a bulldozer wearing
a cowboy hat doing in-stream channel restoration.
In the Ozark Highlands region of Arkansas, we've established ecoregion based water quality
standards. The Ozark Highlands are primarily an upland area and they're underlain by
calcareous rocks of limestone and dolomite. Due to the nature of the streams, they have a lot
of gravel in them. In-stream gravel mining is widely practiced, so we wanted to put together
Page 81
-------
a project that checked into what effect in-stream gravel mining was having on the streams.
The stream that we picked is in the Ozark Highlands. It's called Crooked Creek, and it's the
best small-mouth fishery in Arkansas and probably one of the best in the nation. Gravel
mining has been going on in the stream for quite a number of years, since at least back in the
'30's. To give you an idea of the quantities that are mined, it's estimated around 500,000 or
more cubic yards are mined annually, and that's around 13.5 million cubic feet. If you can
imagine a square a quarter mile wide on each side and you stack the gravel up eight-feet deep,
that would be about the volume of gravel that's mined out of the stream.
I don't know if you are familiar with some of the concepts of stream geomorphology, but
basically, a stream reaches a stable state based on its flow, climatic conditions, and amount
of erosion and sedimentation that's taking place within the stream. It reaches a steady state
and will basically stay within that unless something perturbs it. So you can imagine if 500,000
cubic yards of gravel are taken out of the stream annually, it's going to adjust its channel and
start eroding banks or whatever to account for the load that's taken out of the stream.
We received a small grant from EPA to purchase equipment to do this survey. We're trying
to evaluate the changes in the stream's channel morphology, the stream channel stability, it's
substrate size distribution, and the sedimentation rate. This is between the least disturbed
sites, the disturbed sites, and downstream sites. The information will then be used to assess
the impact on the small-mouth fishery including loss of suitable habitat, smothering of spawn,
and other factors. The result of the study, as I said earlier, won't be a traditional Total
Maximum Daily Load in the sense of limiting a pollutant load or mass, but should provide a
rational basis for managing an activity~the gravel mining—within the watershed. We're
hoping this methodology will let us assess the impact in-stream gravel mining is having on the
streams and then we may regulate or restrict the gravel mining practice, perhaps below a
certain water elevation or stream elevation, to prevent any damage to the streams.
This next graphic is Crooked Creek. You'll notice it has large meanders until you reach the
town of Yellville and then it's fairly straight. The watershed is around 460 square miles. It
has a total channel length of around 83 miles. The gradient is around eight to ten feet per
mile. An unusual feature of Crooked Creek is it loses all its flow in the summer. It's a
perennial stream upstream of Yellville. In this portion where the channel is dry, gravel miners
use bulldozers and front-end loaders in the channel itself and mine gravel.
The gradient of the stream is what drives the velocity in the stream. The higher the slope and
the higher the velocity the more energy the stream has due to velocity. The energy within the
system is dissipated by friction with the stream bottom, turbulence, erosion, and sediment
transport. The processes of erosion and deposition are the dynamic factors that determine the
stream's morphology, geometry and shape.
Page 82
-------
Next overhead. This is a plot of the elevation per river mile. It starts off at 1,200, but
actually the stream heads up at an elevation of around 1,600 feet mean sea level and flows into
the White River at around 400 feet mean sea level. It has a good gradient and energy for its
size.
I'll briefly discuss the field methods we did to assess the channel geometry and some of the
things we're doing to check for channel stability within the stream. Transect measurements
will assess bank full width, bank full mean depth, the deepest point in the stream, the flood
prone width, and establish a temporary bench mark, at each site, so that we can measure
stream elevations in relationship to the bench mark to see if the stream is down-cutting or
depositing material at each site. Bank full flow determines the channel shape. It's the flow
that transports the most sediment within the stream. Because of the frequency of the
occurrence of the bank, full flow is the one that transports the most sediment.
Some of the physical features that identify the bank full depth elevation are the top of point
bars, changes in vegetation, and grade changes. The methodology that we're using was
developed by Mr. Rosgen, and it's also work done by Luna Leopold. Mr. Leopold was the
Chief Hydrologist for U.S. Geology Survey for a number of years. We're also measuring the
flow, mean velocity, cross-sectional area, and pebble count.
Okay, Mike, get the lights now. Ready for the slides. This is a typical Ozark Highland
stream. This is the Buffalo River. It's the watershed just south of Crooked Creek. This is
Crooked Creek at a near or bank full flow. This will give you an idea of what a bank full
flow looks like.
This is hi the lower portion of Crooked Creek in the losing stream section. For about 23 miles
there's usually no flow in the summertime. It's really amazing to go out there and see all this
flow of around 60 or 75 cubic feet per second upstream, and then just drive downstream a few
miles and see a dry stream bed.
This is an aerial photograph of an area that has had intense gravel mining hi the past. This
area right here, if you see the water in that area there, was mined two years ago. The original
channel used to flow around here. Two years ago, they went in and mined over here by the
trench method. The next time the stream came up, it jumped over into the excavated channel
and has basically stayed in that channel ever since. We have established a transect at this
point. You can see this area here is quite a bit wider. This is that same area that was shown
in the aerial photograph. This is the channel that was mined, on the right. This was the
original channel over here. Look at all this substrate that's exposed that was habitat for macro
invertebrates and darters, etc. It's now high and dry. This is also the original channel. See
the cobble rock here next to the bank. Note all the fine material that's settled in there. Silt
and sand has completely smothered the bottom at this point here. This is the same site again.
Page 83
-------
This is a shot at a bank fall flow. To give you an idea of what we're talking about when I use
the term bank full flow, see this mid-channel bar here? It's almost covered up. That's another
feature of the bank full elevations, bars are just covered.
This is a site in Crooked Creek that was mined over 30 years ago, maybe 40 years ago, based
on some of the trees that have grown back into the spoil areas at the site. This slide was taken
this March. Last summer, the flow was coming through this way. So within less than a year,
the channel has jumped at this location, and is still unstable. You see a lot of debris. Here's
an uprooted tree. There's a lot of debris and trees that have fell into the stream. I'd say 30
or 40 really large trees have fell into the stream because the channel has down-cut and it's
moving laterally eroding under the trees root mass and they just fall in. This has been going
on probably ever since they quit the gravel mining.
Again, more debris in the stream. This was a slide taken the first part of March. Notice this
bank that's eroding—this high bank. That's in an earlier slide that was taken last summer and
you can see it has eroded quite a bit.
This is another shot. See the trees up here? The root mass? The stream has down-cut this
much from the instability of the area that was caused by the gravel mining.
Another shot showing the trees. That's a root wad of the tree that eroded and fell in. This
is that high bank shown in the earlier shot. This tree is just about ready to get washed out.
This is another shot showing how the channel has down-cut. You can tell by the way the tree
roots are exposed. That's down-cut probably a foot or so. More debris, trees that have fell
in the stream from the mining activity.
This is the laser level that we used. You can barely see it, but that is the target there. You
can either slide that up and down the level rod or you can put it on top of the level rod and
raise the level rod to match the elevation of the laser beam to establish your elevations of the
stream channel.
This is showing transect work. A surveyor's cloth tape is stretched across the channel and
then we take a shot every 10 feet or at breaks in elevation within the stream channel. First,
we have to determine what the bank fall elevation is, and I would say it would be somewhere
right in here. It's partially a subjective determination that you have to make. We record the
elevation of the bank fall height, and then based on that elevation, we can make some other
geometry measurements. I'm not really going to get into the details of that, because the main
idea here is just to show you how you can do a TMDL that's not really within the normal
concept of a TMDL, and what we hope to apply from what we learn from this.
Page 84
-------
This is a tributary of Crooked Creek. I wanted to show this because it shows some classic
features. This is a point bar here. You can see that the bank full elevation would basically
be at the top of this point bar. The vegetation starts. There's a little bit of a change in the
slope at Ibis -point—¥eu--ean-'t-see it because the^Hde is ^oo^ark, but thcre'-s- ft corresponding
mark over on this bank. This is one of the interesting things of how a stream adjusts its
channel. This stream is undergoing lateral or sideways migration. Probably the reason why
is because the riparian vegetation has been removed —just nothing there but grass. You can
see as the flow gets up to a bank full flow, it starts eroding this bank over here, and at the
same time, deposition takes place on the point bar. So the relative width of the channel will
basically stay the same, even though this whole complex is moving over to the right. This is
another feature we're trying to assess in Crooked Creek. What's going on concerning lateral
stability of the channel.
This is one of the high banks on Crooked Creek at the site that was mined over 30 years ago.
That's about a 15-foot level rod, to give you an idea of the height of the bank. To measure
the lateral stability we drive in a rebar horizontally into the soil bank, flush with the soil.
Then come back, say six months later or one year later, and measure how much the bank has
eroded by measuring the length of the rebar that's protruding from the bank. You can get a
rough estimate of what the lateral migration of the bank is and make an estimate of how much
material is being eroded and going into the stream.
These are some of the cross sections from the survey work we're doing. This is at a site
called Kelly's Slab. At this site the bank full width was around 110 feet. The ratio of the
width, 110 feet, to the depth was around 50. The channel is about 50 times wider than the
mean depth. That's what we're finding is fairly representative for a least disturbed site.
This is the cross-section plot at the disturbed site. The bank full width is around 320 feet.
The width to depth ratio at this site is 135. What happens at these mined sites is the channel
gets much wider and the width to depth ratio increases. This channel type is very unstable.
It's a wide, fairly shallow, cross-sectional area. It can't transport sediment very well. With
the gravel substrate, that site is always going to be unstable and shifting around. All the fine
material gets picked up and carried downstream. There's a pool about a quarter mile below
this site that has filled in with fine sediment.
Here's a level rod for reference. You can see the gravel there, it's completely filled in with
sand and silt. All the interstitial spaces that would normally occur in this type of stream,
where you find insect larvae, darters, and mad-toms is gone.
These are ideas that people have found before, but they really hadn't been quantified. What
we're trying to do is quantify some of the changes that are taking place. This is a cumulative
particle size graph. This is the percent of cumulative here. In other words, these numbers
Page 85
-------
here actually correspond to ~ that's one millimeter, that's ten millimeters, 100 millimeters,
1,000 millimeters, etc. For example, at the yellow line, it would be about 40 millimeters.
What this is showing is at the least disturbed site the material that's less than one millimeter
in size (sand, silt, and clays) is around nine percent. But at the disturbed site, and at the site
just downstream of the disturbed site, it's almost 30% fines. Thirty percent of the substrate
is less than one millimeter in size. There's a real difference in the particle size of the fine
material.
That's the last slide. We can have the lights on again. As I had mentioned earlier, we're just
getting started on this work. We've been out in the field two tunes and we'll develop the
particle size distribution at all our sites. We're going to have about eight sites. We'll also be
able to monitor through tune at these transect elevations we've established whether the channel
is cutting down or filling in. We'll be able to measure lateral stabilization.
What we've already seen is that fine material increases at the mined sites. It fills in the
interstitial spaces and creates embeddedness. It also can increase turbidity when the stream
velocity gets up and suspends these particles. And of course, when you fill in the interstitial
spaces with sediment, that eliminates the habitat for the macro invertebrates and some of the
small fish like darters and mad-toms that live in those areas. The width to depth ratio
increases significantly.
The other thing that really surprised me is that site where they stopped mining 30 years ago.
It's still unstable. It's still moving around. There are trees falling in. In fact, it may be that
it is inherently unstable from here on until—I don't have any idea how long it would take for
it to become stable, but it's been unstable now for 30 or 40 years. It doesn't look like there's
any process going on that would stabilize it, because the stream has down-cut and got below
the root mass of the trees. There's nothing to stop the lateral migration. Even though there's
riparian vegetation here, the stream is down-cut and can go underneath the root mass of the
trees, undercut the trees, and they just fall in. I don't see that process stopping. Probably the
only thing that would get it stopped would be to go in and do some channel restoration like
Mr. Rosgen does.
Well, that's it. I'll be happy to answer any questions anyone has. I've got some handouts up
here that you're welcome to have. It kind of gives an overview of the field methodology and
what we're trying to do, and then some of the results that provide more detail of what I went
into during my talk.
Question:
Have you done any biological monitoring to go with this like the rapid-bio assessment or
upstream or downstream to those sites?
Page 86
-------
Martin Maner:
No. We intend to do that though. We received a small grant from EPA--I think we failed to
mention this—and just bought 4h& equipment last JalL We wilLprobably staridoing^ome-of
the macro invertebrate this summer. Thank you.
Moderator: Troy Hill
Thank you, Martin. Our next presentation will be by Richard Smith, and Richard works with
the Indian Nations Council of Government. It's one of the 11 substate planning districts
located in Oklahoma in the Tulsa area. Richard will be talking to us about the Little Deep
Fork Creek Watershed. This project has been a project that has evolved. Initially, it started
out as a simple wasteload allocation project, and this was before Richard actually got involved.
I don't know if he volunteered to get involved or not, but he got pulled in after we had
discussed that maybe we couldn't solve it by just looking at point sources. So this has been
going on for a while. But there are some interesting concepts and procedures that are going
on that will be useful, I think, in a lot of our nonpoint source type watersheds. So, Richard,
would you show us what you know?
Speaker: Richard Smith, Senior Environmental Planner, Indian Nations Council of
Governments; Tulsa, OK
Good afternoon. Little Deep Fork Creek is actually in an area of Northeastern Oklahoma
between Tulsa and Oklahoma City. It's a tributary to the Deep Fork of the Canadian River.
In 1989, INCOG performed a wasteload allocation study on behalf of the City of Bristow and
the Town of Depew. These towns were renewing permits or discharge from wastewater
treatment facilities. The standard wasteload allocation process relies on an intensive survey
which collects water quality data relating to nutrients and dissolved oxygen. A computer
model is then calibrated based upon the data set and wasteload allocations are set based upon
future design criteria for the plants.
During the survey, we found several areas that had anomalous dissolved oxygen problems that
seemed to be unrelated to the wastewater discharges themselves. Above where the Bristow
Treatment Plant comes in, even fecal coliform counts were about 10,000. We had some
unusual dissolved oxygen readings. For example, our control site had dissolved oxygen
maximum percent saturation of well over 150%. So even at our control site, we had some
problems upstream, and we had not anticipated this in our original data collection set when
we planned for an intensive survey.
Page 87
-------
Both the D.O. swing and the percent saturation increase rather dramatically as you go
downstream from the control site. The control site also had severe D.O. swings and high
percent saturations. We had some real anomalies in terms of dissolved oxygen in the data.
As a result of these kinds of problems through the finalization of our wasteload allocation
process and talking to EPA, the recommendation was made to perform a phased TMDL on
this site in order to characterize the nonpoint sources that appeared to be contributing to the
D.O. stream deficiencies. The original scope on the TMDL phase included organizing
interagency participation, developing a quality assurance project plan, characterizing existing
nonpoint sources, performing an in-stream monitoring, developing reference streams,
performing the TMDL to set wasteload allocations, and then implementing best management
practices and education programs in the watershed.
The Bristow Wastewater Treatment Plant is an extended aeration facility. The design capacity
is a little under a million gallons a day. The present discharge is about 350,000 gallons a day,
and the population, when we did the original study, was projected to double in 20 years.
Based upon the 1990 Census data and new projections, the city of Bristow's population is now
projected to remain about the same for the next 20 years.
The town of Depew, which is upstream of the discharge from Bristow, is a town of about 500
population. They have a small lagoon facility with no mechanical aeration. The design
average daily flow is 0.149 MOD. The present flow is only 30,000 gallons a day. The
Depew population is projected to decrease just a little over the next 20 years. INCOG has
revised the population estimates subsequent to the original study in 1989.
The minimum dissolved oxygen criteria varies within the watershed, and is based upon the
beneficial uses assigned to the stream. Depew discharges to a small tributary, which has been
designated as habitat limited aquatic community. This designation has a lower dissolved
oxygen standard applied to it. There is a section of Little Deep Fork Creek downstream of
the Bristow Wastewater Treatment Plant that also is habitat limited with secondary recreation.
Therefore, different kinds of dissolved oxygen criteria must be met within the watershed.
The Soil Conservation Service, now the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), has
collected land use data within the area on a ten acre grid. This data was used by the NRCS
to develop a summary of the land uses in the area with respect to vegetation type. Within the
watershed there is about 40% forest and 40% pasture, with only a small amount of
urbanization in the area and about 15% row crops.
INCOG used 1991 aerial photographs that were also available on a 1" to 400" scale to
determine land use characteristics.
Page 88
-------
Within the watershed there is open pasture that is interspersed with dense forests. In some
areas the tree canopy is very sparse. Most of the area has marginal or small scale ranching.
There are also several large scale ranches with high intensity cattle production.
Oklahoma has joint NPDES permitting authority with EPA for establishing NPDES permits
for discharge from wastewater treatment facilities. In addition, the Little Deep Fork Creek
was placed on the state's 303-D list as a high priority watershed for dissolved oxygen, salinity,
pesticide, sedimentation, and nutrients.
In terms of the watershed itself, there is about 37 inches per year of precipitation. The
riparian zone consists of bottomland forest with upland forest and woods outside the riparian
area. The watershed has gently sloping terrain. The soils are sandy and silty loams, and very
erodible. This adds to the nutrient problem and the difficulty of really characterizing algae
production in the stream. The drainage area for Little Deep Fork Creek is approximately 260
square miles.
In the Oklahoma water quality standards, the beneficial use of warm water aquatic community
is considered capable of supporting intolerant species. Primary recreation is capable of
supporting full body contact and swimming. Habitat limited aquatic community are areas that
have some kind of a natural or irreversible limitation on the habitat, while secondary body
contact recreation would be for boating and wading only.
The Soil Conservation Service in the 1950's developed a plan to establish 54 flood control
lakes hi the watershed. The distribution of these is throughout the watershed of Little Deep
Fork Creek. These obviously affect the flow as they are designed to retard extreme flooding
events, extreme runoff events, and to discharge the water more slowly.
When INCOG initially developed the TMDL scope as a result of the final INCOG modeling
report INCOG re-examined the 1989 data set that had been collected. The original study was
not designed to examine nonpoint sources of pollution. A review of the data set determined
that there were several areas of possible nonpoint sources. The control site had a very high
D.O. swing, and the middle reach also had slightly increased amounts of nutrients and D.O.
problems. There was a third area that was just upstream of Bristow, which had high
conductivity, possibly coming from oil field production areas. But since it didn't seem to
impact the D.O. in any way, we are not going to consider it further in the TMDL. The last
site, an area downstream of the Bristow Wastewater Treatment Plant discharge, has excessive
nutrient problems and high D.O. swings.
Regarding assessing the problem, we realized that there were no water quality data available
prior to the 1989 data set. Also, the Little Deep Fork Creek was ranked as a high priority
watershed because the modeling results indicated that both treatment plants would have to
Page 89
-------
maintain or be elevated to an advanced secondary treatment level, and also because of the
D.O. problems found during the 1989 data survey.
Subsequent to the original data survey, dissolved oxygen profiles have been collected over the
past two years to see how stable the original survey data was. The more recent dissolved
oxygen maximums are very similar. These measurements were made five years apart. This
strongly indicates that the 1989 data set collected for the original calibration study was not just
an anomalous event, but reflects a steady state condition.
In addition, one of the Phase I elements is characterizated of land use activities. There is a
lot of cattle influence throughout the area. Many areas have direct cattle access to the stream.
There is evidence of cow manure in the stream itself. Much of this occurs in the upper
portion of the watershed above the original control station. What was anticipated as a
relatively clean rural area is in fact an area that is heavily influenced by cattle production. The
areas downstream of the Depew tributary have fewer cattle access points. The banks are very j
steep in those areas, limiting the number of access points. j
In order to complete the TMDL process, INCOG is working with the Oklahoma Conservation
Commission (OCC). The OCC has obtained a grant that will allow them to complete the other
phases of the TMDL. Part of this process is to put together a number of the participants that
will be immediately involved in the process, including the two towns that are affected,
watershed land owners, Natural Resources Conservation Service, and EPA.
Re-examining the original data set with respect to dissolved oxygen stress in the stream, one
would expect to find high chlorophyll concentrations where the D.O. swings are the greatest.
However, the water column had virtually no chlorophyll in it. But the D.O. swings were
obviously due to algae production. Mechanical aeration couldn't account for the saturation
of upwards to 200%, and there is not much macrophyte production in the stream. It was
concluded that it had to be periphyton assemblages (as attached algae). Certain areas were
identified where this was most likely. The original wasteload allocation study did not
characterize periphyton beds. In fact, they were very difficult to see.
One can usually see much filamentous algae in streams in areas of high nutrient enrichment.
However, there is little attached filamentous algae like this in Little Deep Fork Creek. Mostly
what is seen is a green/grey sand, which has high concentrations of diatoms and blue/green
algae. But it is extremely productive. The stream bed itself is mostly sand and silt, so there }
is little substrate for the filamentous algae to attach to. This results in mostly diatom j
communities that can intermingle with the sand particles. j
In setting the final wasteload allocation process, the nonpoint source loading from the cattle |
loafing areas must be estimated. The 1989 model (QUAL-2E) will be recalibrated. QUAL- j
I
Page 90
-------
TX maybe used, because it has a nonpoint source function that is not flow related. We will
assume for future conditions of modeling that there will be significant decreases in nonpoint
source loadings in the stream.
The point source controls in the stream will be driven by the wasteload allocation process
itself. The nonpoint source control measures in the stream will consist of demonstration
projects, implementation of best management practices and education programs within the
watershed. This will be coordinated through the Oklahoma Conservation Commission in
cooperation with other participating agencies.
To summarize, there are three sub-categories. Project start-up consists of establishing
cooperative agreements with the participants, creating a project advisory group, and
developing a quality assurance plan for all participants. The data collection and wasteload
allocation phase will consist of performing reconnaissance surveys and water quality
monitoring. Stream modeling for load allocations and wasteload allocation development will
then be performed. Watershed education meetings will be conducted and best management
practices and demonstration projects will be implemented. Follow-up water quality studies
will be performed to determine the effectiveness of BMP implementation, and if needed, to
revise the TMDL.
Question:
How do you plan to characterize the nonpoint source loads?
Richard Smith:
Well, we had originally planned to conduct periphyton surveys, and measure nutrients from
field flows during rainfall events, and dry weather flows. We really overextended ourselves
to be honest. We just weren't able to do all this. What we plan to do now is work with the
Conservation Commission through their 319 grant process and establish baseline studies under
both wet weather and dry weather condition for nutrients. One of the issues that we need to
nail down is the phosphorous loading into the stream, because the Bristow Wastewater
Treatment Plant, like most treatment plants, discharges a lot of phosphorous. We need to see
if phosphorous controls need to be implemented on the treatment plant. We don't know that
at this tune. So one of our goals up front is to try to characterize that, as well as examine the
influence of the cattle production in the stream. We don't have the data yet. We're looking
at trying the Generalized Watershed Loading Functions (GWLF) Model. It's a desk top model
that will estimate nutrient loads from a field into a stream. As Troy pointed out in his
presentation, the goal at this point is to develop the TMDL. Continue with the studies. If the
TMDL needs to be revised or refined, then we'll do that and we'll implement control
measures as we proceed.
Page 91
-------
Response: Troy Hill
I think that an interesting point in this one is that they're going to develop a plot transect.
Similar to a vegetation transect. We determine percent cover based on vegetation. They are
going to do a plot transect, where they are actually determining the loads based on transects
in the stream. Because one of the concerns is that in the upper quarter of the watershed a lot
of that loading of the loafing cattle is coming during critical conditions (low flow and high
temperature). Because we're getting a lot of nutrient loading there. So to quantify that, we
do a plot by plot test which will be transects. That's being developed through the Oklahoma
Conservation Commission as they are doing research on quantifying that.
Question:
Is this one of those possibilities? That you might have point source nonpoint source trading
because you have problems upstream at the treatment plant that you might be able to take care
of by cost sharing as opposed to treatment plant modifications.
Richard Smith:
That's a good possibility. And that's something when developed as a concept, you can take
to the municipalities and offer as a possible alternative to just simply upgrading their treatment
facilities which can be very costly.
I guess the biggest drawback we would have is that Bristow is only about 4,000 population and
Depew is only 500. Resources are very limited in the cities, but they're going to be limited
anyway. So being able to provide nonpoint source control measures possibly at a fraction of
the cost of a standard implementation of a treatment plant upgrade is going to help.
Response: Troy Hill
This project is unique in that it has a large 319 Grant associated with it to help build and take
off what Richard's doing. There's approximately a $400,000 319 Grant to do implement
these recommendations-whether that be cattle exclusions, alternate watering sources, that kind
of thing. So basically, the state agencies have all come together and said, "How can I help.
Well, I can get 319 money and I'm an implementing agency. I'll go ahead and apply for
that," while Richard is working on the more technical side in conjunction with them.
Page 92
-------
Wetlands (3:00-4:30P]Vn
Moderator: Beverly Ethridge, Chief, Wetlands Protection Section, U.S. Environmental
P^^otection Agency, Region 6; Dallas, TX
Wetland zealots claim credit for flood protection, wildlife habitat, fisheries, forest production,
water quality improvement, attenuating low flows in the streams, and all of those things. Ten
years ago or so, we started to claim credit for our ability to even participate hi the point source
treatment arena with constructed wetlands. Just to let you know that we've not been sleeping
on our laurels, we now see that the wetlands and the watershed have a roll in such things as
global air improvements and protections, like ozone and CO2. So you can always count
wetlands people in if you're talking watersheds.
I say that because I come from EPA. Historically and even as we speak, our agency is in
large part an agency of engineers who tend to focus on water quality in the water column. I
hope that our session will give the opportunity to start to look at the broader landscape issues.
We've got a very representative panel. You will hear these folks speak to the roles of
wetlands in the watershed. You'll also hear them discuss the various partnership building
mechanisms and what they might have done differently if they knew then what they've learned
since they got their projects going. We have a speaker who represents the local level, one
who represents a state-federal level, and a representative of a non-government organization.
Each of our presentations will focus on the Mississippi River and the lower Mississippi Delta
as it goes down into the Coastal area. This area once had as much as 21 million acres of
bottom and hardwood forests and wetlands, but through clearing for agriculture, these
numbers have now been reduced to less than five million acres. Water quality and quantity
have been severely degraded and limited. The navigation channels and flood protection levees
in the lower Mississippi have decreased the overflow of the rich sediment laden river water.
As you no doubt are aware, as much as 25 square miles or so of the Coastal wetlands are
eroding annually.
So we'll begin by hearing from Mike Adcock. Mike is from the Northeast Delta RC&D.
Mike has a B.S. in Geology. He's sort of a petroleum recruit that we got during a dip in the
oil economy. For the past two years, Mike has coordinated the multi-agency organizational
land owner effort in the Tensas River Basin Initiative. Addressing the environmental,
ecological, agricultural, and socio-economic problems and opportunities in the Tensas River
Basin of Northeast Louisiana. The directions of this initiative were to describe the basin's
existing resources, document the most significant problems and concerns of the citizens, and
develop treatment options addressing the problems that were locally acceptable.
Page 93
-------
I also want to add that once our three speakers have done their presentations, we will have a
very informal discussion session. I've got note cards that I'll be happy to pass out for any
questions that you've got. Then we've the pleasure of having a couple of representatives out
of our Washington Office of Enforcement & Compliance Assurance Office who also have
designated the Mississippi River as a priority area. But let's begin with Mike's presentation.
Speaker: Mike Adcock, Tensas River Basin Coordinator, Northeast Delta Resource
Conservation and Development Area, Inc.; Winnsboro, LA
Thank you, Beverly. I'm Mike Adcock. I'm the Tensas River Basin Coordinator. I work
for Northeast Delta Resource Conservation and Development Area. It's a non-profit
organization. We're located in Winnsboro, Louisiana. I'd like to thank Cis Myers and
Beverly for inviting me to the conference and allowing me a few minutes to tell you all about
the work that's going on in the Tensas River Basin.
The Tensas River Basin is located in Northeast Louisiana. It encompasses the three parishes,
East Carroll, Madison, and Tensas Parish. It's approximately a 750,000 acre watershed and
it lies entirely within the lower Mississippi River Valley Alluvial Plain. The Tensas is
representative of the numerous watersheds located up and down the Mississippi Delta, and the
Tensas is one small part of the total lower Mississippi River Valley ecosystem.
The Tensas has been characterized as one of the richest ecosystems in the country in terms of
production and diversity of plant and animal species. But at the same tune, much of this land
has been recognized as some of the most productive agricultural land in the country.
Historically, over 90% of the Tensas River Basin was covered with bottomland hardwood,
forested, wetlands. At present, less than 15% of these remain an 85% decline. Land use
changed primarily to facilitate row crop agriculture soy beans. As a result, the Tensas is
experiencing numerous environmental and ecological and socio-economic problems that are
normally associated with the loss of wetlands.
I'm sure most of you are familiar with the positive functions and values of wetlands. Well,
if you'd like to see the negative impact of a loss of wetlands, the Tensas is a good model for
that. Well, in an effort to address these environmental problems and opportunities and to
avoid potential land use conflicts, a core group of concerned agencies and individuals met in
the Tensas in 1991. They had the grand idea of taking a watershed approach in formulating
a natural resource management plan for the Tensas. This core group included Ms. Beverly
Ethridge with EPA, Lisa Creasman with the Nature Conservancy, Ms. Jan Boydstun with the
Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, Mr. Marlin Jordan with the USDA-SCS,
now NRCS, Brad Spicer with the Louisiana Department of Ag & Forestry, Bob Strader with
Page 94
-------
the Fish & Wildlife Service, and also representatives from the local soil and water
conservation districts.
This group all agreed tha^sinee the resource problems in the Tensas were so complex that a
piecemeal approach wouldn't work. It was going to take a comprehensive group effort to
address the concerns and the problems and opportunities in the Tensas. If there was going to
be any ecosystem management improvement, then it was going to need a coordinated effort
and these were limited resources, time, and funding, no one responsible agency to take on a
project like this.
So we formed a technical steering committee. It's a 19 member steering committee made up
of representatives from local, state, and federal agencies and organizations. All had a direct
interest hi the well-being of the Tensas. Representatives from the core group—all the people
I mentioned earlier, plus USGS, Forest Service, other USDA agencies, and the Farm Bureau.
It's a 19 member committee. It's pretty well a cross section of all the representatives
throughout the Tensas Basin.
Now the project had a committee or a group to work on this, but there was one thing missing.
That was the public's input or the local concerns. The core group agreed that since over 90%
of the Tensas Basin was privately owned, that for this initiative to be successful, the land
owners, the land users were not only going to have to be involved, but they were going to
have to support and promote the project.
So how do you get land owners involved in a watershed project? First of all, we invited
farmers, land users, and concerned citizens to serve on the steering committee. There were
six farmers. All the conservation districts were represented as well as the Farm Bureau. This
is a slide of Mr. Shepp Krigler with a plaid shirt. He's a Tensas Parish farmer. He's the
Chairman of the committee. He was the 1994 Young Farmer of the Year.
Other ways that we solicited the public's input was through an aggressive public awareness
program that included newspaper articles, newsletters, TV coverage, and field days. This is
the Field Day we hosted last year. We invited land owners and representatives from state and
federal agencies for mainly two purposes. One, to show some of the people that are not
familiar with our area what farmers are doing. What they can and what they can't do. And
also, to open up a line of communication between some non-traditional partners that normally
don't sit down and talk. It gave them a chance to visit with people and ask questions that they
wanted to ask, but they didn't want to call across the country to talk to someone. They felt
a little more comfortable here on their farm.
We hosted land owner workshops, and demonstration projects. This is a wetland
demonstration project on private land where all we're doing is managing the water on this
Page 95
-------
property after the fanner harvests his crop. We hold the water on it—or the land owner does—
until he's ready to get back in the field, releases the water, and monitor the benefits from it.
We've had one-on-one discussions, model farms, and public meetings. All our public
meetings have been advertised and solicited input. We formed a land owner advisory
committee. This is our watershed agricultural group and the man that kind of heads it up.
That's Jay Hardwick. He's one of the Tensas Parish farmers also. And this group assured
us that we were getting input from the agricultural community. It's made up of the Farm
Bureau Parish Presidents, local soil and water conservation districts, agricultural chemical
dealers, agricultural equipment dealers, and local district conservationists with NRCS. And
this gave us a chance to get feedback from the agricultural folks on some of the things they
would like to see or some of then* concerns.
Well, for the past two and a half years, this steering committee has been working and putting
together a plan or a study. They have completed this Resource Management Plan or Study.
The plan included a resource inventory of existing resources in the basin, identified the
problems in the basin, and also came up with a list of solutions to the problems that were
identified that were locally acceptable. Problem identification includes (I'm going to run
through these pretty quick) water quality problems, primarily related to agricultural land, use
practices, or ag runoff. Loss of habitat. This is one of the most famous in the Tensas. This
is the Louisiana black bear. This is the one that President Roosevelt made famous when he
came down and hunted in the Tensas. This is the teddy bear. Flooding. This is showing
some agricultural land. This was in '93. Which we had a serious flood in '91, but this is land
that people are trying to farm. It's low-lying land. It was once bottomland hardwoods. It's
flooded forever. It never was a problem when it was in bottomland hardwoods. But now that
people are out trying to make a living on it, it's a problem. Another problem we identified
was static socio-economic conditions. The area is poor as most of the Delta is. This is a slide
showing what's left of Chicago Mill's lumber yard. This was at one time — late 50's, early
60's ~ the largest hardwood sawmill in the country. It's located in the Tensaw. There were
several sawmills in the basin, but now they're down to one small one, and they import most
of their wood for lumber purposes. This mill employed over 500 people just at the mill, not
counting what they had in their field operations and their hauling operations. But the area has
become dependent solely on the fluctuating market conditions of agricultural commodities.
But you can see most of the problems that were identified can be tied directly back to the
extensive loss of our wetlands in the area. The steering committee also came up with a list
of recommended solutions to address the problems that they identified. These were broken
down into four different groups. The first group would be land treatment options or BMP's.
These are nothing new. They've been around for years. But we wanted to make them fit the
problems that we have in the Tensas. We wanted our locals to tell us which ones would work
Page 96
-------
and which ones wouldn't work. Again, this is one of the on farm work shops. This is a
farmer explaining to the other farmer some of the integrated pest management, nutri-
management techniques he was using. Other practices we're promoting are conservation
tillage, filter strips, kufter strips, «nd again, these have keen around forever or been around
for a while. But we tried to size them to fit the problems that were identified there in the
Tensas.
The second group of solutions we had were structural or engineering. This is just a close-up
of a drop pipe—a water control structure. You can see the benefits here. We hold the water
over the winter and allow the silt and sand to settle before it runs off into the stream. Plus,
it creates a lot of habitat for our wetland wildlife species.
The third solution was public awareness. We need to continue an aggressive public awareness
information program. Find out what individuals are involved, what is their impact, how what
they do affects the conditions of the Tensas, what they can do to improve the conditions, and
what incentives are available to help implement some of these recommendations.
The fourth recommendation we had was reforestation. We feel like this is going to be the
most beneficial over the long run. It's been pretty well accepted throughout the Tensas as far
as the wetland reserve program. But this is also an expensive method, and with some people,
it's controversial.
Presently, the Tensas is in transition from the study to the implementation and monitoring
phase. Future plans include targeting our efforts around these four recommendations. The
steering committee has agreed to stay together to implement the recommendations. The local
agricultural watershed groups will stay together through implementation. We identified two
groups that we didn't really target in the first phase (the study phase) and that was our
corporate farmers and limited resource minority farmers. Both of those will be targeted for
implementation.
Now the good or the fun part—the successes which I think this conference is about. It gives
us a chance to brag a little bit about some of the things that we have done. Some of the
successes in the Tensas are going to be hard to monitor. It's hard to tell public awareness or
public participation. Some of the other methods are easily monitored such as acres restored,
those type numbers. But what we felt were some of the successes in the Tensas were where
we improved the overall condition, coordination, and communication between all stakeholders.
Partnerships were developed not only between state and federal agencies and organizations,
but also between non-traditional partners, our farmers. The EPA, other agencies and
foundations have helped fund this project which has been a major success. We're hoping
they're going to continue through the implementation phase. We've completed a
comprehensive natural resource management plan with input from the stakeholders. We've
Page 97
-------
increased public involvement. We felt like since this program was all voluntary that for it to
be successful we had to have public involvement-even more so as we go into the
implementation phase. We've improved public awareness of the natural resource issues,
problems and opportunities in the basin, and most importantly, implementation of the
recommendations.
The study is completed, but it's not sitting on a shelf. We're out trying to get the
recommendations that came out of it implemented on the ground. Some of the things that we
have done as far as land treatment options: the first is there are more conservation practices
being applied today than I would think anytime in the past-structural or engineering methods,
the risers and drop pipes. There's a backlog of land owners wanting to install these water
control structures on their property. They are just waiting for the material to come in.
Public awareness. Reforestation. And over the past four years, thanks primarily to the
Wetland Reserve Program, there's been over 17,000 acres of prior converted wetlands that
have been converted back to bottomland hardwoods, or are in the process and have contracts
signed on them to be converted back to bottomland hardwoods. That has been through the
Wetland Reserve Program. If you're familiar with it, it's a permanent easement on it.
Meaning that this land will perpetually stay hi the bottomland hardwoods and will never go
back into agricultural land.
Beverly Ethridge:
Thanks, Mike. Mike's being modest. During the first year of wetland reserve program sign
up in this 500,000 acre watershed, there were 50,000 acres offered up! Now he's talking to
you about the numbers that have accumulated over the three years of the program—17,000.
But ten percent of the landscape got offered up for wetland reserve the first year. Not bad.
Our next speaker is Lisa Creasman, who is the Executive Director of The Louisiana Nature
Conservancy. Our acquaintance with Lisa began about four or five years ago, after she had
just authored the Ecosystems in Crises pertaining to the Mississippi Delta. Lisa comes to us
with a vast background of experience. She's had a lot of hands-on experience with education.
She's done work on research vessels in the Antartic Ocean. After a one-year position in the
Louisiana Governor's Office as Technical Assistant on Environmental Affairs, she came to
work with the Nature Conservancy. Her position involves coordinating the seven state Delta
initiative, fund raising for the project, implementing on the ground projects, promoting
protection and sustainable use of the ecosystem's natural resources, and working with land
owners. Lisa will address the whole lower Mississippi Delta. Then we'll get back to Steve
and he will talk about the Coastal portion.
Page 98
-------
Speaker: Lisa Creasman, Executive Director, The Nature Conservancy; Baton
Rouge, LA.
I would like to clarify that 4t lias changed a little bit sow that I am in the State Director's
position. Cindy Brown is the new coordinator for the Mississippi River project and she's here
in the audience, too, if anybody would like to meet her.
Before we begin with the slides, I would like to tell you a little bit about the Nature
Conservancy and how we got involved in ecosystem conservation. For those of you who
aren't familiar with the Nature Conservancy, it's a private non-profit, non-governmental
organization. We often describe ourselves as a land conservation organization. That's tied
to our mission which is rather lengthy, but is to preserve the plants and animals that represent
the diversity of life by protecting the land and waters they need to survive. So basically, what
that means is we protect habitat so we can protect the plants and animals that need that habitat
to survive.
The Nature Conservancy used to do inventories to find out where these species were located
on the ground, and work through voluntary measures with land owners to protect that habitat
through a variety of ways. For example, we may find an area where there is an endangered
community of some plant, and if the land owner is interested in participating and wants to sell
that land, we would try to raise money, buy that and say, "Okay, now we have a Nature
Conservancy Preserve." We thought, well, that's one way you can be sure of success. You
own it. You manage it to maintain whatever you want there. We would go out and put our
little signs around the perimeter saying, "This is Nature Conservancy Preserve," and we
thought, "Okay, we've at least achieved our goal there. Let's move on." But what we
weren't doing is considering that preserve in the larger context of the watershed or the
ecosystem. And over the long term, we weren't achieving our objective. So the Nature
Conservancy has started moving towards ecosystem conservation. We still don't know exactly
what that means. It's just like I'm sure we all encounter. Conservation biology and those
types of things are very conceptual, and figuring out how to translate that to on the ground
work is very difficult.
But what I'd like to do is just talk a little bit about the Lower Mississippi Valley, how we got
involved there, and a couple of lessons that we've learned through our work there. So if I
could go ahead and have the slides, please. These are somewhat redundant of what Mike has
shown, because the Tensas, as he said, is representative of what you find in the Lower
Mississippi Valley. But I'll just run through these briefly and end with a map that is a focal
point.
The forested wetlands, as we're talking about wetlands here, are characterized in the Lower
Mississippi Valley by Cypress Tupelo swamps, and the areas that are slightly higher and
Page 99
-------
dryer, but still considered wetland, the bottomland hardwood forests. These areas in the
Lower Mississippi Valley historically contain dense thickets of cane or cane breaks, and they
had massive hardwood trees. This drawing was done in the 18th Century, and even at that
time, hi the late 1700's, you could see that they were cutting the trees and floating them out
during high water times. So they were harvesting timber at that time in the 1700's.
Between 1776 and 1936, over 50% of the Lower Mississippi Valley was converted to other
uses; predominantly to cotton production. Then during the Korean War and World War II,
the demand for timber took the last of the virgin timber from the area. Then as Mike talked
about, in the late 60's and early 70's, conversion to soy bean further reduced the extent of the
forested wetland habitat. What that means on the landscape is a big change of what was
historically forested wetlands and the wetland functions and values. Now you find patches of
forest separated predominantly by large fields of agriculture. That has had an impact on
wildlife habitat. I don't know if you can see hi this slide, right there is an ivory billed
woodpecker. This was taken in Northeast Louisiana. That was the last sighting of the Ivory
Billed woodpecker. That bird depends on older forest structure, and because all of the virgin
timber has been removed--! don't want to say old growth forest here, so I'm avoiding that—
that species is now extinct.
And the Florida panther is no longer found in the Lower Mississippi Valley because it depends
on large contiguous tracts of forest and there's not many of those that remain, and also the
Louisiana black bear, that Mike mentioned, is now federally threatened. But not only, as we
all know, is wildlife habitat affected, but the ability of these areas to retain flood waters and
release them slowly downstream. So what you see are flooded agricultural fields or flooded
residential areas. You also see degraded water quality. This is two sources of muddy water
coming together. Water quality issues there don't just affect recreational opportunities. I
think, too, that they affect commercial fisheries that may exist in the Lower Mississippi
Valley. But also, sediment is the primary water quality problem in the Lower Mississippi
Valley, so when these sediments run off of the fields into the streams, they reduce the
capacity. They fill up the streams and reduce the capacity of them to carry the water off the
fields. So you have even increased flooding. So it's a rather vicious cycle that occurs there.
This is where we are now. The map on the left is the historic extent of forested wetlands.
This is based on the extent of alluvial deposits or deposits from the river and the extent of
backwater flooding prior to the construction of the levees. So what we're talking about here
really isn't a watershed, but the floodplain of the Lower Mississippi River. That area was 21
million acres that Beverly referred to. On the right is the current extent. That's 1991 satellite
imagery. There are about 4.9 million acres of forested wetland in that. It's a 77% decline
from the historic extent of forested wetlands.
Page 100
-------
So the Nature Conservancy came to this area and they said, "Well, we're interested in the
species that reside there. We think that there are some incredible natural communities
remaining of bottomland hardwood forest that we're interested in preserving." So the seven
states that parallel4he^ive^got together and they^said, "Well, the way we're setup i^ much
like the government. We kind of have state offices and then a regional office and then a
national office." So the Louisiana office got together and said, "The Atchafalaya is important
and the Barataria-Terrebonne and the Tensas, so we'll work in Louisiana on our part. And
then hi Mississippi, you guys work on the Yazoo Basin. Then in Arkansas, you work on your
part." So basically, what we were doing is saying this was one ecosystem, but everybody was
going to go home and work on their separate parts, and we realized we weren't going to
achieve our objectives there. So we said, "What we need to do is address this as an
ecosystem," which is a huge commitment and an undertaking. And talk about trying to
measure success at that scale, that's very difficult.
So basically what we did is we said, "What are the issues~what things can we achieve?" To
begin with—and everybody has said this today—in listening to all the talks, we all realize the
importance of working hi partnerships. There's no way the Nature Conservancy can achieve
just our objectives by working alone. So we all know we need to work together in
partnerships. I think, too, we realize the importance of education—kind of shared education.
We need to learn from the fanners and the foresters how can we achieve our goals with the
people who are depending on those areas for economic growth and development. There's also
the issue of economics. How can we do this in an affordable way?
One of the speakers on the panel this morning said, "You can't get me to pay $50,000 to
improve water quality downstream. How can we make this economically practical?" I think
we all agree that that's an important issue. So I was thinking what is something we've learned
that I could provide here that maybe other people haven't encountered, and that's the issue of
scale. I think that it may be a very simple matter, but by looking at the ecosystem scale, there
are things we can achieve that you cannot achieve at the watershed scale as easily. At the
ecosystem scale, the things we're concerned about looking at are policy issues. How does
agricultural policy and wetlands policy affect your ability to on the ground make change
happen? Not that we can make policy changes. But it's more easily addressed and a more
appropriate thing to tackle at the ecosystem scale.
There's also the issue of wetland functions and values. How did this system originally operate
as a wetland? How does that affect your ability on the ground to restore those functions at a
specific site? So there's kind of the academic knowledge, the research capabilities at the
ecosystem scale that will benefit people on the ground.
I think a third benefit from working at the ecosystem scale is the cumulative knowledge that
exists. There maybe something that they've done in Kentucky that we could benefit from in
Page 101
-------
Louisiana and visa versa. So I think there is the opportunity to communicate those lessons that
we've learned over that whole ecosystem. Whereas, if you were working in isolation in a
watershed, you may not be able to take advantage of that. And that's not to say that
everybody doing a watershed project needs to go work at the ecosystem scale. I think that
originally we at the ecosystem scale thought we're going to do everything from this level. We
learned that's not going to happen. There's certain things we can achieve at the ecosystem
scale best. If we drop down to the state or the watershed level, then we can work there better
achieving those goals. Then to do the true on the ground implementation, you have to work
with the individual land owner.
S
So I think that it's—and I don't know if that's come across as a lesson learned, but I think j
isolating your objectives so that there are things -that—instead of trying to achieve everything j
at the same level, you can really use your time most effectively. As the speaker at lunch said,
you really need to stay focused on your objectives. I think when we came in and we looked
at such a large area, instead of getting anything accomplished, we just kept feeling \
overwhelmed. So what we've done is try to achieve things by—and this is the same meeting |
that Mike was at—by working through partnerships and meeting with people. Federal j
agencies, foundations that like to work on big projects. Those types of partnerships that you
can form at the ecosystem level and affect change there.
But then drop down to the watershed level and you work with a totally different group of
partners and you have totally different sets of objectives there. Then when you drop down to
on the ground, you're going to have different objectives and different people. It used to be
I'd go out to a farmer and say, "See this ecosystem. This is important. Here's what
ecosystem management is." And it was an inappropriate application at that level. So I think
that if anything, that's maybe a lesson that we've learned in working in the lower Mississippi
Valley. But again, we're just at the beginning of this. We're interested in learning as we go
with everyone else.
Thanks.
Beverly Ethridge:
Our next speaker is Steve Mathies, who is the Director of the Barataria-Terrebonne National
Estuary Program. Steve received his Master of Science Degree from Northwestern State
University in Natchitoches, Louisiana, and his Ph.D. from Mississippi State, and was a
biologist with the Corps of Engineers, and then has gone out the state level to work in the
Barataria-Terrebonne NEP. Welcome, Steve.
Page 102
-------
Speaker: Steve Mathies, Program Director, Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary
Program; Thibodaux, LA
Thank you. I appreciate thelnvitationto be here today, hi the opening remarks this morning
Dave said that it's hard to figure out the physical boundaries of watershed. I was thinking that
in South Louisiana that's really easy. You just walk to the top of the levee and you look to
the other levee. Right?
I'm here to talk about the National Estuary Program, and in particular, the Barataria-
Terrebonne Program in Louisiana. I'll tell you a little bit about the National Estuary Program
from a nationwide perspective and I'll tell you a little bit about our program. But then I want
to get into the good things that we have done in relation to watershed planning.
Let me begin by saying that I'm a wholehearted supporter of watershed planning. I'm a
believer in getting the user's involved and that's why I was so excited about joining the
National Estuary Program, because that's the focus of the Program. Let's be perfectly clear
about one thing, the National Estuary Program is not a regulatory program. Everywhere we
go, because the name has National in it and people know that EPA is involved, they think we
have to be a regulatory program. When we talk to land owners or citizens groups, they figure
that we're about dreaming up new laws and regulations. We're not.
The National Estuary Program was authorized in 1987 as part of the Clean Water Act. In the
first round of NEP's that came on line was Puget Sound. Our guest speaker today, Ms.
Nancy McKay, is the Director of that particular Program. The main mission of all NEP's is
to work with local communities to develop a management plan for that specific area. It's not
the federal government coming down from on high and mandating what you're going to do.
That's a unique approach, especially when a federal government is involved.
For us here in Louisiana, the Barataria-Terrebonne Program was selected to become part of
the overall national program in 1990. To become part of the national program, you have to
meet two simple criteria. One is that the estuary has to be of national significance, and the
other is that the estuary has to be threatened. In our case, estimates are that nearly 20% of
the commercial seafood catch nationally-that's for estuarine dependent species—nearly 20%
of that catch spend all or part of their life cycle between the Mississippi and the Atchafalaya
Rivers here hi Louisiana. That area is the Barataria-Terrebonne Basin. That makes our area
nationally significant. That's not including the oil and gas that comes from this area, or the
value of the area to water fowl, navigation, sheet metal fabrication, building oil rigs to go
offshore, the nearly 200,000 acres of sugar cane, or anything like that.
The second criteria was that it had to be threatened. In our case, in that little sliver of
Louisiana, between the mid 1930's and now, nearly 400,000 acres of productive marsh have
Page 103
-------
converted to open water. For those of you that are not from Louisiana, when I say 400,000
acres, that's probably more wetlands than you have in your whole state. That's truly amazing.
So yes, it is a threatened resource.
Our program is like all the other National Estuary Programs in that is it's not administered by
one particular state or federal agency. We are governed by a series of committees, and all the
members of these committees are volunteers. We have a management committee. We have
advisory committees. We have groups of scientists. We have local government folks. We
have citizens. We have many special interest groups represented. Those would include the
Sierra Club, Audubon Society, League of Women Voters, Oil & Gas, Sugar Cane League,
and on and on. All in all, there's about 110 folks that sit on our committees.
The way that we started our process three and one-half years ago, was that we sat down with
those 110 folks and said, basically, "What do you want to accomplish for this estuary? You
live here. You work here. You plan on spending your lives here. What do you want to
accomplish for this estuary? What's you vision of what we're going to be like 25 years from
now?" From the development of that long term vision, everything that we have done and all
the management measures that we propose, are weighed against that overall vision that all 110
people agreed to. So by doing that, it took it out of the realm of just the oil and gas guys
representing the views of oil and gas, and putting forth what the oil and gas industry wanted
to see in 25 years; or the environmental groups, or the agricultural industry. It was something
that we all worked on together and agreed that was our mission, our focus, and what we were
going to accomplish.
Where are we today? It's time that we're all in this together and that everyone is getting along
real well. We've worked together for three and one-half years. There's an enormous
commitment. We have committee meetings every month. Now that we have begun crafting
the actual wording of our management plan it has required meetings every other week of
different work groups. And so there are some people on those committees that meet three or
four times a month. That's days a month that are committed to work on the program. I don't
think there's any way that someone can dedicate one day a month of their work life to a
program for three and one-half years, then spend two or three days a month for six or eight
months, and not be totally committed to the outcome of that program.
Our job is not to develop a real nice plan that looks good and then sits on the shelf. We've
done zip if we do that. We have expended an enormous amount of public good will for people
to come for such a long period of time to develop the plan. If it goes nowhere, we would
have been better off if we never started. So of the 110 people that were involved in our
program, we've only lost about eight or ten folks and that was because they were reassigned
with their jobs or moved away. I don't think we've lost one person because they got
frustrated with the system or frustrated with the progress.
Page 104
-------
So now we've built a small army of 110 people that will ensure that when the plan is
completed it will be implemented. These are people in key sectors, whether it be private or
public, that have invested five years of their lives, and they're not going to let it fail.
Our subject today is comprehensive watershed planning and wetlands, so let me just back up
a little bit and tell you what our program is doing related to wetlands.
From a technical standpoint, one really good thing that we've done is developed predictive
models that will predict how our remaining coastal marshes will respond if you change the
hydrology. The landscape model that we're using was a model that was developed for the
Army Corps of Engineers to evaluate the potential impacts of extending a segment of the
Atchafalaya Basin levee system. We've expanded that model to include all of Barataria at this
point. That model is on line now and are currently working on 50 year predictions. We will
have a series of management alternatives that will be evaluated, using the model, to see how
the landscape will respond. Some of those are large scale projects like the proposed Davis
Pond Diversion. Other projects are smaller scale like those proposed by the Breaux-Johnston
Act. But several projects can be evaluated in conjunction with one another.
Another exciting proposal being considered relates to the amount of frustration felt by small
land owners when it comes to the permitting process. We know that we can't change federal
law, but what we can do is make recommendations to ensure that they are implemented most
effectively here in Louisiana without adding to the frustration level. Our folks got together
and came up with three things that we can do. If you want to build a house or open a small
seafood outlet, and you're a small land owner, how do you get information about how to apply
for a water quality certification permit? How do you find out about the requirements of
obtaining a 404 Permit? Or a Coastal Use Permit from DNR? You have to go to those
agencies and sit down and talk with those folks.
We came up with an idea of working with local governments to set up information offices.
So if a person wants to find out if he needs a permit and what to do to get a permit, he has a
warm body to talk to and say, "What do I need to do in Jefferson Parish? This is where I
want to build my house. Is it a wetland? Is it not? If it is a wetland, what do I need to do?
Who do I need to talk to? Who is the point of contact at DNR?" Other things would include
agency performance reviews, where agencies would sit down and evaluate how the other
agencies are performing. Something that's not normally done at this point. And also, we
would look at ways of involving citizens in the promulgation of regulations. Is there a point
where a person can sit down at the table and discuss their concerns with people that are
preparing new regulations.
There are things that we're doing that are a little bit different than things that have happened
in Louisiana before. The bright spot that I want to bring to you is that before we as
Page 105
-------
government do anything, we need to get people involved. We owe it to them to have them
sitting at the table from the very first meeting. That includes land owners, environmental
groups, civic organizations, whomever we're going to affect. They need to be sitting there
from the very beginning and not brought into the cycle once you have your plan already
formulated and your mind set as to what you're going to do.
What are the next steps for our program? Well, we're in the process of setting up public
meetings. These public meetings won't be your typical government public meetings. For
example, we want to talk to the folks in Vacherie, Louisiana. So how do you set up effective
public meetings in Vacherie, Louisiana? What we did was go, sit down, and talk to the
farmers in Vacherie and we said, "You tell me. What works in Vacherie, Louisiana to get
people out?" After talking to folks for about an hour, I was surprised when I left. What I was
left with was them saying, "Well, the place you need to have it is at the Lion's Club and you
need to do it on Monday night, and I'll go to the Lion's Club and make the arrangement,
because my brother-in-law is the President, and if you want 50 people here, we'll assure you
that each one of us will bring 5 to 10 people to the meeting. So then you've got from 60 to
120. And I'll take the flyers to my parish church, and I'm going to give them out after mass
and so on and so on."
The thought I'd like to leave with you is that we need to get away from the "us versus them"
mentality. But the only way we can do that is if we do it as a team and we get all involved.
Thank you.
Moderator: Beverly Etheridge
I'm going to ask Rose Lew, from our headquarters office, to step on up at this time.
Speaker: Rose Lew, Environmental Scientist, U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency; Washington, DC
Thank you, Beverly. I'm here today with my colleague Walter Brodtman, who's sitting in the
front row over there. We're both in the Office of Compliance at Headquarters and we have
another colleague here, Cathy Clark, who's with the Office of Regulatory Enforcement. We
would like to thank Beverly for inviting us and giving us the opportunity to exchange
information. This includes sneaking a few minutes for us at this meeting to tell you what we,
back in Washington, are trying to do that relates to the Mississippi River.
I think that will make more sense if I tell you first about the reorganization that occurred about
a year ago in the former offices that dealt with enforcement. We are now an Office of
Enforcement and Compliance Assurance. A major purpose of the reorganization was to try
Page 106
-------
and start addressing environmental problems more holistically. To get away from people
working strictly in programs related to single statutes and to get work more looking at multi-
media. The way in which the management decided to try and do that is to organize along
sectors. ^Sowe have an Energy & Transportation Sector, Commercial Services Sector, and
Manufacturing Sector. Walter and I are in the Agriculture & Ecosystem Division. In that
division, there is a very tiny group. We represent two-thirds of it. It's called the Ecosystems
Team. When the reorganization took place, the Ecosystem Team was charged with the
ultimate responsibility of trying to come up with an ecosystem protection strategy for the
Office of Enforcement & Compliance Assurance.
Then back in last May, a great deal of interest hi the Mississippi River started. It had filtered
all the way up to Headquarters in Washington.
This was a meeting that took place where a lot of U.S. attorneys got together with a number
of EPA attorneys and, as Cathy said, our Assistant Administrator came. They decided to
target the Lower Mississippi for enforcement cases. But the next thing that happened was that
the OECA management decided that we should take a step back and look at the problems of
the Mississippi on a broad scale. And so our small group, the Ecosystems Team, tried to
explain to management what the environmental problems really were hi the Mississippi River,
what their causes were, and ultimately how we could use our compliance and enforcement
resources to better address the environmental problems.
So, where we are now is that, we have done an analysis based on existing available
information, a number of really good studies that came out in the past couple of years, and
USGS studies. We have a preliminary understanding of what some of the problems are. And
also, we have a very good understanding that EPA can only address these problems in a very
limited fashion. And certainly, EPA and Headquarters and OECA can only address these
problems in an extremely limited fashion. Therefore, the most important thing that we can
do in terms of the process to get to our ultimate goal of better using enforcement and
compliance resources to foster ecosystem protection goals is coordinating, developing, and
supporting partnerships with those activities in the Mississippi River. So that's really why
we're down here. To begin exchanging information and to get feedback and input from
Region 6.
Question:
We are particularly interested in the nutrient loading problems in the Mississippi River and
the dead zone that is in the Gulf of Mexico. Is that being talked about at the national level?
What can we expect from EPA in regards to that?
Page 107
-------
Rose Lew:
Well, that's certainly one of the problems that we're aware of and that we've identified based
on other people's work. It's something that we will be talking about in greater detail
tomorrow. It's somewhat complicated for me to talk about because my understanding is that
at this time the agency has chosen to have the Gulf of Mexico program take the lead on
assessing what the sources of all the nutrients to the Gulf are. There's a lot of information and
several reports that I understand have attributed the primary sources of the nutrients to
agriculture. The Gulf of Mexico program, while not ignoring that information, believes that
further studies need to be done in order to quantify and better identify all the sources of
nutrients in the region. They have recently involved five regions in beginning a program to
address all the sources of nutrients within those five regions.
Beverly Ethridge:
Just for anyone who is not aware, it is estimated that about 90% of the nutrients that go into
the Gulf of Mexico come down the Mississippi River. Steve, about what is the current size
of the dead zone which in the Gulf is also attributed to nutrient pollution?
Rose Lew:
We had the opportunity to be at a recent meeting where this was discussed, and usually they
say it's about 3,500 square miles. But a year or two ago, when we had the huge floods, the
size of the dead zone about doubled to 6,000 square miles.
Beverly Ethridge:
Part of the complications that Rose refers to, of course, is that data shows that about 80% of
whatever nutrients are hi the river already are in the river when the river passes Cairo,
Illinois. Part of the reluctance to jump right in and name themselves as the problem definers
and solvers has been that it's difficult in an office based in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi to talk
about what our farmers need to do to control nutrients off of corn fields. So it's very, very
complicated and I think we'll just have to have, as Rose pointed out, those five regions
working together to help define the issues or solutions.
Rose Lew:
But I would like to say that regardless of how the quantification turns out in identifying all of
the sources and how much contribution comes from what sources, it seems pretty clear that
agriculture is a large contributor. Since Walter and I happen to be in the Agriculture &
Ecosystem Division, that's an area which my particular group can try to address within those
Page 108
-------
constraints of compliance and enforcement. We actually have a proposal for an Agricultural
Compliance Assistance Center that is supposed to get underway in about three months. It's
based out of Region 7 Kansas City office where we'll try and provide information to the
agricultural community through networking witk others who do outreach on their regulatory
requirements and also on best management practices. One of the areas that will undoubtedly
be addressed will be nutrient reduction measures. So we don't necessarily have to wait until
all the final scientific answers are in before we feel we can try and start to do something.
Question:
Steve had mentioned the Breaux Johnston legislation. Could you say a little bit more about
that? (SIC - Coastal Wetlands Planning, Protection and Restoration Act)
Steve Mathies:
Well, that was special legislation in which Louisiana ends up with about $35 million a year
to actually go out and build restoration projects to restore vegetated wetlands.
There are a number of federal and state agencies involved, and they have come up with four
priority lists of projects to date.
Ron:
Correct and five federal agencies.
Steve Mathies:
There is a maximum of $35 million from the feds. Louisiana has had a problem recently
providing the 25 % match.
Beverly Ethridge:
I would also like to introduce Ray Bryant. Ray is the Executive Director of the Delta Center,
which is co-located with the Agri-Center in Memphis, Tennessee. That office is an outgrowth
of then Governor Clinton's Economic Development Plan that was developed for the Delta.
It goes far beyond simple economics and looks at socio-economic issues, industry, wetlands,
natural resources, water quality, all of that.
Page 109
-------
Page 110
-------
Tribal Watershed Activities (3:00-4:30PM)
Moderator: Petuuche Gilbert, Tribal Councilman and Land Coordinator, Pueblo of
Acoma; Acoma Pucblfr, NM
My name is Petuuche Gilbert. I'm from Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico. I've asked each
panelist to introduce themselves and I'll proceed to do the same thing. I'll just talk a little bit
about some questions that I think need to be asked of Native Americans regulating their land
and their natural resources.
Acoma is a small community located about 60 miles west of Albuquerque. We're a
community of approximately 6,000 people on a land base of approximately 591 square miles.
In the concentration of our small river valley, there are three small communities, and a small
stream running through. It is traversed by an Interstate Highway and a railroad.
Through the last probably 20 years as we've begun to really try to regulate what happens in
that small river valley, we've found it to be very difficult. Maybe almost 10 years ago, we
attempted to establish water quality standards, which we've never finished. Even at one time,
we had a suit against a small community, by the name of Grants, upstream from us, against
the state, against EPA over the issuance of an NPDES permit and the lack of compliance by
this small city.
So we saw the real need to do something about protecting our stream quality, but yet even at
this date, ten years later, I don't think we're that much closer to having established water
quality standards. But along the way, the New Mexico Environment Division, that's what it
is called today and the New Mexico Water Quality Control Commission established stream
quality standards for the same stream. But because of the conflict of jurisdiction, the tribe
never adopted these standards. But it's something that the tribe could do. So it's one of those
questions I would like to raise to the panelists. How do we live cooperatively together? As
has been stated this morning, you know, we are all stakeholders, as people living in the same
environment, living in the same region, and living in the state. And how do we as separate
sovereigns, as people who want to decide their growth, their destiny into the future, how do
we cooperate in these stakeholding activities?
I believe that it is as one forester says "if you are all going to be successful, it's going to take
cooperation, coordination and communication." As simple as it might be, it's politics that
I think gets in the way. It's our own basic differences that inhibits us really from having
effective communication. As I see, having not achieved successful water quality standards
establishment, I begin to try and reflect why isn't it that we can't be successful in the short
term. I would like, again, for the panelists to consider what is it that we have to have in order
Page 111
-------
to develop good regulatory frameworks? What are some of these resources, both in people
and in money?
One of the things the tribes bring up is the issue of sovereignty and the issue of self-
determination. And almost something as strong as autonomy or as powerful as a separate
nation state, that the tribes I think still espouse. How does private industry accept something
like that? Or even can they understand it? In the same respect, what about the states? Who
feels that within the state of New Mexico, that the state proclaims ownership and benefit for
the public; ownership over all waters. How do tribes really educate the public at large about
the sovereignty over their territory and over their land and people? Again, this begins to
question can there be a sovereign within a state? Again, it all goes back to this coexistence.
How do we coexist peacefully and still respect each other's territorial rights. So it's a
question, again, I would like the panelists to consider in terms of how do we work these
sovereign issues through?
Another issue I'd like for all of us to consider. As tribes establish their own framework of
regulatory regulations, what are the results? What good can come about? What are some of
the negative side effects that industry might feel? Sometimes I see states and tribes, for
example, conflicting over taxation. Tribes want to tax. State wants to tax. And yet, it may
be the same private industries doing the same thing within the state and within the tribal
reservation. So again, it just really points out this cross-jurisdiction respect and I think
understanding that it is needed.
Finally, getting back to what I started out with. How do we cooperate? If a tribe enforces
or establishes and enforces regulations, how can the state support us in this? In the same
respect, how can we even adopt certain state regulations that we want as tribes and try to get
the state assistance in that? In the last meeting that I was at and in recent discussions there's
been a lot of talk about block grants to states. I think hi the same respects, it's the same kind
of monies can go—and they really need to go directly to tribes in order for us to set up all of
the rules and regulations and laws that we need in terms of establishing a natural resources
standards.
Some of the panelists here are going to talk about not only water quality and watershed
management, but those other things that are necessary in order to regulate a community that
is going to live permanently in that same place into the future. That it's not really going to
migrate from that area simply because they are Native American people settled in their own
communities.
If you look at your list of panelists that are on here, the only one that isn't here is Mr. Terry
Williams. Each person, again, will introduce themselves and talk about their topic. I think
Page 112
-------
we've got some slides. Let me just go down the line from here and I think Ms. Linda Baker
wants to make some opening remarks and then have Mr. Treat give the presentation. Linda.
Speaker: Linda Baker, Special Assistant, Native American Liaison, USDA Natural
Resources Conservation Service; Stillwater, OK
Hello, everyone. I'd like to introduce myself. My name is Linda Baker. I'm the Native
American Liaison for USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service. We are a federal
agency. I don't know how many of you are familiar with the Natural Resources Conservation
Service. We were the Soil Conservation Service.
The reason I'm here today is to let you know of this new position that I'm in. We're very
proud of it. It's a newly developed position, and hopefully, with the reorganization, we hope
to share this position with Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas. It's an outreach program to
Native Americans, and being a Cherokee myself, I couldn't be more pleased. My husband
and I were in the Air Force for 20 years and so I've come home. I'm now in Tahlequah,
Oklahoma and the Cherokee Nation has graciously consented to house us. They provide us
with an office, office equipment, and we're there for visibility and accessibility.
The Natural Resources Conservation Service is a technical service. We've been in existence,
like I said, for 60 years. But now we see that there's many ways to partner up with people
and to share functions, to share people, to share knowledge, and that's what we hope to do.
I have a responsibility for all tribes in Oklahoma, but the Cherokee people were kind of
favored by me, so I wanted to be over there, and I think it's going to be a great success.
Mr. Mullon is also from the Cherokee Nation. He will expound on the technical part of what
the Cherokee Nation is all about. So I won't try to get on that particular situation. But I'd
like to let you know a little bit about Mr. Ron Treat. He is our Water Quality Specialist and
he's in Stillwater, Oklahoma. That's our state office. He has a degree in Agronomy, a B.A.
Degree. Graduated from Oklahoma State. Oklahoma State is very dear to my heart, because
my son will graduate from there in May and be with the Natural Resources Conservation
Service as an engineer. Thanks to Larry Caldwell. And Ron has also been with NRCS for
33 years. He served as District Conservationist, Area Resource Conservationist, State Water
Quality Specialist, and that's in various places in Oklahoma. Right now, he's been working
on the Illinois River Project, which is what he will talk about today, and that is located hi the
Cherokee Nation. He's worked with several Indian land owners, and I'd just like to say, Ron,
thank you very much. I appreciate being here.
Page 113
-------
Speaker: Ronald Treat, Water Quality Specialist, Natural Resources Conservation
Service; Stillwater, OK
Thanks, Linda. In order to set the stage for my talk, I think it would be appropriate for the
Cherokee Tribe Representative to talk about the tribe and then I'll follow him with my
presentation.
Speaker: David Million, Jr., Director of the Legal Division, Cherokee Nation,
Tahlequah, OK
Good afternoon. I am David Mullon. The agenda there identifies me as the Director of Law
and Environment, but I'm not. I'm actually the Director of the Legal Division of Cherokee
Nation. I have a lot to do with the environmental programs one way or another. So I guess
that's why they picked me. Although, there were several other people who could probably
give this presentation.
I'll try to be brief. I thought I would start out by discussing or giving you an overview of
what Cherokee Nation is. Very briefly, where it came from and how we got to be where we
are right now, and then a sampling of some of the environmental programs that we are
conducting currently and are getting into that relate to water quality and water quality
management issues. Then maybe touch on a couple of problems or barriers or obstacles that
we have to deal with in the future in connection with water quality.
The Cherokee Nation is the second largest federally recognized tribe in North America. We
have about 170,000 tribal members. We're behind Navajo in tribal population. We are
located in Northeastern Oklahoma in an approximately 14 county area in Northeastern
Oklahoma. In that part of Oklahoma which used to be known as and used to be Indian
territory. We were removed to Indian territory back in the 1830's and the early 1840's in
what is popularly known as the Trail of Tears, which was the forcible resettlement of the
Cherokee people during the Jackson Administration. The Cherokee Nation owned its land
there.
It's an important concept for 20th Century and 21st Century natural resource issues. We
actually owned our land in fee much in ways that are very similar to the ownership of the land
that the Pueblo Indians, own their land, which is a very different kind of ownership and title
holding than the reservation tribes which had their lands reserved out of what the federal
government considered to be the public domain and set aside for the Indians. But we were
fee owners of our lands. We received fee patents to Indian territory from the United States
of America.
Page 114
-------
Despite provisions in our treaties to the contrary, at the time of statehood, the Cherokee
Nation was nearly dismantled and its land was allotted out to individual Indian ownership.
Much of the land was allotted out to individual Indian ownership. As a consequence of that
and^tfaer events during the 20th Century, if you look at what the tribal land base in the year
1900 and compare it to today, it's a very depressing thing, at least from the standpoint of
Indians. Much of our land has passed out of Indian ownership into non-Indian ownership.
A substantial amount though does remain as Indian land that is individually Indian owned land
subject to federal restrictions against alienation. Much of it is tribal trust land and also tribal
fee land. We have a little over 100,000 acres of tribal trust restricted and fee land in
Oklahoma, which a lot of people find surprising, because they view Cherokee Nation as a non-
reservation tribe. In fact, we have hundreds of thousands of acres of land that we own—much
of which is directly underneath and on both sides of one of the greatest rivers running through
that part of the country—the Arkansas River. We own the land underneath and on the side of
and up to the high water mark and sometimes even much farther beyond that—about a 95 or
96 mile segment of the Arkansas River. Other navigable streams within Cherokee Nation are
still the bed and banks of those rivers are still owned by Cherokee Nation. They are held by
the United States of America in trust for the Cherokee Nation.
We are a three branch government much like the United States government. We have a strong
Executive Branch. An increasingly strong legislative branch. And within the Executive, we
have a tribally legislated Environmental Protection Commission which is the oversight and
regulatory body for a number of different environmental media and programs. It's a three
member commission and has a staff which is comprised of something called the Office of
Environmental Services. That gives you a snapshot of what we are right now.
I thought I'd cover a few things that we are currently involved in. We are not really
organized. Our overall environmental regulatory approach is really not a media based
approach. It's a little bit more comprehensive. We do not have the sort of media oriented
boundaries between programs and people that you might find in the EPA, for instance. One
of the areas that does a lot of environmental work is something called the Environmental
Health Services and this is an IHS Indian health service. This is largely funded by the Indian
Health Service Program which responds to any sort of pollution problems that might occur on
tribal land that might affect the health of Indian people or tribal members. It funds and
operates a fairly sophisticated water quality laboratory in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. It is a testing
laboratory. It also does things like it drills drinking water wells and develops fresh water
springs into drinking and domestic use water sources within our jurisdictional area.
Also, we have another department that works fairly closely with Environmental Health
Services. As a matter of fact, both of these are run by the same person who's sitting in the
back there. It's the Office of Environmental Services. They are currently involved in a
number of different tribal regulatory water quality and water management programs. We are
Page 115
-------
operating a superfund program—a multi-media program which addresses almost any source of
pollution that is related or is caused by the improperly disposed of hazardous waste. And it
identifies, accesses, and ranks potential super-fund sites. Much of its work is, in fact, water
quality type work, because-well, if anyone is familiar with that process, you would realize
that one of the prime ranking characteristics is the impact of the potential source on ground
or surface water resources.
The Office of Environmental Services is also rather deeply involved in something called the
Sequoia Fuels Decommissioning Project, and that is a rather long-term project that involved
at a nuclear fuel generating plant that it has been decommissioned or going through a process
of decommissioning for a number of years. It's a proceeding that is currently pending before
the NRC. It's a long-term problem that the Cherokee Nation right now is involving itself in
as an interested party in the regulatory proceeding. But which we are thinking we may have
a more formal involvement with the NRC in the near future. That whole decommissioning
problem, the Sequoia Fuels Problem, is really a water quality, ground and surface water
quality problem more than anything else. The plant was used to generate. It used radioactive
materials and other chemicals and hazardous materials of a variety of different kinds. They
were stored in a somewhat haphazard way over a large area of land that is right next to the
Illinois River, very close to the confluents with the Arkansas River. There are a number of
sites on that facility that contribute to very serious surface and ground water problems.
Right now the Office of Environmental Services is completing or is just about to complete or
has just completed a Clean Water Act Section 104-B3 NPDES water quality grant program.
It was a training grant for the development of tribal water quality program. In that respect,
we're a long ways behind Isleta. But we'll be catching up pretty soon. We are right now just
beginning to plan for our tribal comprehensive watershed protection program. We intend to
focus (for beginners anyway) on our wetlands program to identify, delineate, and classify
wetlands on tribal lands or individual restricted lands and within our dependent Indian
communities; and also to remediate where necessary once we've done that, and begin drawing
up our wetlands regulatory program. We anticipate that will be—well, we're already starting
that right now. But we'll be well underway within the next year or two on that program.
Incidently, we deliberately chose to focus on a wetlands program in the beginning because of
the impact that a number of different sources have had on our cultural resources that are very
important to the traditional Cherokee people who live back in the hills in Eastern Oklahoma.
A lot of the biotic resources are in trouble. We have a very significant wetlands problem, so
we are focusing on that to begin with and various, I guess what you would call, environmental |
justice issues. Prominent right now are both the illegal and the legal clear-cutting of forests f
on our tribal lands and individual restricted lands. We see this as the beginning of a fairly j
drastic water quality problem in our streams in Northeastern Oklahoma. f
Page 116
-------
Those are just some of the things that we're involved in. There are a number of other
different quality and water management programs and activities that we are undertaking. I
don't want to take more than my allotted time. I will mention some current issues that I think
are probably sort of the thematic issues^mafrufrcommonly from one tribe jo another.
One is we are in the middle of a—I'm not going to say a dispute, but there are ongoing state
tribal jurisdictional disagreements over both the ownership and/or the regulation of water
resources and other natural resources. This is an inevitable fact. It is a direct result of the
allotment era, where there is so much non-Indian ownership within the boundaries of the
Cherokee Nation's historical area that the state's interest is, from their perspective,
predominant. From our perspective, it is secondary. But nevertheless, it is a strong interest.
The flux of jurisdictional—our relationship with the state and how to live with each other—that
is not only as a people, but as two regulatory bodies and two governments—has not been
completely worked out and that will probably take some time. Either by agreement or by
disagreement, it will eventually be worked out. But we have ongoing water quality
management and water quality standard setting issues that we'll be addressing in the future that
are not going to be easy to resolve.
Fundamentally, the Eastern Oklahoma tribes are known to hold substantial water rights in the
streams. Those have never been adjudicated. There's a great deal of disagreement as to the
extent of the tribal ownership of that water. And the ownership of that water is definitely a
relevant factor under programs that are available to tribes under the Clean Water Act. The
tribal water rights are completely untouched in Northeastern Oklahoma. There are not any
cases, that are lower court cases or appellate cases that have purported to limit or to determine
the quantity, the extent, the nature of the tribe's ownership or its regulatory authority over
water resources in Eastern Oklahoma.
That will be a future issue of significant proportions, and already has become one. It almost
came to a head a couple of years ago when the State of Oklahoma endeavored to sell several
million acre feet of a lake in Central Eastern Oklahoma on what was, I believe, Choctaw and
Chickasaw territorial area. They were going to sell it to a municipality down in—or a
metropolitan water district of some sort down hi Northern Texas. And the tribes jumped in
and asserted their rights, but the deal fell through before any litigation was commenced.
The tribes in Eastern Oklahoma have a sort of chronic~or will have~a problem of whether
or not, and to what extent, they are entitled to participate in programs under the Indian
provisions of the Clean Water Act, Section 518, because of the reference in there to federal
Indian reservations. Some regulators don't realize that, in fact, the original reservation lands
of the five tribes in Northeastern Oklahoma are still in tact, and have been determined to be
so by court cases. So we have kind of an administrative issue that hasn't been completely
Page 117
-------
resolved within EPA. We're working to resolve that problem through a number of different
mechanisms.
Finally, I'm a lawyer and I've been one way or another interested in Indian provisions of the
Clean Water Act for a while. I've never felt like they were altogether fair to begin with to
tribes. But nevertheless, there are opportunities under the current reading of the Clean Water
Act for tribes who do substantially very good things. And depending on your perspective, I
would cite Isleta Pueblo as an example. But there are always forces that are trying to limit
even further the tribes abilities to regulate their own water resources and generally those are
state or non-Indian interests that are interested in limiting that authority. Right now, there is
a bill that has just been recommended out of the Committee on Energy and Environment in
the House that has language in it which would make it more difficult for Indian tribes to
achieve treatment as state status and to operate programs. It would give immediate federal
jurisdiction to district courts without going through any appellate procedures over
controversials determinations by the EPA, even non-final actions. Any action or decision
made by the EPA under these amendments that were involving the Indian provisions could be
immediately brought to suit in district court by the state or any affected party. That's going
to be a troublesome provision if it gets through and is adopted within the new reauthorization
of the Clean Water Act.
Speaker: Ronald Treat, Water Quality Specialist, Natural Resources Conservation
Service; Stillwater, OK
I hope you all remember Linda's introduction now. I'm Ron Treat. I'm the State Water
Quality Specialist or Water Quality Program Specialist for the Natural Resource Conservation
Service, and I am going to talk about one of our many water quality projects. This one
happens to be right in the heart of the Cherokee Nation. Contrary to popular belief,
Oklahoma is not all plains, buffalo, and longhorn cattle. We do have approximately one-third
of the state that is similar to the Arkansas Ozarks. It has several streams that are clear and
beautiful.
When Linda asked me to give this presentation, she said she needed some help on a program
to describe how the NRCS is helping the Cherokee Nation implement their water quality
program. Well, I have to be honest. I had a lot of difficulty coming up with something to
show that we are helping the Cherokee Tribe. I have learned a lot just visiting with the tribal
representatives. I went to Tahlequah, the capitol or headquarters of the Cherokee Nation. I
talked to Pat Gwynn, who is an environmental specialist. I realized that even though we had
talked to members of the tribe at various times, we had not involved them in our project. I
think this is the perfect opportunity, with Linda's new position and my new awareness that we
Page 118
-------
can work them into the project. They can help us with our program, and NRCS can help them
with their water quality program.
fcet-me-back-up-.--The Illinois River is located in Northeast Oklahoma, east of Tulsa. The
green area is the Cherokee Nation boundary. So it's in the heart of the Cherokee Nation. The
watershed covers about a million acres. Half of it is in Arkansas and half of it is in
Oklahoma.
This is a blow up of the basin. You can see the Arkansas/Oklahoma line going through the
middle. The river travels about 130 miles total. It's not to be confused with the river in the
state of Illinois. I guess there are several Illinois Rivers in the United States. Near its
confluence with the Arkansas River, there's Lake Tenkiller which covers 13,000 acres. Lake
Tenkiller is one of the most beautiful lakes in Oklahoma. It is very clear or it used to be very
clear. Recreation on the Illinois River historically has been an important aspect of the river.
The area is poor economically. Recreation has always been an important economic factor.
In the past 20 years, poultry and other agriculture industries have moved into the area. The
poultry industry has probably taken over as the number one economic factor in the basin.
There are literally millions of chickens in the basin. Unfortunately, with all the chickens we
have, I could not find a slide of chickens. This slide happens to be of turkeys.
These are figures that were developed for a base report that we prepared during a study of the
basin. They're probably two or three years old. It shows annually there are 230 million
poultry units produced in the basin. This may be closer to 250 or 300 million right now. This
poultry produces a lot of waste. Most producers apply this waste to fields in the watershed.
The terrain is hilly, and they spread it all over the watershed on any area that is cleared. It
produces a lot of forage and hay. With the increased forage production, there has also been
an increase in dairy operations and cattle operations. There is so much waste hi the basin that
it is very difficult to figure out what to do with it. Eventually, it has a potential to cause
pollution problems.
Some of the recent studies, indicate that nutrient levels exceed standards. The recommended
standard for phosphorous in the streams is .05 milligrams per liter. We're coming up with
.8 milligrams per liter in a lot of these streams. We look at phosphorous, rather than other
nutrients, because we feel like it is the nutrient that causes the biggest problems. The results
of this waste being applied can be pretty obvious. These slides show algae blooms, and
periphyton in the streams.
This is the upper end of Lake Tenkiller. I've lived in the area for many years. I've hunted
and fished around Tenkiller Lake. It was always one of the clearest lakes in Oklahoma.
Scuba diving was a popular sport. This is the upper end of it now. The slide really doesn't
Page 119
-------
do it justice. It really reminded me of pea soup. It was a lot greener than what the slide
shows.
In order to try to correct some of these problems, the NRCS and several other state and
federal agencies have developed special project areas. What we hope to do in these project
areas is to concentrate our efforts into high priority watersheds to make people aware of what
they can do to improve their management and hopefully this will result in improved water
quality.
The upper red area is two projects in one. It's the Battle Branch Creek Hydrologic Unit Water
Quality Project. This is a USDA/NRCS project, along with ASCS. Within that project, is
the Battle Branch Creek Special Water Quality Project, an EPA State project. Then we have
the West Illinois Project which was just initiated in the last year. The Peacheater Creek
Hydrologic Unit, which was initiated in 1991. The Battle Branch and the Peacheater projects
have been going on four or five years and now they're being extended.
Within these projects, there's several organizations that work together to try to improve the
management of the producers and improve the water quality. The Natural Resources
Conservation Service, Cooperative Extension Service, and Conservation Districts. We have
three conservation districts involved hi Illinois' River Basin Project. We have the Oklahoma
Conservation Commission, and Consolidated Farm Services Agency, formerly ASCS. Each
have their own specialty. The NRCS assists in water quality practice implementation. The
CES provides education and information.
This is an outline of what some of our programs are. In the USDA Hydrologic Unit area
technical assistance is provided by NRCS, and CFSA has 80% cost share to install water
quality practices. The CES gets special funds for information and education. Within all of
these areas, we also have a USDA Water Quality Incentive Program Project. This is rather
an unique program. The CFSA pays incentive payments for improving the management.
Normally, when we think of cost share, we think of paying for installing conservation
practices. But the WQIP, administered by CFSA and the technical assistance provided by
NRCS, actually pays for improved management. Then we have State EPA grants which the
Oklahoma Conservation Commission and the Conservation Districts implement. They have
90% cost share on many practices, and they also piggy-back cost share funds with the USDA
funds. The NRCS provides technical assistance on these 319 programs, incidentally, without
any reimbursement. We use our local field offices staff to provide assistance.
The cornerstone of our program has been education and information. We hold tours. We
publish newsletters. When I say we, I mean all of the cooperating agencies. We have a
quarterly newsletter. We have had numerous tours throughout the watershed trying to get
people aware of what the problems are and what some of the solutions are. Probably our most
Page 120
-------
successful efforts are individual land owner assistance. We have contacted all of the producers
and land owners within these target watersheds. We now have over 70% of the producers in
the watersheds implementing conservation plans to some extent. We still have to evaluate how
effective they are implementing these.
The poultry industry has cooperated with us. Tyson, Hudson, various poultry companies are
working more with us every day. They also have their own programs and work with their
producers. As I said, one of the biggest problems is applying waste on fields in the basin to
utilize the nutrients. Many of the fields are 10 to 15% slopes and very close to the stream.
Nutrient runoff is a big problem.
When we first started implementing the project, we had a lot of data on cropland runoff soil
erosion, but very little data on how much nutrients were hi the runoff. So we obtained some
funds through our national office and asked the Oklahoma State University Agriculture
Department to help us study how much of the nutrients actually ran off of these fields. Then
we could make recommendations as to what rates to apply.
This is a picture of a rainfall simulator. It's actually a machine that can duplicate certain
rainfalls over a certain period of time. If you look closely you can see four plots. This shows
the runoff that was collected off of each plot. It's pretty dramatic evidence that there are
problems out there. On the left is a check plot where we didn't have any waste applied, and
on the right is where we had 800 pounds per acre applied. This shows particles carried in
runoff progressively gets worse with increased application rates. The only problem is the data
is not conclusive enough that we can make recommendations from it. So they are still
carrying out the study. They are working in the lab now, have set up plots in the lab, and are
doing simulated rainfall on the plots.
Here are some examples of what we're doing as far as practices are concerned in the
watershed. Many of the dairies looked a lot like this with their holding areas on steep slopes
near streams, and a lot of the waste running off into the streams. We have convinced most,
if not all, to install sewage lagoons to catch this runoff. We still haven't really figured out a
way to address cattle loitering in the streams. This is a serious problem hi the area. You can
see it everywhere you drive through the watershed. What we try to do is limit access to the
streams by providing alternate water sources and fencing.
Another problem we had in the beginning was the way most of the producers got rid of their
dead poultry. They carried them to the back of the farm and threw them in ditches or just
anyway they could get rid of them. We had a tremendous eagle population, because eagles
like to feed on these carcasses. Now, almost everyone in the watershed has installed a
composting system where they compost manure and the dead poultry carcasses. This really
works efficiently. Some of them are even going to freezers now.
Page 121
-------
We've been working on these projects for approximately five years. Have we accomplished
anything? To be honest, I don't know that we can show that we've accomplished much. But
we're in the process now of using model data, producer surveys, bio-assessment, and water
samples, to hopefully, document improvement. Bio-assessment or stream evaluations is one
of OCC's latest efforts. They plan to evaluate all the streams in the watershed.
Another way we hope to show that we have accomplished something is through the use of
computer models. Using soils input, water quality data, and land use, we will use various
computer models and a program that the Extension Service has developed called Simple, to
predict that if we install certain practices, then we will improve the water quality.
One of the tools we're using is GIS. This is the small Battle Branch Creek Watershed
showing land use, and as you can see, we have mostly pasture and very little cropland. A lot
of areas even on the pasture are not really suitable for application. One of the aspects of the
Extension Service's program was to go around to all of the producers and soil test then- fields.
In many cases, they came up with over 800 pounds per acre in some of the soils test. You can
see the red areas there. That's over 300 pounds. That's 130 to 300 pounds per acre. Many
producers have accumulated phosphorous and are still applying more waste.
I still think that a key to our evaluation is going to be how the land owners have implemented
their practices and how their attitudes have changed. We are in the process of doing a survey
of the land owners. The gentleman just before me indicated that many of the producers out
in this area are ancestors of the original Cherokees that were moved to Oklahoma. They are
fiercely independent and do not always like to cooperate with federal agencies. I think it's an
opportunity for us to work with the Cherokee Tribe representatives and get these people to
trust us more. Then we can implement all the practices that we would like to see done and
maybe our program will be more successful.
As I said before, I think we made a big mistake by not getting involved with the Cherokee
Tribe long ago. I didn't realize they had so many assets that we could utilize. Hopefully,
with all the programs and cooperation with the Cherokee Tribe, we can solve the water quality
problem. Thank you.
Moderator: Petuuche Gilbert
Thank you very much, Linda, Ronald, and David. Mr. Elaine Sanchez is going to talk about
the Isleta experience. Isleta is another Pueblo Tribe in New Mexico. He will talk about the
situation that they are facing downstream of a big urban community. But are there any
questions related directly to the Oklahoma or Cherokee presentations? If anybody wants to
ask a question now before we go on, and, later we'll give you more opportunity for a more
general type of questions.
Page 122
-------
Question:
I've got a question for the first gentleman. The bill you're referring to that may cause some
problems for like tribal water quality issues in the future, is that the Shuster Bill?
David Million:
Yes.
Speaker: Blaine Sanchez, Water Quality Control Officer, Pueblo of Isleta; Isleta
Pueblo, NM
Thank you. I'm Blaine Sanchez from the Pueblo of Isleta. I'm their Water Quality Officer.
I've been given the responsibility to develop a water quality program for the Pueblo to
monitoring and oversee if the Pueblo's surface waters are meeting their established water
quality standards.
Long before the arrival of the European, the indigenous people of this region depended on the
Rio Grande. In this arid land, the river was the lifeblood that provided for our existence.
Along this river, we planted corn and other crops, hunted game, raised our children,
performed our ceremonies, and drank its water. Isleta once did not distrust the Rio Grande
for the different uses it provided. But times have changed. Isleta will continue to make use
of the river, because it is part of our tradition, culture, and we have life.
Isleta is the southern most remaining original Pueblo settlement on the Rio Grande. Isleta is
south of Albuquerque. The rest of the other Pueblos are along the Rio Grande from the
Northern Pueblos above Santa Fe, and below Santa Fe, which are the Southern Pueblos
between Santa Fe and Albuquerque. Other Pueblos west of Albuquerque, includes Acoma and
Laguna, and the Navajo Tribe.
Isleta's imposed reservation boundary is nine miles north to south and 40 miles east to west.
Isleta has a population of approximately 4,500 tribal members.
This slide is an aerial shot from the shuttle. The green ribbon that you see there is the Rio
Grande and the Bosque Cottonwood Forest. In the middle is Albuquerque. The white capped
areas are the Sandia Mountains. The thin white line is the escarpment and edge of the Rio
Grande Valley. The watershed boundary is from the escarpment to the top of the Sandia
Mountains. The Sandia Mountains have an elevation of 10,000 feet.
Page 123
-------
To the north of Isleta lies New Mexico's largest city and metropolitan area with over a half-
million people and all the potential pollution impacts that can be generated. Wastewater
discharges that is sometimes the majority of the river flow in the river, urban storm runoff,
by-products from industrial and governmental research facilities, all contribute to altering
water quality of the Rio Grande and the associated aquifer.
This is why Isleta was the first Indian Tribe to develop water quality standards under the Clean
Water Act amendments in 1987 to protect our uses associated with the river. Isleta's water
quality standards are based on those designated uses that the Pueblo has determined for all
surface bodies of water within the exterior boundaries of the reservation. The Pueblo has
identified 34 surface bodies of water. They range from ephemeral intermittent streams found
hi the mountains to the Rio Grande, irrigation, canals, wetlands, and manmade fishing lakes.
The Rio Grande here is being diverted for irrigation at Isleta. The Rio Grande isn't as large
as the Mississippi by any means, but it is the main river system in New Mexico and provides
the volume of water for all of the irrigation and agriculture going on in the Rio Grande Valley.
As you can see by these petroglyphs shown here the Pueblos have been present hi this area for
quite a while, past and present. This is a picture of Isleta from the top of the hill looking
down toward the valley. You can see that green ribbon depicted in the earlier slide shows that
the green area is pretty limited and confined mainly to the valley region. The uplands and
rangeland are pretty dry. We probably get one-eighth of the precipitation that you get here
locally — eight inches of rainfall a year. So in that respect, water quantity is also an important
consideration. Being very limited places it with a higher value.
The uses of the Rio Grande that the Pueblo developed include fisheries, primary and
secondary recreational use, industrial use, agriculture water supply use, and most important,
primary contact ceremonial use. Protecting primary contact use is where Isleta1 s water quality
standards generated controversy with the City of Albuquerque.
Does water quality perspective really differ that much between the Pueblo and the state is a
question that I asked in a previous presentation that I gave. As far as the water quality
standards go, both are promulgated using EPA's criteria. Both implement water quality
standards to support a national goal of restoring and maintaining the physical and biological
integrity of the nation's water. Both have anti-degradation policies. Both have similar
designated use. Where the designated uses differ is in the category of primary contact
ceremonial use for which New Mexico does not have a similar use. The definition of the
Pueblo's primary contact ceremony use is "the use of a stream, reach, lake, or impoundment
for religious or traditional purposes by the members of the Pueblo of Isleta. Such uses involve
immersion and intentional or incidental ingestion of water and it requires protection of
sensitive and valuable aquatic life and riparian habitat." In comparison, New Mexico's
Page 124
-------
definition of primary contact use that is related to protecting primary contact recreation reads
as follows: Primary contact means any recreational or other water use in which there is a
prolonged and intimate contact with the water such as swimming and water skiing involving
considerable risk-ofingestion^fwate^ k^quantities^ sufficient to pose ^ significant health
hazard. Though the definitions read differently, the bottom line is that they both provide an
individual with a standard of protection. Under primary contact use that allows for
immersion, whether briefly such as for ceremonial or for an extended period of time such as
swimming and some ingestion of water, protection should be equitable for alike uses.
New Mexico does not recognize primary contact for that segment of the Rio Grande which
flows through the Pueblo's jurisdiction. However, I like to note that New Mexico has
included ceremonial use as part of its primary contact definition in their recent water quality
standards triennial review which was adopted and approved January of this year. So the state
does recognize ceremonial use in their definition of primary contact.
A little bit about the implications that resulted from establishing Isleta's water quality
standards. Basically, EPA was in the process of reissuing an NPDES permit for
Albuquerque's waste treatment facility located approximately five miles north of Isleta's
boundary. The EPA waited to issue a permit until Isleta's water quality standards were
approved. After Isleta's water quality standards were approved in December of '92, EPA
prepared an NPDES permit to meet both the Pueblo's and the state's water quality standards.
At that time, the city filed suit against EPA and challenged approval of Isleta's water quality
standards. In that suit in the federal district court, the court found hi favor of the Pueblo and
EPA. That ruling found that EPA followed all the administrative procedures in adopting and
establishing those water quality standards for the Pueblo.
At this time, there was discussion about how long this might possibly be dragged on in court.
So it was discussed between EPA, the state, and New Mexico that perhaps a settlement
agreement could be reached; that a permit could be issued with some restrictions less stringent
than fully complying with Isleta's water quality standards, but nonetheless, more stringent than
what was previously issued for the waste treatment facility. That negotiated agreement was
presented to Albuquerque for their approval and was accepted. As part of the settlement
agreement, a study was to be performed to determine the background levels for the certain
questionable metals in the Rio Grande. These four metals are arsenic, aluminum, cyanide,
and silver. Of the four, aluminum standard is New Mexico's.
Basically, the study is to determine what the natural background levels are for the four metals
in the Rio Grande, and what future discharge limits the City's Waste Treatment Facility will
have to meet. Currently, that study is being contracted to USGS and we're in our first year
of study. As part of the study, we're also looking at arsenic accumulation in fish tissue in the
Page 125
-------
Rio Grande that potentially poses health concerns for the general public and Isleta community
members.
I'd like to point out the continuing potential implications for differing water quality standards
that may be established by tribes. Conflicts may be generated similarly in Isleta's and
Albuquerque's situation. But it provides a continuing impetus in arriving at a national goal.
So it can be both good and bad.
One good thing that has happened with Isleta's water quality standards establishment is that
the Pueblo has gained a new respect in dealing with water management issues in the middle
Rio Grande, and hopefully, for the rest of the tribes across the country. I would like to point
out, an interesting note, that during the process of negotiating this NPDES permit, the city
really complained about the stringency of the water quality standards. They were arguing that
the standards we were imposing on them were drinking water standards. But that isn't true
because drinking water standards are covered under the Safe Drinking Water Act and not the
Clean Water Act. But nonetheless, that was one of the city's media plays used to confuse the
public that Isleta wanted sewage effluent to be drinking water quality. This is interesting to
note, because of the ground water situation in the mid-Rio Grande Basin. It's been found to
be a limited supply and that there's possibly a 20 year supply of ground water. Albuquerque
is looking at implementing conservation efforts to stretch that water out, and is also looking
at other means to come up with additional water source for its growing population.
One of the endeavors that Albuquerque is pursuing is an agreement with Intel Corporation to
look at how they might recycle some of their waste water. Intel uses approximately nine
million gallons of water a day to clean their computer chips. In that process, once their
computer chips are clean, that water goes straight to their treatment facility. What Intel is
working out with Albuquerque is to see how they might reduce their consumptive use of that
water, possibly recycle it, and use it within its manufacturing process. This same concept is
looking at being extended to (the technology) the treatment facility where potentially that water
can be cleaned up to drinking water quality and be reinjected into the aquifer to help augment
its recharge. But what's really interesting, and kind of funny, is the city was protesting about
cleaning up their effluent to drinking water standards, but because of water availability, they
nonetheless, may have to clean their water to a higher quality anyway to reinject it into the
aquifer. So it's kind of ironic how that played out. Isleta was indirectly showing them the
direction they might have to face anyway.
Some of the respect that has been gained from this process is that Isleta is considered the
leader in this area. We've been discussing with the other Pueblos (Southern Pueblos) about
developing a water quality monitoring network-kind of similar to a citizen's monitoring
network, but involving individual Pueblos in that capacity. Hopefully, we can develop some
water quality information that can be used by the other Pueblos in helping them decide if they
Page 126
-------
want to develop water quality standards. It also provides filling in gaps of data that the New
Mexico Environment Department could use, in their assessment of the other segments of the
Rio Grande. The State doesn't have the staff, time nor funding to monitor continuously those
portions of the Rio Grande. So by developing this Pueblo monitoring network we can provide
data for the Pueblos, but also for the New Mexico Environment Department and the public
as a whole.
We hope to maybe in the future, if this monitoring network with the Pueblos is successful, to
extend it to the northern Pueblos. This potential monitoring network would consist of the 16
Pueblos up and down the Rio Grande. There are some Pueblos that are removed from Rio
Grande. We would have a monitoring network from Taos down to Isleta.
Other recognition is being received by state, federal, and regional institutions and in the
respect of participation in the regulation of water resources. Some partnerships are being
developed between Isleta with the Bureau of Reclamation, Corps of Engineers, Fish &
Wildlife Service (a program called Partners with Wildlife) and other higher educational
institutions. We're having some geologic mapping done on the Pueblo that has ties to ground
water recharge and possible sites that can be mapped for that particular purpose.
Also, the Pueblos and especially Isleta, are major players in the management and recovery of
certain habitats associated with the river. The Rio Grande Bosque, which is a cottonwood
forest that I mentioned earlier, is the only existing cottonwood forest hi the Southwestern
United States, that still remains. So it's an important biological habitat that is being addressed
as to how we manage it and protect it for the future. And in that portion of the middle Rio
Grande where the six middle Rio Grande Pueblos are, they make up a portion of that Bosque
environment.
Also, there are issues dealing with threatened and endangered species, the Rio Grande silvery
minnow and the willow flycatcher (bird). I've been able to be appointed to the recovery
planning team for the silvery minnow. I assume shortly that because of the listing of the
willow flycatcher that the Isleta will be involved again also. Let's run through a few more
slides here. This is looking north from the hill that was looking down at Isleta. Excuse the
slide, but this is one of our rare opportunities that we had a storm coming through so it was
a cloudy day, but nonetheless, grateful for some precipitation to come our way. Those are the
Sandia Mountains north of Isleta and to the east of Albuquerque.
This is on Isleta. As I was pointing out earlier, our reservation runs west to east. This is the
east part of the reservation. It extends a little bit further to the east and this is looking south.
But to the left of the slide is east and it abuts with the national forest service land. This
elevation up here is about 9,500 feet. To the west, this is the escarpment between the Rio
Grande Valley and the Rio Puerco Valley, which forms the line between watersheds. So you
Page 127
-------
can see our extreme and varied geography up from the mountains all the way out to rangeland,
and in this picture, some dunes that are caused by wind erosion and deposition.
Another storm here in the mountains. We get most of our precipitation during the monsoon
season, July and August, which the majority of our eight inches is received. That produces
some ephemeral and intermittent streams in the mountains. Very small in comparison to some
of the runoff that's received here in the creeks and tributaries, but nonetheless, important. A
water resource for livestock and used for wildlife.
Another small but important tributary runoff. Some of that runoff that comes off the
mountains here is in the form of these arroyos and this is where a lot of the major pollution
component is sediment. Some of that resulting consequence is the cutting and forming of
arroyos. That's probably about four to five feet deep there.
Another aerial shot. That's one of the large drainages on Isleta—Hell's Canyon. You can see
quite a bit of erosion taking place as a result of water runoff. This is one of the recreational
lakes on the Pueblo. It's used mainly for fishing. There's three ponds here that alternate uses
during different parts of the year. The wintertime it has trout fishing. The summertime it has
catfish stocked in the lakes.
Here's a picture of one of our irrigation canals. This water is being diverted south to the
south part of the Pueblo and further on down south to other communities south of Isleta. You
can see we do have some water canals, but it's a pretty limited amount of water. A picture
of some wetlands that we have on the Pueblo. I guess the difference with our wetlands and
your wetlands here in the area is that you have a vast area of wetlands and ours are mainly
associated adjacent to the river. Some people look at them as a burdensome habitat, because
of their limited use. In the past, they were not seen as a viable part of the biology and
associated environment with the river.
As we're developing our water quality program there at Isleta, we're hoping to develop our
ability to implement technical monitoring and studies. Here's a picture of us doing some fish
shocking to determine some fish composition in an adjacent pond to the river. By the way,
this isn't on Isleta, but this is on Sandia, a Pueblo which is north of Albuquerque. Sandia was
the second Pueblo to adopt water quality standards which are very similar to Isleta. I want
to mention also that there's a third Pueblo in Northern New Mexico, the Northern Pueblo, San
Juan, that has water quality standards. Those are the three Pueblos right now in New Mexico
that have water quality standards. Five others are in the process now of establishing water
quality standards, which would total, the future at least eight Pueblos with the possibility of
more.
Page 128
-------
We have wildlife which is tied to our water. Insignificant wildlife that sometimes people
overlook, is of cultural value for us. The presence of a variety of wildlife is an indicator of
the integrity and health of our environment. This picture ends my talk and is a view of the
Rio Grande looking soutfa.-^Aad-te-etose,- I'd like to say that Isleta has take&the first step in
a long journey in implementing water quality standards, and we will continue to do our best
in achieving water quality on the Pueblo, and hopefully, pass down that quality of water to
our neighbors to the south of us. Thank you.
Moderator: Petuuche Gilbert
Thank you very much, Blaine. Those are very good video presentations from both groups.
Mr. Mullon gives his apologies. He had to run to catch his plane. But I think these presenters
gave good vivid examples of this cooperation among state, federal, and tribal. Especially, I
think we're going to see the need for this kind of cooperative effort during these tunes of less
federal dollars coming into Indian country, and yet, you know, we're all going to be somehow
working together to establish whatever it takes in order to protect our natural resources.
Let me ask if there's any questions that you could ask of any one of us and I'm sure that we'll
be able to explain as much as we can.
Question:
Question for Blane. He's mentioned that there are three tribes and they already have standards
and five more that are working on water quality standards. Do you get a lot of calls from
around the country from tribes that are working on this and need your help?
Blane Sanchez:
There has been a lot more calls coming in to discuss water quality standards. Mainly, a lot
have been based on the misconception that the lawsuit was against the Pueblo, and that's a
misconception that I try to clarify. The lawsuit was not against the Pueblo, but was against
EPA in the approval of the standards. I think that's one of the things that some of the tribes
that I've talked to are kind of maybe hesitant, because "Well, we're going to get sued if we
follow this procedure." But I try and put that to rest. As far as water quality standards, there
are a lot of and seems to be more and more tribes looking at following this avenue. I've had
some discussions with them, not in real great detail, but just pointing out to them that if they
are looking at developing water quality standards, what really is involved. Not only just the
process of developing standards, but also the long-term commitment in following through and
development of a program to oversee implementing the standards. And also, the potential for
funding that may not be available through EPA which will have to be a commitment by the
Page 129
-------
tribal government and take upon themselves that commitment to continue a program into the
future regardless of funding. It's a long-term commitment.
Question:
I think this would be addressed to Blane. You mention the water quality standards and how
yours differed from New Mexico's and were more stringent in some areas. Were yours more
relaxed on other parameters or are they as stringent or more stringent?
Blane Sanchez:
As mentioned earlier, of the four questionable metals being investigated in the Rio Grande,
the aluminum standard was New Mexico's. Isleta's water quality standards protect primary
contact, but New Mexico's do not for that segment of the Rio Grande. We have a stricter
water quality standard for that segment that flows through the Pueblo, that's why there's a
difference in water quality standards. But the state does have similar water quality standards !
to protect primary contact, but on other bodies of water within the state. j
Question:
On the Pueblo, now that you've adopted these water quality standards, are there any
discharges into the river within the Pueblo that had to be upgraded to meet with these
standards?
Blane Sanchez:
None, at present, and that's what I tried to point out to the tribal officials is that in the future
any economic development projects or endeavors that potentially might be discharging some
type of wastewater effluent is going to have to comply with those standards. So I don't know
if that's something that was really looked at in the beginning when water quality standards
were being developed. But I think the main reason that standards were being developed was
to protect downstream effluent that was being received from Albuquerque. But the flip side
of that coin is that those standards are also going to apply to us first and foremost.
Question:
How do you set the priorities? Is that a formal or informal process? Where do you go next
after you've got standards?
Page 130
-------
Blane Sanchez:
Well, as part of the process, once the standards were established and in place, where I'm
involved is^in developing that program to assess water quality on the Pueblo by monitoring
water bodies and the uses, and is the water quality meeting those uses. So the first priority
is to get baseline data. Where are we at as far as water quality in meeting the standards is
unknown? We must look to see if there are problems, then how do we address meeting those
standards? Then probably at that point develop regulatory infrastructure that the Pueblo can
enforce hi meeting those water quality standards.
Question:
You mentioned that you have this water quality monitoring network you're trying to build.
But even with that, how do you enforce your water quality standards? You only have a short
segment of the river.
Blane Sanchez:
First and foremost, as I said, water quality standards apply within the exterior boundaries of
the Pueblo, our jurisdictional boundaries. The reason our water quality standards impacted
the City of Albuquerque's effluent was because, one, their proximity and distance from our
boundary to their point of discharge is five miles. The discharge under the permit must meet
adjacent, downstream water quality standards of a State or as in our case a Tribe. The second
reason and probably the most important is that during different parts of the year, mainly
summertime irrigation season, the flow in the river pretty much goes down to zero discharge--
zero flow. So discharge that's coming out of the treatment plant if 55 million gallons to 60
millions gallons per day, which makes up that discharge into the river, is the sixth largest
tributary to the Rio Grande. So in that sense, during those tunes of the year, water in the
river is essentially wastewater coming out of the treatment facility, which is impacting the
Pueblo's water quality directly.
Question:
How do you take enforcement of these things?
Blane Sanchez:
The NPDES permit. That's what was written taking both Isleta standards and the state
standards hi meeting those water quality standards under the NPDES permit. So through the
NPDES permit that was issued through EPA is how enforcement is taken.
Page 131
-------
Question:
You mentioned there was 4,500 members of the Pueblo Tribe. Of that number, are you the
main staff or do you have a staff of people to conduct all these tests yourself?
Blane Sanchez:
We're hot at the capacity yet to be monitoring. I am the staff person there dealing with water
quality. The hurdle that I'm facing is developing or, I guess, addressing quality assurance
oversight and setting up a structure that in monitoring and developing that data that there's
some type of quality assurance oversight built into that process. Because of the limited staff
that the Pueblo has, there isn't that ability for specific staff to address those Q.A.
responsibilities. Right now there's another person that is dealing with solid waste, which is
another issue that tribes are facing and probably all small communities in managing solid
waste. But she's dealing with solid waste specifically. So there's two people within our now
established environment office that was just established at the first of this month by the Tribal
Council and through resolutions. So that's part of my dilemma too in working with the
Pueblo is that I have a dual responsibility of following the scope of my water quality
responsibilities, but also looking at developing that environmental office for the Pueblo.
Moderator: Petuuche Gilbert
Thank you very much for the panelist participation and then the questions that were presented
by the audience.
Page 132
-------
WATERSHED SUCCESS IN REGION 6 CONFERENCE
April 19, 1995
General Session: Watershed Protection & Property Rights (9:00-9:45AM)
Introduction: Myron Knudson
I would like to introduce Cis Myers, who is responsible in many ways, for this event. Cis is
the Senior Environmental Coordinator for the Lower Colorado River Authority. She's also
in her spare time an adjunct professor at the University of Texas Lyndon B. Johnson School
of Public Affairs and has had many years experience working for the Lieutenant Governor of
Texas. She has degrees from Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, as well as
Syracuse University, and is now working on her Ph.D. Welcome, Cis.
Moderator: Cis Myers, Senior Environmental Coordinator, Lower Colorado River
Authority; Austin, Texas
Good morning. I have the pleasure of introducing my good friend, John Duffy, who is
Special Counsel to the Secretary of Interior, Bruce Babbitt. John was born in Brooklyn. I'll
give you the straight introduction and then I'll give you the real poop on John. John was born
in Brooklyn, New York. He's a graduate of Brown University and the Cornell University
Law School where he was the Note & Comment Editor of the Cornell Law Review.
Throughout his 25-year career as a private practitioner John specialized in dispute resolution
through both negotiation and litigation, which makes him particularly qualified to be working
for the Secretary of Interior these days. He is the author or co-author of a number of
publications on various legal topics and has conducted seminars on legal issues in both the
United States and internationally, particularly in Canada.
Now, I told John this was rather a boring introduction and to give me the real poop. So first
of all, we want to dispel any rumors that indicate that he and I are the oldest people at this
conference. We have identified at least four people who are older than we are. Secondly,
John tells me he is a really good looking guy. He has great fun. He is intelligent. This is a
self-analysis, I want you to know. He is intelligent. He is witty and charming. He is a big-
shot. And he tends to be hostile if you don't ask questions when you are called upon. So with
that, I think we're really fortunate that John took the time to leave Washington with all that's
going on up there legislatively. We really appreciate your taking the time to be with us, John.
Let me introduce to you, my good friend, John Duffy, Special Counsel to the Secretary of
Interior.
Page 133
-------
Speaker: John Duffy, Counselor to the Secretary, U.S. Department of Interior;
Washington, D.C. !
Thank you, Cis, for that wonderful introduction, for which I will never forgive you. I want
to thank my friends here at LCRA for giving me the opportunity to come to New Orleans.
I've long had a love affair with New Orleans and with the state of Louisiana. One of my law
professors, Billy Ray Forrester, was the Dean of the Tulane Law School, for a time,
attempting to keep me in law school, he spent a lot of time with me and told me about what |
a great state Louisiana is and have experienced that myself on a number of occasions. Not •
only here in New Orleans, but also in LaFayette, is one of my favorite places.
It was easier to experience New Orleans, of course, when I was thin and thirty. Now that I'm
fat and fifty, New Orleans can be a danger as well as a pleasure. I was very disappointed to
find that I had to speak at 9:00 hi the morning. I should have negotiated better. I'm also very
disappointed at the non-appearance of Mr. Tauzin's District Director. I understood that this
was going to be an opportunity for a strong spirited debate on the interesting topic that has
been planned for this general session. I can understand his decision that discretion is the better
part of valor, however. He definitely has the weaker part of this case. So we'll know that
he should be here, I'll take his chair and move it forward hi the traditional manner to represent
a missing opponent.
Now the first thing I wanted to say is that I'm not happy about the way this topic has been
defined in your program. I'm concerned about the statement of the issue as Watershed
Protection and Private Property, because in my view nothing in watershed protection is
opposed to private property rights, as that term has been understood since the dawn of Anglo-
Saxon Jurisprudence. I want to point out that Anglo-Saxon Jurisprudence—here I am moving
to a professorial role, which is now in vogue in Washington—is, as some of you may know,
based in part on the law of the Vikings, who invaded England and brought with them their
concepts of jurisprudence, which were actually quite advanced. The Vikings, for those of you
who aren't completely familiar with them, were very much like Texans. They were hard
scrabble dirt farmers. They were tough customers. They had little truck with central
authority. The Vikings recognized, however, even as independent as they were, that if Sven
and Oloff had property that bordered the same stream and Sven was upstream of Oloff, Sven
couldn't relieve himself in the stream, or allow his cattle to relieve themselves in the stream,
without conflict breaking out.
That same fact holds true today in Texas. I was at a meeting of Texas farmers during the
height of a particularly delicate debate over critical habitat. Many of you in Texas will know
that the rumor was that we were planning to seize all of Central Texas for the federal
government, and for some reason, Central Texas residents were not happy about that. In that
Page 134
-------
meeting, in the heat of passion, one of the farmers got up, pointed to a representative of the
Fish & Wildlife Service, and said, "If I want to take my cows right after they've been dipped
and wash them in the stream, I'm gonna do it!" And a woman raised her hand in the back and
said, "The helfyou wiUfHi drink that water^^ownstream."^few, tame, there isn't any
conflict between watershed protection and property rights. Indeed, watershed protection is
one of the ways in which we maintain property values. I'm in favor of watershed protection.
The blood of Vikings runs in my veins and I'll be damned if I'm going to let somebody urinate
upstream from me.
Some of you may say, "Now, John, the good-looking part of the introduction is okay, but the
intelligence part we're worried about." Because what you've just said is a broad
overstatement. This is really not the type of argument that we were expecting from somebody
who is a big-shot. We were expecting a more finely tuned intellectual analysis. But I am
telling you that is not where this battle is being fought. It's not being fought with finely tuned
intellectual analysis. It's being fought with bilge like takings legislation. I can't use any other
term for it. It is absurd to suggest that we should allow everybody whose property value is
decreased by any amount by any government action, to sue the government for that. No
civilized society has ever recognized that, including Sven and Oloff. It has no place in Anglo-
Saxon jurisprudence. Property rights have never had that definition—ever. Otherwise, the law
of nuisance would never have grown up.
The law of nuisance, as you may recall, is the law that prevents my neighbor from putting up
a huge Christmas tree display that puts five million watts of light into my bedroom at night.
It's what keeps his dogs from defecating without control on his lawn so that the odor in the
middle of July of dog manure is so great that my patio is unusable. These are the things that
the law of nuisance protects us against.
Now the laws that have developed over the past 25 years are no more than administrative
extensions of the law of nuisance and the concepts behind them. Those concepts are deeply
rooted in our system of law and in our understanding of private property.
What we have here, I think, abroad in the land is a public relations effort to take a concept
that we all believe in, private property, and oppose it with concepts that the people who are
using this technique don't believe in. Then they give us a draconian choice. "You want
watershed protection? Or do you want private property rights? Which is it? Make a choice."
I'm here to tell you that there is no choice necessary, because no reasonable conception of
property rights has ever included what these individuals are saying it includes.
One of the techniques that is utilized here, very effectively I think, is what I call argument by
anecdote. We don't hear real argument about these issues. We just hear stories about what
Page 135
-------
the regulations did to Grandpa and Grandma on their farm in Austin. I happen to know a lot
about Austin. That's why I know the LCRA so well.
Now one of the stories that was abroad in Austin was that the Fish & Wildlife Service~and
let's be honest, the Fish & Wildlife Service isn't perfect, but they're not completely crazy—
the Fish & Wildlife Service wouldn't let a man cut down a single lone tree that grew on his
40-acre property because a birdie might nest in it. Now, we all know that didn't happen, and
yet I've heard that from Congressional staff people. I've heard them say, "Let me give you
an example of how these laws are being applied." That's not what is happening out there, and
I'm angry and I want to make you angry about this campaign of deliberate misrepresentation.
Because sometimes, you can't fight irrationality with reason alone. You have to have emotion
behind it.
I'll tell you an anecdote which is a true story, thereby separating it from the other anecdotes.
When I was a young man, thin and thirty, I think, is the way I would characterize myself, I
was actually running—something I don't do much now—around East Potomac Park. I don't
know if any of you know Washington, but East Potomac Park is a peninsula bordered by the
Potomac River, and out at the Haines Point, which is at the tip of East Potomac Park, Lady
Bird Johnson had installed a fountain. It's called the Lady Bird Johnson Fountain. Water out
of the Potomac was pumped up and lights would shine on the fountain. That fountain had to
be shut down because the bacteria count in the water of the Potomac was so great that people
running by like myself were getting ill from the spray. Now approximately 25 years later,
you can swim in the Potomac River. You can fish in the Potomac River. And when your dog
falls into the Potomac River, you don't have to shoot the animal to protect your family.
Now these are the type of anecdotes—real, true anecdotes—that I think we have to tell more
often. To everyone's surprise~my surprise especially-Cis and I, although technically not the
only old people here, are really in a small group of old people here. There's a lot of people
in our country who don't know, or don't remember, how things were. They don't remember
why these laws were put in place. Their view is the Potomac has always been fine. They
don't remember when the—I'm trying to think what the name was—was it the Monongahela
River that used to catch fire all the tune? [Some in the audience respond: The Cuyahoga.]
The Cuyahoga, right. They don't remember when these things were a common occurrence.
They don't remember when the news was not reporting the introduction of wolves to
Yellowstone. It was reporting the imminent demise of the bald eagle, and the assured
extinction of the whooping cranes.
We're going to have to take this argument to the people arguing the other side in a bold
manner. It does no good to constantly say that we have not done as good a job as we could
do in getting our message out or in making our rules and regulations comprehensible and easy
to apply. We recognize that we have not done a perfect job in that. But that is not the essence
Page 136
-------
of the attack that is coming at us now. It isn't a question of how to improve these laws. It's
how to eliminate these laws. This attack, I think, is not being made by people who genuinely
want to solve the conflicts that we all know are out there. There are obviously conflicts
between the management ^f water, 4he productive use of Avater^and^the protection ^4he
natural environment, and the protection of people. Those conflicts can only be solved if we
recognize them as conflicts. If we see that in fact they are there. The Endangered Species
Act's greatest success has been to raise that issue continually in front of policy makers
throughout the country. Raise the issue that actions that they are taking are destroy ing the
natural environment; are rendering species extinct. That's a warning sign. It's up to everyone
here, state and local, as well as federal people, perhaps state and local more than federal
people, to take action to make sure that doesn't occur. That's what the Endangered Species
Act does. If we eliminate the act, or if we eliminate the Clean Water Act, or if we eliminate
any other act, or if we impose legislation which doesn't directly eliminate those acts, but does
it by stealth through the back door under the cover of darkness, then we are going to miss the
opportunity in our public decisions to make a decision that really solves the problem. We are
going to postpone that problem to the future. It's up to all of us to make sure that doesn't
happen.
Now, I have a number of other points I could make on my speech. Some of them are witty.
But I would like to end here and open this for questions and comments. I will say that at least
the last part of the introduction was accurate. I do feel rejected if there are no questions. You
aren't getting out early. You're going to have to sit here with me till 9:45 and it's not going
to be a pleasant experience.
Now I'm going to close with the words of my boss, Secretary Babbitt: we need you. We
need all of you, who know what has been done in the past 25 years, to get out there and work
to protect this legislation. This is not a remote threat. This is a very real threat. And it is
not a threat of change. It's a threat of cataclysmic destruction. Thanks a lot.
That's it for my speech. Now I will entertain questions, comments, or thoughts, or I will
induce them. There we go. I see a hand. Right there. Good.
Question:
I'm just going to holler from here. I'm from Central Texas. I'm from Austin. When
Secretary Babbitt backed off of the Endangered Species issue hi Austin, it sent a message out
to people hi Austin. How do we as regulators deal with that kind of message in light of what
you are saying?
Page 137
-------
John Duffy:
Great. I always like a tough question. Maybe you could clarify exactly at what point
Secretary Babbitt backed off. What are you talking about exactly? Do you mind if I take my
jacket off here. Thanks a lot.
Question:
A few months ago when we were having some of our meetings in Austin about whether or not
to put certain species on the list.
John Duffy:
The salamander?
Response:
Yes.
John Duffy:
Let me just tell you what happened on the salamander. There was a listing decision that was
pending in front of the Fish & Wildlife Service. During that tune, we went down and visited
with people on the staff of then elected Governor Bush, and we chatted about these decisions
and they said to me, look, we think that there's not enough information about where these
salamanders are and where they are located within this vast aquifer. The salamander is sort
of in the aquifer, but it's sort of below the surface of the floor of the aquifer. It sort of lives
in little tubes and whatever that are located at the spring source itself. So they are hard to
count. They said that we will agree if you will postpone the listing for six months to do two
things. We will agree to work with you to do a complete study of all potential parts of the
aquifer where they could be found. And two, we will agree to work to put in place a
comprehensive regulatory scheme that will reduce, eliminate, and control the degradation of
the aquifer watershed from development. And we said well, that sounds great to me, because
I don't see how we, the federal government, are going to be able to put in place a
comprehensive scheme for the management of the aquifer. Last time I looked, the
Endangered Species Act didn't empower us to take over the control of land use planning in
Texas. Consequently, we don't have a good way of accomplishing that. Yes, we could list
the species. But I'm not sure that in listing the species we would be able to give it any more
protection. If the threat of listing the species is so great to you, I would prefer that you took
this task on.
Page 138
-------
So the Governor wrote us a letter saying that he would take this task on and we postponed the
listing decision by six months. Now, my view is that was a good deal, because this matter of
the Endangered Species Act can't be solved by the local government alone. It's got to be
solved by local people. WedontJiave overall land use planning authority^ So we don't have
the mechanism that will allow us to put in place the type of controls that are necessary. All
we can do is either deny people 10-A permits or try to go into court in Central Texas and
prevent a particular development on the grounds that development may have an impact on the
quality of the aquifer. The problem with the aquifer is that it's not a direct flow. You can't
drop dye in at the top and watch it come out the bottom in 35 minutes. Sometimes it takes 15
years for the dye to come out. Consequently, you have a difficult case to stop that
development. You may have trouble going in and enjoining that man from building his
development, because you're going to have to be able to prove that what he's doing is going
to do damage to the aquifer. The Endangered Species Act allows a 6-month extension of the
decision on listing a species when there is disagreement concerning the information upon
which it would be based. On March 10, the Department announced that the unresolved
scientific issues surrounding the status of the Salamander were sufficient to extend the
decision.
Governor Bush, I thought, made a very courageous decision, because I can assure you that
there were a lot of people in the state of Texas who would have preferred that he do nothing
about this. I think he did it because he's interested in preserving the Edwards Aquifer. We
wanted to help him do that, I guess is what I'm saying.
Question:
I've got a follow-up on that. I'm wondering your thoughts on Judge Bunton(?) saying that you
indeed do have authority to regulate the farmers and cities over the Edwards Aquifer and has
appointed a master, or whatever he's called, to look into that and make reports, and he has
made at least one report and the judge has now asked him to look to see what additional
control measures could be placed, and I thought that was the Endangered Species Act that was
before the federal judge.
John Duffy:
Right. But the difference between San Antonio and Austin is San Antonio is primarily a water
quantity problem. Basically, the question is how much water. In Austin, it's a quality
problem. It's not how much water. There's plenty of water in the aquifer and the springs are
not in immediate danger of water depletion. It's a question of whether or not whatever is
going to happen upstream in the aquifer is going to have a detrimental impact on the health
of the salamander downstream. That's very hard to prove. It's much easier to prove that the
water isn't going to be there for the salamander than it is to prove that the water is going to
Page 139
-------
be there, but it's not healthy for the salamander. So consequently, those raise different cases
and no one to my knowledge in San Antonio has suggested that there's a problem with the
quality of water that the San Antonio species are getting. That may be coming, but it's not
there now. You know, I wouldn't ever disagree with a sitting federal judge having made a
decision. It's always a bad idea. But I think if this was a quality decision he'd be on much
weaker grounds. Yes?
Question:
I'm Chuck Bennett from Arkansas and I'd just like to have your comments on the new Clean
Water Act provisions for wetlands. What's proposed regarding your mention of property
rights, and how all that mixes in. Generally, I agree wholeheartedly with what you've said,
but I have a hard time going from point A to B when we talk about wetlands and the way the
new act is describing it as compensating somebody for a certain class. I mean, if you
designate a wetland a certain class, somebody is going to have to pay them for the property.
What are your comments on that? Is your argument on protecting everyone's property rights?
Can you apply that to the wetland case that I just mentioned?
John Duffy:
Let me make sure, because I'm not fully familiar with that law. I'd like to say that I was right
up to speed on the proposal, but I'm not.
Chuck Bennett:
I was hoping you knew more about it than I did. So I'm not sure I can describe it exactly.
But they're going to designate three classes of wetlands, A, B, and C, and if it's designated
A, it's the highest quality and then that person is allowed to sue the government for payment
for his property if it meets certain rules, which I don't know exactly what the rules are. In
effect, it's a way to obviously throttle the federal government's ability to just designate
wetlands. I mean, it puts a big responsibility on the federal government. If they do,
somebody is going to have to pay them to make that stick. So it's really going to restrict it.
When I think about wetlands, I think about, well, we're telling some guy whose property is
just sitting there in its natural state that it's going to have to sit there in its natural state. So
he may have a good argument that we've taken the value of his property away.
John Duffy:
Okay. Let me reach that question. My neighbor, for example, has a corner lot and it's not
right next door to me, but he borders on a big avenue, Massachusetts Avenue, and you know,
there's no McDonald's there, and if he could put up a McDonald's, he could make a lot of
Page 140
-------
money. He can't, because this is a residential neighborhood. His neighbor doesn't want a
McDonald's and I don't want a McDonald's. The reason I don't want a McDonald's is it
would reduce the value of my property. So he can't put up a McDonald's. Now I don't feel
ealled^ipott to compensate him for that. -Why-are wetlands a different situation? -The-foet-ef
the matter is that we have some wetlands here. The wetlands are integrally related to the
remainder of the watershed. People can't necessarily do what they want on their property if
it impacts other people's property. That's the essence of this. People keep saying, "Well, I
can do anything I want with my property." That's never been true in the history of civilized
people.
The Supreme Court has ruled that if the government's regulation takes the complete value of
your property and reduces it to zero, because it can't be used, like the beach case in South
Carolina, then the government has taken the property. All right? We have mechanisms for
people who think that the property has been taken. This is not an effort to redress something
that there's no redress for. We have a Claims Court. There's a full mechanism for going in
and getting redress for your property. But in the history of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence, as
enshrined by the Supreme Court's decisions on takings, no one has ever contemplated this sort
of blanket payment for loss of potential value. That's because everyone recognizes that in
using one's property one has to use it in a way that's consistent with other people using and
enjoying their property.
If I have wetlands on my property, it may be in my best interest to develop it. But, it's not
in the best interest of everybody else to have it developed and that's why there's a limitation
on my ability to develop it. That's why there's a limitation on putting a stockyard next to my
house, because it's going to impact my property.
If you take the example of Dell Webb which we just made a big deal about in Texas. I had
a big press conference. I went down there. I was on TV. My mother was happy. Dell Webb
came in. They had a planned development. They planned the development hi such a way that
various endangered species were not impacted. They didn't have to get a permit. No permit.
No problem. Just looked ahead. Said, "There's a whole bunch of endangered species here."
Took care of it. Now, doesn't that tell you something? It tells me something. It tells me that
we can work out these matters if we have planning and if we have science. That's what most
annoys me about the current debate.
In addition to these strange ideas of private property—and I'm telling you they are strange;
I mean they are unparalleled and unprecedented-there's also this idea that it would better if
we knew nothing. Knowing things can be dangerous. If we know things, we may find that
there's a problem in filling in the wetlands. So let's know less. Let's know nothing. We
have a National Biological Service because the general feeling in the Department of the
Interior was that we had three organizations that had science responsibilities, but they weren't
Page 141
-------
talking to each other. So now we have one science agency. Fine. They want to get rid of
that. The USGS has been, for 85 years, drawing great maps. What's the problem with
USGS? It just finds water. It finds land. It finds minerals. It locates them. It puts them on
a map. No, let's get rid of that. We might know something about this stuff. It would be a
big problem for us. Science agencies are under attack. Funding for information gathering is
under attack in your own agency (EPA). Why? Information. It would be a problem. We'll
know something. We'll have a problem.
The real problem is that if we don't know anything we can't solve the damn problem.
Knowledge is what makes us able to solve the problem. Knowledge makes it easy for us—not
easy—but it makes it possible for us to take the development versus natural resources
protection dichotomy, and make it go away. We don't have to have a draconian choice. We
can have both nature and economic growth.
I was reading in the newspaper the other day that electric cars now are actually a practical
alternative. I mean, 10, 15 years ago, people said, "Nobody will drive an electric car. It's
ludicrous." Now, in California, the quality of electric cars is such that electric cars will
become a reality. The question of whether we can continue to have Los Angeles and a natural
environment, you know, has been at least alleviated by electric cars. Why anyone would want
a Los Angeles isn't clear to me, but let's assume that in a Democratic society somebody wants
that. The fact is that dichotomy is solved by science.
Question:
I'm from Texas and I work in a section which issues discharge permits. When we write a
permit to authorize a discharge, we don't look at how that permit could affect property values.
We may do that indirectly by trying to meet a water quality standard or whatever. But I could
see that if this legislation (and I'd really like your read on this as there's actually a very
similar thing going through the Texas Legislature) could actually impede issuing permits. The
state or federal government could fear that by issuing this permit you could be lowering a
property value, because here you are setting up this industry or this municipality's wastewater
plant here and nobody is going to want to buy that property next door. They couldn't exist
if you didn't discharge and nobody wants this stuff rolling down the stream, even though
we've made a showing that it's not going to hurt anybody. So I guess, could this backfire to
have the opposite effect? And this might be hypothetical, but just want your thoughts.
John Duffy:
No, it's not hypothetical. It's exactly correct. I mean, this legislation as drafted would allow
you to be sued where your action had any impact on diminishing these people's property.
There's some that say any impact, some say 10%, some say 20%-you could sue for that
Page 142
-------
diminishment. And it's two types of diminishment. You're talking about what we call
traditional diminishment where the actual value of the property goes down. But these laws
deal with hypothetical possible diminishment. I mean, my neighbor comes in and says, "Hey,
look, I want to^ut up^McDonakUs." Jsay, "Well, yrm nan't p\n up a McDonald's." He
says, "Well, hey, I'm diminished right there. You know, I think I better go into court and
sue on the grounds that I'm diminished." So I think that you're going to have a bigger
problem. I think I'm going to just put a pipe in the stream and flush my sewage into the
stream. And when you come and say, "Hey, don't flush your sewage into the stream," I'm
going to say, "That diminishes my property. Now I have to sort of connect to this thing and
I'm diminished." I mean, if any diminishment can be seen, then that's it. So that's a
problem. You are right on target. Nobody can believe where this legislation is going.
That's basically our saving grace. It's so stupid that it may be reduced to an absurdity. But
the problem is that something very significant is still going to be on the horizon and those are
the things that we have to work against. I mean, it's not part of our jurisprudence to have
that.
Question: Bob Hastings, Sierra Club
I'd like to direct a comment to the empty chair and then I'd like to ask you a question.
John Duffy:
Great! Please!
Bob Hastings:
I'm Bob Hasting with the Sierra Club and I was really disappointed to know that
Representative Tauzin's office was not going to be represented here today. Because I would
have liked to of heard that lively debate. I think you've made some good points and I would
like to hear Tauzin's office respond to them.
I would emphasize to Mr. Tauzin that the Sierra Club has not been conspiring with EPA,
although he was quoted as saying that. We are interested in protecting the environment just
as EPA is, and therefore, we feel very strongly about these issues. I would just emphasize
that what we need to do is deal with facts and not distortions. I would point out to all of the
people present that they should keep up with the news this week, because most of the major
networks have picked up on a story. One of Tauzin's favorite horror stories is the Chicoines
family. Locally, here in Ascension Parish, Louisiana, the Chicoines family inherited a
problem from someone that they bought property from in a wetlands area where there had
been some digging and a pond constructed by the former land owner. The Chicoines family
Page 143
-------
is now being required to correct some of those earlier problems. So Mr. Tauzin likes to cite
this as the classic example of a takings and a conflict of private property rights. In reality,
what happened was that the previous land owner was challenged by a neighbor who was upset
because the modifications on that land were causing flooding their property. So this is a
classic example of your Viking example: how modifications on one property can affect a
neighbor's property. This is what we need to protect against. CNN, ABC, NBC, all of the
networks have picked up on this and it is being publicized nationally this week. So I would
encourage all of you to watch for that.
Now let me direct my other comment to you, basically, in the form of a question. Many of
us are frustrated because we don't know what to do right now. We're trying to publicize the
truth and fight some of this distortion, but we find that in many cases our comments are falling
on deaf ears because of the tremendous lobbying effort on the part of property rights
supporters or supposed property rights supporters. And we find that our elected officials who
express sentiments such as you have expressed today are not very vocal. We don't hear you
coming out and being quoted nearly as frequently as the other side, and so feel that we're
losing the battle without ever fighting. What can we do to really publicize the truth and
emphasize to the other side that this is absurd. This private property rights issue is something
that is ridiculous, but yet, if we sit back and don't work against it, it's going to pass whether
we think it's absurd or not.
John Duffy:
Well, I believe that there has been a failure on the part of public officials like myself to speak
out more plainly on the problem, and I hope that the administration will be moving to correct
that in the near future. I know that my boss is now scheduled to go out and speak on these
topics throughout the country. So, you'll be hearing more from us in the future.
Two things, I think, are very important to recognize. One is that your organization like other
organizations were born and came to the fullness of their strength during the effort to create
these laws. We need you now to work to protect them. We have sometimes, I think, in the
environmental community fallen into complacency, and I might even say arrogance with
respect to our position. We have tended to lump everyone who didn't agree with us into the
class of bozos or naives, and actually some of them are people who simply are caught in a
situation where they wanted to do the right thing, but don't know what the right thing is.
That's the fault of our agencies. I can defend our agencies on this point. In the past two
administrations, no one in the political level has really cared whether these agencies did or
didn't do a good job in explaining environmental laws to the population at large. Indeed, the
political agenda of those administrations was contrary to the idea of having these
environmental laws be seen as sensible, because in most cases the political people were against
these laws. Therefore, I think that the people in these agencies, and I include the agency that
Page 144
-------
I work for now, (the Department of the Interior) as well, found themselves in a situation
where they were just fighting to get the job done. They didn't really have as good a chance
of getting out there and explaining why the job needed to be done.
In Texas, for example, I've met now with a large number of the vocal opponents to various
plans that we're working with in Texas, and some of these people are people who have
genuinely sound complaints about the way the department has worked; e.g. failure to give
adequate information. No, we haven't refused to allow somebody to cut down a single tree.
But on the other hand, we haven't gone out and told people how many trees they can cut
down. For some time, we have had a sort of bunker mentality and I think we need to get over
that. I think out in the countryside, there's a large number of people who support
environmental laws. We just have to show them that there isn't any conflict between these
environmental laws and their lives. And to the contrary, these environmental laws are critical
for the preservation of their lives and the lifestyles that they want to have.
I think we can do that. I think we need to do that. And I think that groups like yours need
to go out and deal with people who are the targets of the present anti-environmental
movement. I think that these people are being misled. I think that we're contributing to that
and I think we have to stop contributing. We have to get out and start explaining the facts.
We have to explain it in simple terms and with anecdotes. We've got some really good
anecdotes. And I'll tell you the type of anecdotes that we need to relate. We need to talk
about pollution.
Look, we're where we are now because we've worked so hard to get to there and we can't
lose that ground. There isn't any conflict between development and the protection of the
environment that can't be resolved. We're going to have development. We want to save the
environment. Everybody wants to preserve the natural resources of this country, well maybe
not everybody, but the vast majority of people. We just have to make it clear that they can
be preserved.
Listen, it's been great being here. I've really enjoyed it. I know you have to move on. I
know lawyers are difficult people to get away from the microphone, because I, too, watch the
O.J. trial. Thanks a lot.
Introduction: Myron Knudson
I have the pleasure of having Carlton Dufrechou tell us a little bit about the field trip that's
coming up and I think you're going to see some beautiful scenery. Carlton is the Executive
Director of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation. His function is overseeing the planning,
coordination, and implementation of the foundation's water quality and habitat restoration
Page 145
-------
programs and other projects in the 5,000 square mile Pontchartrain Basin area. Carlton used
to be a bureaucrat so he knows a little bit about what some of us do for a living. He served
six years with the Corps of Engineers, and is a native New Orleans. So with that, Carlton,
thank you. And again, I think we owe a round of applause to the Foundation and Terrene for
sponsoring last night's events. So, thank you.
Speaker: Carlton Dufrechou, Executive Director, Lake Pontchartrain Basin
Foundation; Metarie, LA
Ladies and gentlemen, tomorrow morning we have a tour of the Pontchartrain Basin, the
southern half of the basin. We are right down here in the French Quarter right now. That's
the heart of the old city. Tomorrow morning we're going to head out west to the Bonnet
Carre Spillway. This spillway was completed in the late 1920's. It is a relief valve for the
Mississippi River. About every seven or eight years we have a large storm event on the—well,
not storm event, but rainfall and snow in the upper ends of the country that will eventually
flow down to the Gulf of Mexico. When it gets to the New Orleans area, because of the levee
system, every once in a while, we're going to overtop the levees. That spillway is designed
to actually be a relief valve. It discharges all of the water coming from the northern part of
the country into Lake Pontchartrain and passes through Rigolette Pass, Chef Menteur Pass,
out here to the Mississippi Sound.
This area also was the site of a pretty controversial project that Myron has been very
instrumental in changing. The Corps of Engineers, the agency I used to work for, had a
project that was conceived about 20-25 years ago that proposed actually diverting water from
the Mississippi into Lake Pontchartrain to benefit oyster fisheries. The concept was good
about 20 years ago, but in the interim period, suddenly folks got an interest in Pontchartrain.
Pontchartrain1 s restoration started taking place. And the water quality of the Mississippi was
recognized that, hey, we got a problem with that. If we put that water hi Lake Pontchartrain,
we may actually be degrading Pontchartrain. And besides that, it was an unnatural diversion.
It was directing water through a six-mile long canal directly into the lake for about nine
months out of the year. With Myron's help, along with EPA, that project has been reanalyzed
and actually it's turning into a project, I think, that will benefit the wetlands along the western
edge of Lake Pontchartrain.
Those wetlands we're going to try to take a look at tomorrow. That's a shot of the Bonnet
Carre Spillway, the existing spillway. These are some of the wetlands in the La Branche area
that actually you folks will drive over tomorrow. From there, we're going to come back
toward the metropolitan area and Jefferson and Orleans Parish. Because we are in a bowl,
we're actually below sea level in New Orleans. All of our storm water is pumped out. We'll
visit one of the pumping stations in the metropolitan area. From there, we'll go to Old
Page 146
-------
Lakeshore Drive and see portions of Lake Pontchartrain and some of the recreational potential.
From there, we'll head to the eastern portion of the city, out toward the Mississippi River Gulf
Outlet. The Gulf Outlet is a deep draft ship channel that was dredged from the Mississippi
River tcHhecontainer facility in^New^Means East 4n4he late SQVto early 60-s-—When it was
completed, it was a great shortcut for deep draft ships into the container facility.
Unfortunately, when we did that in the late 50's we didn't recognize the value of our
wetlands. This channel actually allowed, not only the ships to come in, but also the higher
salinity waters from the Gulf of Mexico to come into the historically brackish to fresh marshes
in the St. Bernard and Plaquemine area also in eastern New Orleans. Because of that, a good
number of the marshes, unfortunately, went south for the duration. This was a cypress marsh
some time ago.
While we're down here, just to review really quickly, we start off here, head west toward
Bonnet Carre to La Branche Wetlands, back towards some of the pumping stations, Lakeshore
Drive, possibly some of the fishing camps in New Orleans east, down into St. Bernard and
Plaquemine. We'll also see the Gore pumping station in St. Bernard Parish, where we are
trying to divert storm water to actually enhance some of the existing wetlands down there.
And possibly if time and weather permits, we'll stop at Chalmette Battlefield and have lunch
out there and get you folks back here tomorrow afternoon.
I hope you enjoy the city. If you have any questions about New Orleans, anything specific
about Pontchartrain, anything that we can help with, just catch any of us with Lake
Pontchartrain Basin. And Myron and all of the EPA folks, thank you again for all of your
help.
Page 147
-------
Page 148
-------
Permitting Activities Supporting the Watershed Approach (10:15-11:45AM)
Moderator: Warren Davis, Director, Watershed Management Division, Texas Natural
Resource Consef vation Commission; Austhi, Texas
This is Permitting Activities Supporting the Watershed Approach, Part 1, Session. This
session will discuss how controls and permitting programs initiate and support the watershed
approach. It also will include a review of whole basin planning and ecoregion approach to
water quality standards. We have all four speakers here today. We're going to go in a
progression, and our presenters are going to start on the local level and go to the two states
and then the regional level to give the big picture view. Following the presentations, we will
have our questions and answers.
I want to briefly introduce each of our speakers. We have James Lewis, who is the Water
Quality Monitoring/NPDES Supervisor for the City of Austin; Emelise Cormier, who is
Program Manager, Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, Baton Rouge; Mel
Vargas, who is the Program Manager for the Watershed Texas, Texas Natural Resource
Conservation Commission, Austin; and Stephen Bainter, who is the Environmental Scientist,
EPA Region 6, Dallas, Texas.
We want to start out on the local level with James Lewis. James is the Program Manager for
the Storm Water and National Pollution Discharge Elimination System. He's been working
with the City of Austin for eight years. He's been an environmental quality specialist there
as well. He's had several publications. He has a B.S. degree in Botany, with a Minor in
Chemistry from the University of Texas. Please welcome James Lewis.
Speaker: James Lewis, Water Quality Monitoring/NPDES Supervisor, City of
Austin; Austin, Texas
It's a pleasure to be here. I have been with the City for about eight years now and it's always
a privilege for me to represent the city.
The City of Austin is like many cities. It has a highly developed urban area right on one of
the main features, Town Lake. There are going to be a lot of things that I refer to, since we
have a short period of time. I have the pleasure of having in the audience a Mr. Stephen
Stecher down here, who was instrumental in writing the Town Lake Study. This brought out
a lot of information—the EPA Grant Project, the Clean Water Program.
Page 149
-------
So we have to deal with many of the problems of a highly urbanized area without any controls
in the urban area. Upstream of the town, we have a fairly undeveloped area. That's Lake
Austin. All this will come into play in a minute when I talk to you about the problems that
we've seen.
The City has a history of being known as a more environmentally progressive city. We have
many programs, which I'm getting ready to tell you about, which is part of the success story.
We've had a few failures, too, that you'll hear about. But part of our success was because of
our problems we had with development. As you see, there's a silt plume here coming down
that was caused by heavy development in the 70's and 80's. Back then, it was very visible
and very recognized. This is our drinking water supply. So when you hear that Austin's a
very environmentally conscious city, you've got to realize that a lot of the work that we did
was to protect our drinking water supply. Here is another picture of a silt plume, very visible,
caused by this rapid runoff that we see in the City from the higher impervious cover, which
caused higher volumes and higher velocities.
Now, the heart and soul of what a lot of people call our environmental movement is Barton
Springs. Here we see a picture of Barton Springs a few years ago. It's difficult to see in this
picture, but it looks quite a bit different now. One of the problems that has been so visible
is the high bacteria counts in Barton Springs after it rains. A lot of people will say, "Well,
that's always been the case." If you look at the top of this picture, you'll see a horse-drawn
carriage up there and say, "Well, see there was fecal back then, too." It's a very beautiful
pool. A very attractive feature to the city, and it is probably a main impetus for a lot of what
goes on in the city in the environmental movement.
Here is another hard to see map. But what this shows is probably one of the things I want to
hit you all with, which is maybe not one of our greater success stories. This is a map showing
an area here that the city has jurisdiction in. This is the city limit line right here. This is
Barton Springs showing a recharge zone. Here is our jurisdiction line. Here is the area in the
watershed that we do not have jurisdiction on. So all this area, the runoff from this area is
affecting the quality of the water of that springs. Of course, you wouldn't believe that from
legislative action lately.
I'm going to run through, real quickly, many of the programs that we've implemented in our
management program. This is before NPDES came about. Like I said, we're developed from
ordinances that were implemented to protect our drinking water supply. We have a home
chemical collection facility; now a permanent facility open once a week. We have spill, J
complaint response programs. Several years ago, for public awareness and education, we f
were putting up signs saying, "You're now over a sensitive watershed, the Edwards Aquifer."
We have a fairly intensive monitoring program. One that I'm still involved in has about 45 f
stations in place with plans for up to 65 stations in the next two years.
Page 150
-------
Here's a picture of the latest public education move that we've had. It allows the citizens to
call the city to ask about better ways of dealing with fire ants. We have about eight of these
billboards around the city now. In that ordinance development process, we've always had
land development rules. One of the later ordinances came up with the water quality retrofit.
As I was telling you before, other cities often view Austin as, "Why are you doing so much?"
A lot of it is perspective. One way of looking at that is you have the EPA dominating the
scene in a preaching sort of way. You have the City of Austin, who is viewed as in this mode
of progressiveness. And you have other cities who are now getting on line and they feel that--
well, it's just going to raise our taxes. I guess one way to look at that would be as the great
vastness of regulations. I heard there were three guys looking over the Grand Canyon: a
preacher, an artist, and a cowboy. The preacher got up there and said, "Another wonderful
sign of the grace of God." The artist got up there and said, "What a beautiful spot for a
painting." The cowboy looked down in there and said, "What a terrible place to lose a cow."
Basically, it's that kind of perspective that we see all the time, especially in communication
with other people that are having such a hard time with these rules.
This is just a depiction of the historical base of how we came about with a lot of these
programs. Like I said, back in the 70's, we created the Creek Ordinance to mainly deal with
flood control. You know, stream bank erosion is definitely one of the higher impacts for
environmental quality. We had some temporary ordinances to protect our drinking water
supply that we finalized in 1980. You can see we were looking at specific watersheds—the
Lake Austin Watershed Ordinance and the Barton Creek Watershed Ordinance. We were
looking at specifically those watersheds to protect our drinking water supply.
We came out with Code Amendments which had source controls. We actually put some of
these limits on the discharge of water to our system. A lot of these limits came from the
drinking water limits at the time. Many were very strict, and we also had the coverall that
said, "You shall not pollute. You shall not discharge anything that might cause pollution."
It was fairly difficult. It was a little bit vague in nature and some of those parameters were
hard to show. So it created problems in authority and enforcement.
Then we had the lower watershed ordinances to protect the Barton Springs Contributing Zone,
where the previous ordinances were just in our city limits jurisdiction. Now we're looking
at, not just the watershed itself, but the zones that contribute to the discharge to the aquifer
there.
In 1986, we put all those back together and formed a comprehensive watershed ordinance.
A lot of what these ordinances did and what we saw in them were development of manuals:
the Environmental Criteria Manuals and the Drainage Manual. These manuals were
cookbooks for developers or anyone who wanted to build in the city to give them guidelines
Page 151
-------
on how to go about that process and what they were required to do. We got down to the end
of the road here. The Urban Watershed Amendment was looking at addressing that urban area
that had no controls, and we were looking at new and redevelopment requiring controls, and
if you did not want to put in controls, you paid a fee into a fund which would be used for
regional controls.
The Composite Amendment came out. This was an amendment that had significance, because
we actually put water quality limitations on the water quality volume. That is we calculated
what we called the water quality volume, which was usually the first half-inch of discharge
or runoff from a storm, which you were required to capture and then treat. And a lot of what
we saw from this was people coming up with no discharge systems. That is they were
catching that water quality volume and then re-irrigating with it until evaporation took place
or infiltration. Then the SOS Amendment came about and recently the courts struck down that
amendment for property rights reasons and we're now back to the pre-1992 ordinance which
is the Composite Amendment.
One of the things that kind of fits into this conference is we have initiated four Watershed
Master Plans, where we're actually looking at specific watersheds, again, to protect our major
water supply. We want to address those NPDES impacts, and the master plans are basically
funded on what it would take to model and to put in structural controls to adequately meet the
goals. Some of those goals were identified in the Town Lake Study that Mr. Stecher there put
together. We were looking at NFS load reductions; nutrients 25 to 30%, toxic metals 50%,
total suspended solids 50%, trash and debris 50 to 90%, and oil and grease 25%. So fairly
ambitious goals. I guess, what is coming from this and what we've seen so far is the
structural controls cannot be the full answer, and we're looking more to the source controls
and public education~the non-structural controls.
What I want to take you through now is mainly a look at some of the things that we've done
toward controls. Part of what I do is set up monitoring plans to evaluate these controls. Let's
take a quick look at these. I'm going to be pushing this, so you need to kind of hold on here.
These are basically erosion controls. First from those hay bails you saw before to silt fences,
rock berms, and detention ponds—that's what the Environmental Criteria Manual prescribes
as temporary and permanent erosion controls. We started looking at treatment methods.
Here's one of the original. We had an original program where we looked at several methods
back in the 80's. This was grass swells. We looked at vegetative buffer strips. Here is an
off-line extended detention pond, in the sense that the water first comes in, then flows here,
and will flow into the pond. When the pond fills up, then the water bypasses the pond and
flows directly out. So you have that first flush water quality volume caught here, which then
is, in this case, extended detention.
Page 152
-------
We looked at one of the first examples of a wet pond. It was actually a detention pond where
we closed one of the lower gates and made it a wet pond. Of course, after we did that, it
became aesthetically valued and could not drain it. People like it so much. So it still remains
like that today.
This is one of the earlier program stations. It has a 93% impervious cover looking
commercial area and a detention filtration structure. Monitoring is often very difficult to show
clear results. We were one of the first, though, to show what one of these ponds could do.
The problem with these filter ponds is the nutrients. We don't lose the nutrients. We're very
successful in showing sediment removal in this pond and suspended solids. Then you start
getting into particle size. Well, we knew after one of the storms and the water started going
down in this pond, that we could definitely filter a van out. When the water started going
down in this thing, we started seeing the roof. We called the fire department and so forth.
We had some concerns that somebody took a wrong turn. Turned out that somebody stole the
thing, drove it into the pond thinking it was a permanent pond, and didn't know that the filter
would then drain it down. But we knew that we could then stop some of the particles.
This is probably one of the more successful designs, but it's not the latest design criteria we
have. It is the Jollyville Ponds. It's basically a detention filtration and catches the first flush
water quality volume in this portion. This is what we call the splitter box, but it also acts as
a sedimentation chamber, and when the pond fills up, it overflows here. Let's see if I have
an example. Let me show you some basics. You have basically a leech field and gravel
covered with filter cloth and then about 18" to 2-feet of sand on top. The water comes in and
you can see the pond is full now. Once the pond fills up, the inflow water directly bypasses
the filter with very little mixing between that first flush that we caught there. Then the water
drains back down evenly through the filter, both the splitter box and the filter, and then of
course, things look a little dim. But what you have here is about two foot of sediment built
up after a period of time and some sludgy sediment and material built up on top of the filter.
One of the most successful projects, or from a monitoring viewpoint, that we showed was a
irrigation system. This was the Brodie Oaks Mall~another commercial development. The
water would come into this pond and then overflow if you had a large enough storm at this
outlet right here. But this volume was captured during most of the storms and held for a
certain period of time and then re-irrigated back to the system. If it did overflow, it
overflowed into a filter. Then that would overflow once it filled up. This is probably one of
the best results and it was because of that re-irrigation.
Also, Mr. Stecher had a part in designing the Arboretum. This was a pond which the water
from this development here would flow into the bottom of the pond and the theory being that
the water would then come up from the bottom and the cleaner top water would then overflow
out, and we had this narration going on there. All this monitoring data showed that basically
Page 153
-------
as impervious cover increased, so did our loads. From this data we derived the criteria to
develop what that water quality volume was. Here we have nutrients, phosphorous, nitrogen,
COD, and from all that developed a consumer report type table. So, this is my evaluation of
EPA's performance. But this basically shows, with the circles or semi-circles darkened in with
different parameters, how these different types of ponds performed.
What are we looking at now? We're looking at controls. This is kind of a front-line
approach. It's an inlet filter where you just have a screen stuck into a straight inlet. Here's
another picture of it. It's just a perforated pan with a larger flow device in the back. If the
plan plugs up, it will then overflow. You can see we catch a lot of floatables and a little bit
of sediment. We're monitoring the effect on water quality.
This is the new Convention Center in Austin wet pond. Over here is a separator before it goes
into the wet pond. We're monitoring both the effects of the separator and the wet pond. You
can see the floatables that are caught by the separator. The final device in this separator is a
syphon so anything that floats on top of the water comes from the middle of the segment.
This is the St. Elmo wet pond. We're just now getting into wet ponds. Austin, with its arid
conditions, is not the best climate for wet ponds. This probably exemplifies the more recent
criteria in the sense that this whole part back here is sedimentation with a smaller filter. This
is the sedimentation part of the device which is larger and this is the filter which is smaller.
This pond was specifically designed for monitoring. We put the filter lower so we could get
a good flow control coming into the filter, so we could monitor the effect of the inflow coming
after the sedimentation and then out the filter. After we put our monitoring shelters up here
and all of the other railings, this pond became known as Robo Pond. Also, that gate is to
regulate the flow into the filter.
Unfortunately, this is difficult to see, But this is probably another example of what this
conference is about. We have an EPA grant project with the Barton Springs Edwards Aquifer
Conservation District, TNRCC and LCRA called the Highway BMP. What you have a hard
time seeing here is the gabions. Inbetween these gabions is a vacant spot where we're
experimenting with different types of media. The water comes into this chamber. This is the
filter part. On the other side of this is a hasmet trap which will catch 10,000 gallons. If
during dry weather you have a tanker truck that loses its load, they can catch that load and trap
it on the other side of this wall here. It will then deal with it without the load going directly j
to the creek. This is on Barton Creek. j
There was lots of negotiations between the aquifer district, conservation district, and the other
members in this group (Texas Department of Transportation) who have become reborn
environmentalists. They have done some really good things here, in my opinion, as far as
Page 154
-------
looking at better technology. You know, highway department guys can't do anything unless
it's on a tractor. So they developed this pond where they have access to everything in here
from a vehicle. I didn't point out on those other ponds that was a problem. But once again,
this is a vertical filter. Water flows through this vertical filter which is supposed to be ease
of maintenance. Here^s another picture of the water
difficulties in the beginning, because they would plug up quickly, and we've been
experimenting with different types of media.
This is going to be a project where we build a wall down the middle to make it symmetrical.
We inoculate one side with bacteria—friendly microbes— and keep the other side as the control.
And this is going to be an extended detention through a wetland area which is now just one
large detention pond. This is the Far West detention facility.
We hired another consultant to look at cost effectiveness and at some of these controls in
another project. What this graph shows is cost effectiveness as far as pollutant removal and
runoff. I'm not going to go into all the details of this, but he's showing that irrigation is the
best method in his preliminary report. It's not final, but basically this line is the cost
effectiveness or the water quality volume that you're going to be catching. That increases
usually with the size of the watershed. But this is what it's getting down to is what is the best
way of treating the water in the most cost effective way.
Moderator: Warren Davis
Thank you, James. At this point I would like to note that the program shows Laura Koester,
the Deputy Director for the Office of Water Resource Management, TNRCC, as the
moderator. She sends her regrets and her regards. She was unable to attend. My name is
Warren Davis and I am the Division Director of the Watershed Management Division,
essentially responsible for issuing municipal and industrial wastewater treatment permits. One
of the things that we're doing in the TNRCC is called Watershed Texas. We just had a
presenter on a local level. We're going to now go to two state level programs related to
permitting activities. We're going to start off with Mel Vargas, who is the Program
Coordinator for Watershed Texas at the TNRCC. Mel has been with TNRCC for one and a
half years. His primary responsibility is developing and coordinating the Office of Water
Resource Management's Watershed Management Approach to Watershed Texas. Prior to
coming to TNRCC, he spent seven years in private consulting as a project manager for large
scale land development projects. He has a B.S. degree in Landscape Architecture from
Michigan State University and an M.S. degree in Environmental Planning from the University
of Virginia. Please welcome Mel Vargas.
Page 155
-------
Speaker: Mel Vargas, Project Coordinator for Watershed Texas, Texas Natural
Resource Conservation Commission; Austin, Texas
Thanks, Warren. My name is Mel Vargas. It's a pleasure to be here. I'd like to go through
two things today. First, I'd like to summarize the characteristics of the Texas Natural
Resource Conservation Commission's recent adoption of what we're calling a Permit by Basin
Rule. Secondly, I'd like to describe briefly how we feel that this Permit by Basin Rule or
water quality permitting can be used as an important part of a successful watershed
management approach.
I have a few overheads I'm going to go through. To start out, the Permit by Basin Rule is
part of the Texas Clean Rivers Act, and was adopted this past January under Section 305.71
of the Texas Administrative Code. It is a rule that applies specifically to domestic and
industrial water quality permit holders. It applies to all renewals, any amendments, and any
new permits that come in. This rule provides an opportunity to receive information from all
the parties that are affected by discharges in a given geographic area. Since TNRCC does not
have NPDES delegation we have been working closely with EPA Region 6 to make sure that
the NPDES permits they issue coincide with the same permit issuance dates that we have
established within this rule. This will ensure the necessary coordination of Federal and State
permits within a geographic region. Finally, the real organizational component of this rule
is the simple fact that we're going to be issuing all of these permits to maintain a five year
cycle.
We believe that consideration of permits and issuance of the permits in a given geographic
area all at one time will support the objectives consistent with watershed management.
Ultimately it will set the foundation for describing a more accurate picture of what
accumulative effects are from the different water quality permits that are issued; and the
different dischargers in a given geographic area. Consequently, it can also provide a stronger
science basis for decision making. It will allow us a better understanding of assimilative
capacity for a given waterbody. We believe it's going to require that we get the permitees
more involved and other stakeholders more involved within a geographic area or a watershed.
And, by getting them more involved, we think it's going to provide them a strong role in
setting management goals for their specific region. This will, in turn, help TNRCC make
better decisions when it comes to setting water quality standards.
The handout that has been passed out attempts to diagram the timing of permit issuance by
basin and the sequence of activities that lead up to writing permits. Texas has 25 river basins
in the state, including bays, estuaries, and the Gulf of Mexico. We tried to figure out how
many permits we could actually do in a given fiscal year and what it would take for our staff
to review and issue those permits. The major factor in determining how the different basins
were grouped together was permit workload. Other criteria included things like making sure
Page 156
-------
that coastal basins were associated or connected to their adjacent bay and estuary in the same
fiscal year. We also connected coastal basins which coincide with the National Estuary
Programs to ensure that the basins in that general area were all due at the same time.
Having^rouped trie Mstn^ various programs lhat supporting
ultimate issuance of wastewater permits. These programs are surface water quality
monitoring, modeling, standards, toxicity evaluation, nonpoint source program, Clean Rivers
Programs and the permitting program itself. While these programs have been historically
program-centered in their approach, the TNRCC has initiated the steps necessary to coordinate
and integrate them through their watershed management approach— Watershed Texas.
A major component of Watershed Texas is the statewide basin management cycle which is
portrayed in the diagram I am showing you. This diagram depicts a continual planning
process necessary for a successful watershed management approach based on five phases -
scoping, data collection, assessment, prioritizing issues and strategies, and implementation.
The activities and responsibilities of the surface water quality programs I mentioned will be
sequenced to respond to this rotating, five-phased cycle. Each year the cycle will dictate
specific activities to occur under each phase in specific basins. So the basin management cycle
dictates three important aspects of the watershed approach:
1 . a logical sequence for activities to occur which will result in better decision making as
it relates to issuing and renewing permits;
2. the length of time spent on the various activities and programs under each phase; and
3. the statewide schedule for where and when the basins throughout the state will be
addressed.
It is important to acknowledge the complexity of the basin management cycle and realize that
multiple activities are occurring each year. The actual issuance of permits in a basin however,
is set for one specific year. This coincides with the "implementation" phase of the basin
management cycle. I also want to emphasize that permit issuance is only one activity of the
implementation phase. Other activities might include best management practices, public
education, or technical assistance. The darker shaded area depicts a transition period which
will be necessary for programs to adjust their day to day responsibilities as they convert to a
watershed approach.
Integrated data collection and assessment are paramount to improving permit writing.
Recognizing this, the TNRCC will need to strengthen partnerships at the local, regional, state,
and federal level to share in the acquisition of data and resources if better decisions are to be
made for permits. The TNRCC will strive to consider both point and nonpoint sources as they
affect dischargers by focusing on impacts using a comprehensive or watershed approach.
Page 157
-------
In closing, I would like to state that TNRCC considers the permit-by-basin rule as an
important tool which supports the watershed management approach. It will take at least ten
years for the entire state to go through the basin management cycle at least once. As the
programs and participants complete one cycle in a given area of the state, changes and
revisions will be made to improve coordination and integration as appropriate.
Question:
How many permits do you project per year?
Mel Vargas:
I'm glad you asked that. I can quickly show that. This diagram here tries to answer that
question. Again, it's real important to understand that we're going to be in a transition period
between fiscal year '96 and the year 2000. I'll explain this diagram,: because I want to preface
it by saying that the benefits of this rule and how permitting can support watershed
management is going to take at least seven to ten years to evolve, for the players to get
involved, and for all of us to understand how to get through those five phases. So this isn't
just a quick instantaneous implementation thing that we can just start and be happy at the end
of fiscal year 1996. It's going to take a long time to transition into this. But based on today's
existing workload, this is the projected number we would do, if the same number of permits
we had to do when we went through the cycle once, this is what would happen in fiscal year
2000, 2001, 2003, and 2004, for the different basins that we're up against. As you can see
there, we've got it broken into domestic and industrial permits. So during fiscal year '96
through '99, we may have less than these numbers under domestic and industrial. We actually
possibly could have more at any given time. Because there's another stipulation that I did
forget to mention in the rule. That is that no permit can be issued for less than two years.
We've got an implementation procedure that we've recently adopted that requires that we're
not going to have any permittee be forced into a permit that's less than two years, but we'll
do a three-year permit or a four-year permit to push them out a little bit farther, and then
they'll get on the second go-around of the phase, I guess you could say. So I hope that
answers your question.
Warren Davis:
Thank you, Mel. Our next presenter on state level permitting related activities is Emelise I
Cormier. She is working with the State of Louisiana. She has been there for 14 years in |
Environmental Assessment Management, with 13 of those years in Water Pollution Control, I
Water Quality Management. Presently, she's been in the role of Program Manager for the 1
past three and a half years in the Planning & Assessment Section of the LDEQ Water Quality |
Page 158
-------
Management Division. She has been responsible for the development of state water quality
and mentor reports, water quality data management assessment, fish tissue contamination
assessment, and risk assessment. She graduated from Louisiana State University with a
Bachelor's degree in Zoology.
Speaker: Emelise Cormier, Program Manager, Louisiana Department of
Environmental Quality; Baton Rouge, LA
I'm going to talk about what Louisiana has been doing with its ecoregion approach, but I want
to point out that the ecoregion approach is not necessarily an alternative to watershed
approach. I see it as a supplemental piece of information that can allow you to take a
watershed approach with your water quality management programs. A number of states in
the past few years have begun to implement an ecoregion approach to water quality standards
development and water quality management within our region, including Arkansas.
Just for those of you who may not be fully aware of ecoregion approaches~what we do with
an ecoregion approach is identify areas within the state which have similar ecological
characteristics. To do that, we look at characteristics such as climate, land surface form, or
elevation contours, vegetation, soils, and land use.
We began to develop our ecoregion approach in 1990 and started off with EPA's ecoregion
maps. The EPA developed, on a national scale, ecoregions for the country. What we did was
take those ecoregion maps in a GIS geographic information system and overlaid those
boundaries, as EPA had identified them, with other large scale data layers, including detailed
soil associations, vegetation within Louisiana, land use, contours, and supplemented that also
with U.S. Army Corps of Engineers drainage projects. In Louisiana, we have a lot of those
flood control projects, a lot of levees, a lot of locks, and that does form a barrier. So we felt
that was a key component in delineating our ecoregions.
We made several revisions to EPA's original ecoregion boundaries for Louisiana and have
now delineated 10 ecoregions. This area here and this are our South Central Plains Ecoregion.
Running through the middle there is the Red River Alluvial Plain Ecoregion. This is upper
Mississippi River Alluvial Plain. Here we have Western Gulf Coastal Plain. The Atchafalaya
River Basin here, which is completely cut off by levees. The Lower Mississippi River
Alluvial Plain here, and this is our Upland Terrace Ecoregion, and down at the coastal areas,
I delineated the Coastal Cheniere Plain and Coastal Deltaic Plain. These we've added as EPA
had not identified those coastal plain regions.
Page 159
-------
I'd like to show you a few pictures from each of those ecoregions to give you an idea of
Louisiana's landscape. This is Cypress Bayou up in Bossier Parish in the northwestern part
of the state, the South Central Plains Ecoregion.
This is in the Upper Mississippi River Alluvial Plain. I believe this is probably within one of
our wildlife management areas. You can see the dense forest there. But in that region, we
also have a lot of agricultural development; a lot of denuded lands.
This is the Red River Alluvial Plain.
This is down in the southwestern part of the state in the Western Gulf Coastal Plain. This
bayou is called Bayou Nezpique, and you can see we've got some few remnant large Cypress
trees; a lot of Cypress knees.
This is an aerial view of the Atchafalaya River Basin.
This is a stream called Darling Creek in our Upland Terrace Ecoregion.
This is down in the Coastal Cheniere Plain.
Here is marsh down in our Coastal Deltaic Plain.
We also have delineated the Mississippi River as a separate ecoregion because it, too, is
confined within levees. The next step in our ecoregion approach was to select what we call
reference streams within each ecoregion. Our reference streams must meet certain criteria to
qualify as a reference stream or what you might call a control or background location. The
site selection criteria includes: 1) the watershed must be in a typical area of the ecoregion,
2) it must have perennial habitat or be a perennial stream, 3) it must have little or no impacts,
4) it must be a natural stream channel and has not been dredged; channelized, 5) no point
source discharges and no observable nonpoint source runoff should affect that stream, and 6)
lastly, it must be accessible by the sampling crews. This, of course, is not our most important
criteria, but it does definitely play a role in selecting our sampling sites. At each of these
reference streams, we are collecting water quality, physical, and biological data. That
includes doing in situ water quality measurements, taking samples for water quality analysis,
doing hydrologic measurements, collecting fish and macroinvertebrates for identification down
to species level, and doing a habitat assessment.
We've established what we call our ecoregion team. They go out twice a year to each of these
locations within an ecoregion. We haven't worked in all of the ecoregions yet. Each team
member fills out a habitat assessment form at the end of the sampling event. Then we'll
Page 160
-------
follow it up later with placement of instruments to do 24-hour continuous monitoring in those
streams, particularly for dissolved oxygen.
Just to give you an idea of those procedures in the field, here Chris is getting ready to place
the probe down into~m^"watorto~do"lh"e"m"sTtu"'"n^a^uTelnenTs: HefeT we^re^doing^offie
hydrologic measurements. Doing cross section and flow readings. And we also plan to have
some follow-up visits to the stream with yet another team that will do more detailed
hydrologic assessments of the streams to enable us to develop modeling coefficients for
reaeration. We collect fish using seines. We supply two teams with two nets and seine for
approximately two hours at each location.
For the macroinvertebrate sampling, we try to sample at least two different habitats along the
stream banks and also the woody debris. The sampling of the woody debris can be very time-
consuming. We're very meticulous with that. So what we're doing there is picking the little
bugs out of the branches, sticks, and bark, and washing it down into the sieve bucket, and then
finally putting the bugs into little plastic bags with preservatives so we can preserve them until
we can get to them in the lab for later identification.
So finally, some of the applications for all of this. We hope that with the data we collect
through our ecoregion sampling, we'll be able to make some revisions to our state's water
quality criteria, particularly, chemical and physical criteria. A lot of our criteria are based on
national criteria, which aren't necessarily appropriate for Louisiana. One of those, in
particular, is dissolved oxygen. The national criterion is five milligrams per liter. In
Louisiana, we just have natural conditions that do not lend themselves to a five milligram per
liter dissolved oxygen level most of the time. Some of the streams we've sampled in our
ecoregion are unimpacted with a good amount of riparian vegetation and nice canopy. We've
found very diverse species and apparently a very healthy biotic community, and we've seen
dissolved oxygen levels below one milligram per liter early in the morning. So D.O. is one,
in particular, that we hope to be able to make some changes to the standards. But also, we'd
like to possibly change some of our other chemical and physical criteria, such as dissolved
solids, chloride, and sulfate. Some of these standards may have been based on data from
already impacted streams. So with the information we're getting through our ecoregion
sampling of reference streams, we hope to have a better idea of what conditions should be
within an ecoregion; thereby, establishing more appropriate and maybe more protective
standards.
Then with those more protective and more appropriate standards, we hope to develop better
permit limitations. We hope that we'll be able to utilize the data to do more efficient water
quality modeling, so that for an ecoregion we can do some streamlining with our permit
development and modeling. Also with this data, we can develop better reaeration coefficient
Page 161
-------
rates that will be used in these models to provide more realistic, protective, and maybe cost
effective permit limits-more cost effective, that is, to the permittee.
We have over and over again faced a dilemma with small communities that are discharging
into a stream that never meets the five (milligram per liter) dissolved oxygen, primarily due
to the natural conditions in the state. Yet, when we run a model, we come up with very
stringent, often times tertiary treatment levels that these small communities just can't afford
to meet. We also hope to utilize the data that we are getting to do a more complete assessment
of our state's water quality conditions, and eventually develop biological criteria which will
also enable us to do more comprehensive assessments. Finally, the ultimate use of all this is
better protection of our state's resources.
With that, I'll conclude and I'll be glad to answer any questions anyone may have later on.
Thank you.
Moderator: Warren Davis
Thank you, Emelise. We've heard presentations on the local level. We've heard from two
different state perspectives—Texas and Louisiana. Our final presenter will give us a regional
perspective. We have Stephen Bainter. He's an Environmental Scientist, EPA, Dallas.
Stephen has worked with EPA for four and a half years in the permits branch. Prior to that,
he worked for 13 years at a waste water treatment facility. He has a B.S. degree in
Biochemistry from U.T.-Arlington. Please welcome Stephen Bainter.
Speaker: Stephen Bainter, Environmental Scientist, U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency, Region 6; Dallas, TX
Thank you very much. Let me first start out by mentioning that NPDES stands for National
Pollutant Discharge Elimination System and it's specifically a point source program. The
permits that are issued under the NPDES program are not meant to control non-point sources,
but specifically point sources. So this is just one part of the big picture on how we gain
control over a watershed and provide adequate protection.
In March of 1994, Bob Perciasepe, the Assistant Administrator of Office of Water, came out
and published the NPDES Watershed Strategy. That strategy was developed with the Office
of Wastewater Management and we can see the essential components here.
The NPDES program cannot in itself implement these six components. More likely what
we're going to be doing and what we strive to do is to coordinate with other programs and
compliment those programs for a general overview of watershed protection.
Page 162
-------
Again, first and foremost, statewide coordination. We want to make sure that what we do is
coordinated within the state, and it may be interstate as well. So we want to provide that
coordination. Additionally, NPDES permits. It's essential that the permits be issued to
control point sources as is necessary. The monitoring and assessment program is typically
handtednndera^ different office. ButTt's important that tfaeHNPDES program develop ^data
system and collection of data such that it supplements the other information that's being
gathered from ambient monitoring.
We also have programmatic measures and environmental indicators. We're switching from
the traditional bean counting into looking at how we can assess the effectiveness of our
program through environmental indicators. Additionally, we're concerned about public
participation. While typically NPDES permits are very individual in nature, we don't have
a lot of public participation concerns in that issue. But when we come out with general
permits, that's probably where the NPDES program has its biggest impact as far as public
participation.
And lastly, we have to compliment enforcement. We have to provide the mechanism for
enforcement, in the Office of Enforcement, to go out there and be able to protect from
violations of NPDES permits and to protect our watersheds.
Concerning statewide coordination, the NPDES permits branch does not issue grants or does
not grant monies to the states. However, we are involved in that process with the other water
management division branches. We encourage projects that support the watershed protection
approach, and we try to discourage other projects that are redundant. We want to make sure
that we're moving forward. We don't really want to get caught in this same circle over and
over again.
Currently, through our grant program, we are targeting the Galveston Bay area and Corpus
Christi Bay area in Texas for some of our Section 106 grant monies, as far as having the state
issue or draft for us minor permits for municipal and industrial facilities in that particular
watershed. We know that there's a problem in that watershed, and I'll talk about it a little bit
more in the future.
Concerning the watershed identification and NPDES permits, this was one of the targets of
the strategy, and it's something that Region 6 for as long as I've been there has always had
in the NPDES permits that are issued is the identification of the receiving stream, the major
river basin in which that discharge occurs, as well as the segment numbering designation that
the state has come up with. I think in the future we will also probably try to tie that with the
USGS basin numbering system so that we can coordinate a lot more of our activities between
other federal agencies.
Page 163
-------
Concerning interstate coordination, at this time Region 6 is working with Region 7 to establish
some sort of meeting between the four states that border those two regions. Kansas, Missouri,
Oklahoma, and Arkansas have a lot of watersheds that drift between those four states. What
we're looking for here is if there's some mechanism that those four states can come up with
such that permitting activities in that watershed could be coordinated and they could all be
issued in essentially the same time frame. So all the permittings in like watersheds would all
be addressed at the same time.
We're also scheduling a two-day workshop. It's going to be on watershed protection
successes. It's something that headquarters has come up with. It's not specific to the
permitting activities. It's really encompassing everything that we look at as far as watershed
protection. It's going to incorporate everything that we've talked about in this particular
conference, and we're looking at trying to schedule that for the fall of 1995.
On NPDES permits, first permit sequencing by watersheds. We're buying right in with the
state of Texas program. We want to follow that as much as possible. There is a slight
complication with some of our minor permits that may have been expired for many years,
which complicates our enforcement activities. So with a few exceptions, all the permits issued
in the state of Texas will follow their permit rule.
Regarding water quality standards, it's imperative that the NPDES permits have water quality
standards implemented in those permits. Where we find that there is a reasonable potential
for a permittee to cause an exceedance of a water quality standard, then that permit will be
issued with some sort of control involved in it. We also would incorporate any basin
management plans. A good example of that is in the state of Texas and in the Illinois River,
Oklahoma there is a nutrient concern and, specifically, phosphorous. So in those two
watersheds, we're also issuing permits that have phosphorous controls in them.
Concerning targeted watershed with nonpoint source problems. As I mentioned earlier, the
Galveston Bay area is very important to us as far as that protection. That area has several
oyster beds that have been closed because of fecal coliform counts. So at this time, we're
really targeting certain areas of that watershed for municipal and minors that are going out as
far as their discharges into that watershed. Dickerson Bayou is one of the areas that we really
targeted because that particular area is on the verge of closing oyster beds and reopening them.
So, our efforts there are probably most likely to succeed in keeping those oyster beds open
year round.
Specifically, in the Bayou Grand Caillou and the Bayou Petite Caillou, our industrial permit
section targeted a lot of shrimp processing facilities. There were 15 facilities that discharged
into these two bayous. Their discharge was identified as being the most significant problem
or contributor to a problem with dissolved oxygen levels. So through the application of
Page 164
-------
national performance standards, those 15 shrimp processors were issued NPDES permits to
try to alleviate that problem.
Best Management Plans (BMP's)are something that's getting a lot of publicity right at this
time. A lot; of peopleare; really buying in on the concept of BMP^s. Three years ago, the
Region looked at how do we deal with pollutants that there may not be an effective control of
that through a treatment technology. We have had several cities that showed up with
pesticides in their effluent in a concentration that would cause them to fail a whole effluent
toxicity test. The Region responded by issuing permits that required those cities then to
incorporate a Best Management Plan, a public education and participation program. It seems
to be very effective.
The two notable situations that we really have tracked very closely, in Texas, are the Cities
of Greenville and Ft. Worth. Both those facilities had numerous failures of their toxicity test.
Upwards of 90% of the tests had failed. Ft. Worth, I believe, had one sublethal failure. They
had no lethal failures hi 1994. And as far as I know, Greenville has had only one in the last
two years-failure for lethality in the testing. So those are situations where a city had a high
rate or percentage of failures. They turned around and looked to the public, Getting them to
buy into what we're trying to do-protect our resources-and the citizens apparently had come
through with them, and I think that's a real important aspect here. Because throughout this
conference, we've talked about getting all the stakeholders involved. So I think that's
probably one of our best examples of where the public's really bought in on a program and
we've seen some good results.
As I mentioned earlier, general permits are something the Region is involved in. In recent
years, we have issued a CAFO or a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations Permit. It had
a broad basis to it. It applied everywhere within the region. There are specific areas that we
targeted as far as going back and looking at how they were being implemented. But again,
this general permit applies everywhere.
We also came out with a storm water permit for construction related activities and non-
construction industrial related activities. This is not the storm water permit that applies to the
cities. Anybody or any city with 100,000 population or greater will be addressed through a
specific NPDES permit for storm water activities. But in general, the construction activities
and things like that are being controlled through a general permit.
We also have recently issued the coastal oil & gas produced water and produced sand permit.
This permit was issued in an effort to gain more control over those oil and gas activities that
have traditionally discharged a lot of pollutants into the streams without a lot of controls. So
those three permits or general permits have really had a good impact as far as giving us the
Page 165
-------
ability to go in and gain control without having to spend a lot of resources on individual
permittee.
Currently under the U.S./Mexico border area, we're targeting pre-treatment programs.
Mexico is moving forward on developing pre-treatment programs in their border cities, and
likewise, all major facilities, municipal facilities, in Region 6 along the Rio Grande are being
issued pre-treatment program development requirements. This does not mean that those cities
would necessarily have to develop industrial pre-treatment programs, but we at least want to
know that we've looked at those cities and we've determined whether or not they have a
significant number of industrial users that need to be controlled.
Concerning monitoring and assessment, the Region established a policy and procedures to
require permittee to collect ambient information for us where there was a likelihood that there
would be an exceedance of a water quality standard based on their discharge and any ambient
information we might have. We have run into a little problem as far as the fact that
headquarters is at this time developing some standards of performance for ambient monitoring,
and until such time as that comes out, we've really put that policy on hold. What we don't
want to do is collect information that, in futures years, won't be useful.
Data coordination. Again, in accordance with some national policy on the quality of the data
that needs to be collected. We want to make sure that our NPDES permits that are out there
collect information that will be useful in the future. So there may be some revisions to the
level of detection that a permittee must accomplish through their monitoring or how they
collect their samples based on the national policy.
Concerning programmatic measures and environmental measures, again, what we have is a
situation where we're trying to get out of our traditional mode of bean counting or the number
of permits issued, or the number of the audits conducted, things like that. The number of
permits not reissued, I guess, is another way of looking at that. And trying to get more into
these environmental goals. I'll go through those goals in just a moment. They are not the
NPDES watershed goals. They are the Office of Watershed environmental goals. Also, to
make sure that we work towards watershed, the permits branch has reallocated its resources
from its traditional bean counting mode and looked at that area where we can make the most
of our resources. So we've committed 50% of all our permitting resources to watershed
activities. So now while we have good control over most of the larger dischargers, the major
dischargers, we're also going back and picking up some of the minors, who in the past had
a permit issued, but has not been reissued in recent years.
I just wanted to list these environmental indicators. I really do not know what the baseline is
on many of these things, and you're going to see improvements as an indicator, and I have not
seen what the baseline is for some of those things. But real quickly we'll go through that.
Page 166
-------
Fifty percent of threatened and endangered species will have stable or increasing populations.
I think we are all concerned about this, and this gives us a way of determining that, in fact,
we are protecting these organisms. Ninety percent of fish and shellfish harvest areas will
provide food safe for people to eat. Ninety percent of rivers, streams, lakes, and reservoirs
better desigmted^s^ilrinkmg water supplies wilt provide water that is safe-fer-usc in drinking.
Fifty percent of wells monitored for ground water will meet designated uses. The rate of
wetlands loss will be reduced to less than 100,000 acres per year. Ninety percent of rivers,
streams, lakes, and estuaries will support healthy and diverse aquatic life. A five percent
reduction in sediment contaminants discharged from point sources. This was kind of
overwhelming to me when I tried to conceive what 700 million kilograms actually represent.
I think that's going to be a real goal for us and it's going to be interesting to see how we meet
it. Ninety-five percent of the population served by drinking water systems will provide water
that meets health requirements. Fifty percent of the community water systems will have
source ground water protection programs in place.
Those are our environmental indicators. It's my understanding that the year 2010 is when we
would actually look to get those environmental indicators and goals accomplished. That data
may be changed. But, I think, it's at least an opportunity to look at what we're trying to
achieve and get out of the mode of number counting and into the mode of actually looking at
how well we're doing our job and how it's affecting the environment.
Concerning public participation, probably the biggest thing the NPDES permits branch does
is outreach to people who are interested in what we do and what permits are being issued
within their state or in a neighboring state. There's an extensive mailing list for NPDES
permits designated by state. As an example, in Texas there are 400 concerned parties that
every time an NPDES permit is issued a public notice and a fax sheet is sent to each of those
parties. In Oklahoma, there are 332 interested parties. New Mexico has 324. Louisiana has
310. So you can see a lot of people are keeping up with what we are doing.
Concerning public hearings, typically we will hold a public hearing on an individual NPDES
permit. But it's rare that we get a request to have that hearing or at least that we get a request
from a number of people. There may be one person, may be two people that are interested
in holding a public hearing on an NPDES permit, and if we have enough support, we'll
certainly do that. But traditionally, the individual or the organization that's being issued that
permit are the concerned parties and that's usually dealt with on a one to one basis. However,
when we look at the general permits, we do have a lot of people who are concerned about that
because of the broad application of a regulation. So in that respect, we've held a lot of
hearings and meetings concerning concentrated animal feeding operation permits, storm water
general permits, and most recently, we've been holding a lot of meetings, or we did hold a
lot of meetings on the new bio-solids rule. What we used to call municipal sludge is now
called bio-solids. It certainly sounds a lot better. And there are some new rules that we
Page 167
-------
promulgated last year that permittees must comply with and numerous meetings were held
throughout the region.
As far as involvement in watershed projects, I think it's our goal, not only in the permits
branch, but I think in EPA Region 6 altogether, to build upon this conference to open it up
to more people and get more of the public involved in the sort of activities that we're involved
in today.
Lastly, enforcement. Obviously, we're not enforcement people. However, it is important that
we do the things correctly in our permit issuance so that enforcement can adequately address
problems where permittees are not complying with the regulations, quality standards, Basic
Management Plans, or standards of performance. Again, targeting minors in watersheds with
no point source problems is obvious. When we first got into the Galveston Bay area, we had
numerous minor permits that had expired and had been expired for several years. It's very
difficult for enforcement to go in and take action on a permittee whose permit has been
expired for four or five years. Therefore, we are trying to make sure that we get the needed
minor permits issued in that specific watershed so, in future years, our enforcement branch
will be able to take actions necessary to correct problems with small facilities. These may
actually be a large problem in that particular watershed.
It's also important that we incorporate all aspects of state water quality standards, because that
allows us to strengthen the enforceability of those permits. If we issue a permit in accordance
with water quality standards and the permittee is not meeting them, then we would expect that
there's a problem in that downstream area. We certainly want to make sure that we don't
complicate the issue of correcting a problem by issuing a permit that's not enforceable. Any
sort of loophole is an opportunity for pollution and we want to avoid that at all costs.
Concerning issuance of general permits, again, this is a broad application of a permitting
action. However, it does allow us through enforcement to go back and address problems in
known watersheds. At this time, we have a couple of watersheds that we're targeting for
enforcement activities concerning nutrient controls or from concentrated animal feeding
operations. Those particular areas would be the Wister Lake Watershed and the Illinois River
in Oklahoma, and the North Bosque River Watershed in Texas.
Question:
I know you're dealing with the municipal and industrial wastewater target permits, but are you
also going to be looking at air, or solid/hazardous waste permits? Is everything going to
become due at the same time as far as renewals?
Page 168
-------
Answer: Mel Vargas
Well, right now at TNRCC, we haven't taken a step in that direction yet. It's being discussed
in some of our internal meetings as we develop a watershed management approach.
Question:
My question is for Mel. Will the Watershed Texas be recognized as diverse treatment within
a basin to have diverse requirements? Or is it going to use the same one size fits all because
the Texas Clean Rivers Act was used? The nutrient screening is a good example of that one
size fits all, where there's one criteria set for the whole state. Pristine regions are different
than coastal regions.
Answer: Mel Vargas
An important goal of Watershed Texas is to allow flexibility and improve predictability. We
have to look for opportunities and mechanisms that will provide the flexibility necessary to
deal with the geographic differences within each river basin. I think we've talked about a few
principles that are going to support that, and I think that one of those is just trying to get more
of the players at the table sooner, so we can understand how to do that. We have to figure out
how to make decisions better based on geographic differences, physiographic differences,
ecoregion differences, population, whatever. We need to move more in the direction of
developing GIS systems and other tools that will help us make better decisions. One issue that
conflicts with the goal to provide flexibility is data availability and assessment. To develop
different criteria and alternative implementation strategies for different regions requires
extensive data. The TNRCC must reach out to all the different partners of a basin and get
their help to obtain the type of information necessary to address differences that exist from
upriver to downriver, from West Texas to East Texas, or even from North Texas to South
Texas.
Warren Davis:
Another question back here.
Question:
I just had a quick question for Emelise. It refers to the bio-assessments that you're doing in
your ecoregions. Do you know from experience if you have found any local indicators of
aquatic stress or vegetative stress that you could actually site in certain areas in terms of
problems.
Page 169
-------
Answer: Emelise Cormier
We haven't gone that far yet. We're still working on gathering our baseline data. But what
we're looking at are fish species, diversity, and numbers in the streams, as well as the macro
invertebrate species diversity, and the relative percentages of tolerant versus intolerant species.
Ultimately we'll develop that indicator, and it may be some type of biotic index.
Question:
I had a question for Mel. In Louisiana, one of the problems that we've had is that a lot of the
parishes, like counties, will have many, many small treatment plants, because they don't really
have an overall view of how they can grow and it's easy to put in small plants. And it would
probably be environmentally preferable to have them regionalize and send out sewer
payments. It seems like the watershed approach is going to help the counties to see the need
to have their own centralized planning. Do you prefer that?
Answer: Mel Vargas
I'll answer that, and knowing that Carl Masterson is here, I bet he can add a little bit of
information to this question also. It is a standing policy at TNRCC and in our water quality
program to promote regionalization of treatment facilities. We believe strongly that the
watershed management approach is going to lend the impetus to continue that policy and
promote that policy. We cannot dictate and mandate that a smaller facility link up with an
adjacent or a near larger facility, but I believe that through looking at the impacts and the
treatment requirements within a given watershed or geographic area, we're looking at things
in a more comprehensive fashion. I think that the decisions and the understanding will be
there amongst the players to help make those type decisions and move in that direction.
Warren Davis:
The question you're asking is essentially are we going to handle permits based on specific
areas, and if the answer is yes, how are we going to handle the renewals?
Question:
Yes, in other watersheds.
Warren Davis:
And other watersheds.
Page 170
-------
Answer: Mel Vargas
Throughout the first five years, '96 through the year 2000, the exact number of permits issued
in a given year will fluctuate. To answer your first question, the answer is yes. Workload,
or the total number of permits theTNRC€ staff is T^pable^Dfreviewmg and issuing in a given
year was an major determinant in laying out the schedule. After we go through the cycle
once, we're only going to have to deal with new permits for new facilities. So generally
you'll have the same number every year except for new permits, and we'll just have to deal
with the new permit whenever it comes in.
Say it's the year 2000 and we're issuing all the permits for one basin, and a new permit comes
in during the year 2001. We would probably issue that permit for four years so they would
get on the cycle in the year 2004. If a new permit came in the year 2003, we would probably
issue it a two-year permit and then a four-year permit; six years to catch up the second time
around. But there's no doubt about it, between '96 and the year 2000, we're going to have
difficulty because some permits will come in for two years, some will come in for three years,
and there will be the workload for the designated watersheds we're supposed to be issuing,
and there will be other permits coming in from other basins that aren't designated for that
specific fiscal year. That will make our workload somewhat unpredictable for those first five
years. It should be understood that it will take us basically 10 years to get all water quality
permits sequenced and on the statewide schedule.
Question:
Would you consider letting extension to permits in other watershed areas to continue on their
previous permit?
Answer: Mel Vargas
Probably not, because we do not have administrative authority to extend a permit like that.
The Texas Administrative Code prohibits a permit from being issued for more than five years.
However, it is TNRCC's intent to do whatever is possible to get them on the cycle as fast as
we can, depending on what year they come in. That will result in placing a little bit of
hardship on certain permittees, because they may be faced with a two-year permit and then
a three-year permit.
Warren Davis:
Other questions? Yes, sir.
Page 171
-------
Question:
Could you tell me how are you going to reconcile the watershed approach with the 303-D
Priority Approach that has been pretty much set up by EPA?
Answer: Stephen Bainter
This question hasn't come up yet, or at least, I haven't heard it yet. I suspect that we'll work
with the states and our water quality branch to figure out how we can best coordinate those
efforts. Where the state doesn't have some sort of basin permitting rule, then we're very
flexible as to what we can do and, of course, we can administratively extend a permit by not
reissuing it, and the previous permit continues in effect at whatever it was at the time it
expired. But as far as our changing priorities or whatever, without something else from the
state indicating otherwise, we can deal with those on a case by case basis.
Question:
For Stephen and maybe some extra comments from Jim. On the NPDES municipal storm
water permits, I understand on the point sources on the wastewater treatment plants when you
had a standard violation you could tie it to the permits easy, but standards that we have now
really don't go with storm water runoff pollution. How is that going to work and will cities
be allowed to use BMP's as opposed to some numerical criteria.
Answer: James Lewis
Well, I think the state might have a response, whether it's Stephen or Warren. But since the
program right now, the limitations have been reserved in the regulations, it's basically do you
have the programs recommended and will receive and some have already notice of deficiencies
of those programs. I haven't heard any change on whether that's going to continue or whether
we'll be receiving a more stringent criteria. Right now, it's those programs and I haven't
heard anything about numbers of BMP's. It's basically program oriented and how the state
might be taking over that, I think, they could certainly address.
Response: Stephen Bainter
First of all, I'm not very knowledgeable of the storm water program. We have specific people
assigned to that activity. I might be mistaken in this and that's the reason why I let James talk
first. But it's my understanding that the city, the municipality, submits a plan of action of
how they are going to implement storm water controls and through negotiations those plans
are incorporated into a permit. What the city is then required to do is implement the program
that they submitted and said, "This is what we plan on doing." Or they negotiated, because
Page 172
-------
I'm sure that the cities don't always get everything they want and we don't get everything we
want. That's the nature of negotiations. But as long as the city complies with those terms,
then the goal is to implement whatever protection they determined was appropriate and that
we agreed to. It's the same thing we do with BMP's for like pesticides.
Response: Warren Davis
I'd just echo what Steve was saying as correct. Essentially, all cities are required to have a
plan and then to implement that plan. Essentially, from an enforcement perspective, we would
go in and make sure that they're living according to the plan they've written down.
Page 173
-------
Page 174
-------
The Clean Lakes Program and Citizen Monitoring (10:15-11:45AM)
Moderator: Mike Bira, Clean Lakes Coordinator, U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency, Region 6, Dallas, TX
Good morning. My name is Mike Bira. This is the Track B session of the Clean Lakes
Program Citizens Monitoring. I've been real excited that this is finally going to occur. I've
been trying to get this particular group of people together for a little over a year now for
different types of activities, and finally, this conference came about, allowing us to do that.
I'm going to spend a few minutes to talk about the Clean Lakes Program since a lot of people
don't know what that's about. And then you'll see presentations from each of the states, and
from the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation, about citizens monitoring. You will see that
each program has its own distinct structure and flavor. To me, that is of great interest, and
really displays the amount of flexibility that's allowed in a program of this type.
Basically, the Clean Lakes Program is an EPA sponsored program, and if you were listening
to the opening remarks that were made yesterday, we heard about the EPA trying to move in
different directions, and incorporating and empowering states and private entities to get more
involved to solve their own problems because of limited Federal resources. I think you'll see
that the citizens monitoring efforts truly embody those goals. To me, watching these
programs grow has been a great source of enjoyment and pride.
In a nutshell, the Clean Lakes Program is not in the EPA budget. We're funded through
direct Congressional appropriation every year. In FY '95 we received no money. That
happened in 1988 also. But we're at a point right now in the program where we really don't
know if we're going to survive through the new Congressional attitude. I would entertain
some questions on the Clean Lakes Program at the end of this session.
I would like each presentation to be 15 or 20 minutes long. That will give us approximately
a half hour at the end of the session for any questions that anybody may have or any
discussions. We can talk about the Clean Lakes Program, or just as important, the individual
state programs and what the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation is doing, about how their
programs developed, and some of the problems they've had. A friend of mine, who is older
and wiser than me, once told me that anything worth doing is worth doing wrong until you
get it right. I think we've all got experiences that exemplify that philosophy, and the older
I get, I embrace that philosophy more and more.
We'll first hear from Texas, then from Oklahoma, then from Arkansas. And then we'll hear
from the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation. The first three of the states are Clean Lakes
Programs sponsored activities. They also receive financial support in the form of awards from
Page 175
-------
Section 106 of the Clean Water Act, which is the general water quality monitoring, surface
monitoring, and through Section 319, which is the Nonpoint Source Program. Funding varies
in different states. The Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation is supported through Sections
104(b)(3) and 319. They're not directly involved with the Clean Lakes Program. But
nevertheless, it is citizens' monitoring, and we all have the same goals.
Our first speaker is Gay la Campbell. She comes to us as Director of the Texas Watch
Program. Gayla has a very interesting background. She's one of the co-writers of the
LaMotte Chemical Company's Monitoring Handbook, which is a guidebook for citizen
monitors using different types of field kits that LaMott makes. She holds a Bachelor of
Science in Psychology and Education.
What makes the Texas Watch Program unique in this region is their seven full-time staff
members in Austin and five FTE's throughout the state. They are by far the largest program
dedicated to citizens doing monitoring activities in the region. As you know, Texas is a pretty
good size state.
Speaker: Gayla Campbell, Texas Watch Program Coordinator, Texas Natural
Resource Conservation Commission; Austin, TX
Instead of starting with the title slide, I wanted to start off with this little critter. It's a
parmesium parvum and millions of these did this to a West Texas River called the Pecos
River. There were many hundreds of fish killed throughout the mid-80's and the citizens
became concerned, and through their concerns and through working with TNRCC, Texas
Watch became an official program in 1991. Through the assistance of federal grants 314,
106, and now 319, as well as some general revenue, Texas Watch has become quite a
successful program.
I want to do a little overview of Texas Watch this morning. I also want to talk about some
of the successes that we've had on a watershed level working with partners, and working with
not only interested citizens, but those "average citizens" that we've been talking about for the
last day and a half, and most importantly, involving all the stakeholders.
Some components of a successful program includes commitment towards your goals. Also,
if we don't communicate, coordinate, and collaborate, we're not going to be very successful.
But most importantly, it's the partnerships. We've worked very hard for the last year on
developing an infrastructure to handle the 5,000 volunteers (and growing) and a diversity of
resources.
Page 176
-------
We've had our basic goals since the beginning. They are very broad, but we do think that
they are very realistic and we strive to attain them. Part of setting the goals, is defining data
quality objectives. Of course, we do a lot of education in Texas Watch, but one of the
important things is gathering data on why it's needed and who is going to use it. From the
very beginning, volunteers are required to Fill out a monitorrng pTan anffBave ItTappfoved by
the program as to who is going to use the data. We don't want someone to be collecting data
and using it in an alarmist way to a newspaper. We want people to work together. We want
to involve all interested parties from the beginning.
We have various levels of participation all the way from elementary school to the certified
program which is part of EPA requirements. These are our elementary school students in
Project Wet and Texas Watcher Program, where they're getting a basis for water quality
information. We do a lot of teaching. About 40% of Texas Watch includes teachers and
students. This Junior High student is from the Ft. Worth area, who won a state science fair
contest and went to the national competition. He compared the Urban Watch kit with a core
Texas Watch Kit. These are students in an At Risk Program down on the Rio Grande, which
has been very successful for three years. But I just found out that it has lost its funding for
this coming summer.
The certified program starts with lab training. Volunteers go through 15 hours of training,
including four hours of lab, four hours of an afternoon on-site Phase II training. The phase
III is conducted one-on-one with a trainer at the individual's site. A major part of Texas
Watch is quality assurance. The plan is very important. Partly because it is required for the
federal funding that we get, but it also provides credibility and standardizes all the various
activities of the program. We ensure that from the very beginning through standardized
equipment all the way through the evaluation of the data. Our volunteers are required to do
two Q/A sessions a year to be checked for their precision and accuracy. This slide shows a
session that's going on at the Trinity River Authority Lab in Ft. Worth.
Another part of our program is data management. I will say one of the things that Texas
Watch did not do very well from the beginning is manage its data. We are beginning to get
a handle on that. We have established lead data repositories in our river authorities, and we
have data categories at various quality levels for the different uses. One important fact about
the use of the data is that we ensure that the volunteers don't become a part of the program
to work and gather data just for TNRCC. It's very important that we teach them, empower
them, and give them the tools to use the data at that local and regional level. There were a
couple of river authorities who used some of their volunteer data in their Clean River's
Assessment Report this year.
Four volunteer groups data were entered into the Texas Water Quality Inventory (305-B)
report this year. Whether the report comes out in the next two or five years we hope to
Page 177
-------
include much more volunteer data. We're also working with our surface water quality
monitoring team and TNRCC in focusing volunteer's efforts on watersheds where they've
never had data before or where volunteers can monitor more frequently or in areas where
government personnel have a very difficult time getting access. What we found out when we
completed our first report was that 75 % of the data that volunteers collect in Texas Watch is
on the unclassified waters which have never ever been monitored before.
The first group to highlight is the Salado Creek Preservation Committee. Salado is a little
town 20 miles south of Waco. For the last year and a half they gathered water quality
samples, twice monthly, and analyzed them for fecal coliform bacteria among other
constituents at the Brazos River Authority Lab. Twice within the year their results were
extremely high resulting in the Brazos River Authority confirming the high counts. They then
worked with the local health department as well as with TNRCC. And at one point, the health
department temporarily closed the creek. Obviously, the Chamber of Commerce wasn't too
happy, because Salado Creek draws many tourists to town. However, because of these
citizen's efforts, they prevented a greater public health hazard from happening.
Another part of Texas Watch is our nonpoint source monitoring activities. We have several
319 grants and in fact, a lot of what we do with nonpoint source is beginning to be more a part
of the core program, because nonpoint source pollution is an issue of great concern and it's
very important to educate the public. Our Urban Watch program in Ft. Worth, involves
volunteers who test for Ph, phenols, copper, temperature, and detergents as well as
observational monitoring at storm drain outfalls during dry weather. It's a very successful
program.
Another project we do not have data from is East Bouldin Creek, a sub-watershed of Austin's
Town Lake. This paired watershed design study will try to show the effectiveness of BMP's.
In the competitive group of 319 grants, it was rated number two with about 60 other projects
in total. We will start with a calibration phase. That will be determining which of three
creeks will be the control creek to implement various BMP's. We will continue the
monitoring and then evaluate the effectiveness of implemented best management practices.
We're working very closely with the City of Austin, Lower Colorado River Authority, and
the TNRCC regional office. We are also offering technical assistance through TNRCC for
structural BMP's for some of the businesses within those watersheds. In order to support
5,000 volunteers a major part of our infrastructure is our partnership program. They offer a
variety of support. They can be either a lead data repository or they can take over all the
administrative and technical needs, such as a river authority. We may have a donor partner
such as an industry, who may provide only a one time donation. Or there are others that may
provide in kind services such as lab services.
Page 178
-------
We have over 60 partners from a variety of entities. An example is staff with the
Houston/Galveston area Council of Government talking with citizens about activities going
on in the watershed. We try to instill in our partners that citizens get together on a regular
basis throughout the year.
Another successful group is in Sugarland, which is 50 miles from the Gulf and about 50 miles
west of Houston. Oyster Creek runs through the town. They've had a history of major fish
kills and there are a number of permitted industries, one of which is Imperial Holly Sugar.
Of course, when the fish kills happen, the citizens pointed their finger at the industry. One
thing we don't want is citizens pointing the finger. We want them to work together. So
obviously, we started out with an adversarial relationship, but by working with Texas Watch
and the city, the citizens started monitoring above and below the point source discharge and
found the problems were both above and below. The citizens were able to detect potential fish
kills three days before they happened. Some of the success with this group is that they worked
together. The citizens were empowered to do it. They felt that the government should only
assist mem in solving the problem. They're not pointing their finger anymore, but working
in partnership towards a common goal. For the first time ever, about a year and a half ago,
the Imperial Holly Sugar permit went uncontested. And the Brazos River Authority was
awarded a Clean Lakes Phase I assessment grant, with the entire match coming from private
resources.
Another example, with a successful partnership, is with Occidental Corporation in Corpus
Christi. They work with school students who go out on the University of Texas Research
Vessel testing quarterly for the 22 major constituents. They also do trawls and various other
things.
Most importantly, volunteer monitoring empowers the citizens and our future.
Moderator: Mike Bira
Thank you very much, Gayla. Next, we'll move to Oklahoma, and hear from Keith Owen.
He's the Program Coordinator for their Citizens Monitoring Program, Oklahoma Water
Watch. That began in April of '92. Keith attended O.S.U. and studied Fisheries Ecology,
and he's currently the Water Watch Program Coordinator. He's also the state Water
Education for Teachers (WET) Program Co-Coordinator. In addition, he holds a seat on the
Oklahoma State Environmental Education Coordinating Committee. Keith has done an
excellent job for the state of Oklahoma and he's spent a lot of time getting out and developing
Oklahoma Water Watch. He's impressed all the people that I've spoken with from the citizen
level to the local government level. We're real appreciative of his efforts.
Page 179
-------
Speaker: Keith Owen, Volunteer Monitoring Coordinator, Oklahoma Water
Resources Board; Oklahoma City, OK
Thanks, Mike. Here is a brief overview of how I started the Oklahoma Water Watch. In
April of '92--as a matter of fact, it was the 13th of April, 1992~was my first day at the Water
Board. They had always known they needed a volunteer monitoring program. They knew
the benefits. They had visited with the folks of Texas Watch. In our Clean Lakes Section we
had individuals in charge of diagnostic feasibility studies or Phase One's. We had the
gentleman in charge of our state lake water quality assessment projects. They knew they were
too busy to try and do this volunteer project. So they hired an additional person which was
myself. Again, I started on the 13th of April. My first day was kind of eye opening to me.
They called me when I was in my last semester of school. This was the first real job that I
had out of college. The first day I came in they said, "We want a volunteer monitoring
program." I said, "That sounds great. What do you want?" Well, they didn't know. I said,
"Well, how do you want me to do it." "Well, we don't know. But we know we want you to
do it." Again, remember this was the 13th of April. Well, on the 15th of April they had
scheduled an orientation program for one of the volunteer groups that wanted to be trained.
So I had two days to design the program to the point to where I could present it to a group of
about 100 people--which became my best volunteer group-The Group of Grand Lake.
Kind of a dark slide. Sunrise over Lake Eufaula. Believe it or not, I'm standing on my
father-in-law's front porch to take this picture. In putting this informational slide show
together, I tried to keep in mind, well, what do people want to hear? They don't necessarily
want to hear what happens or what do I have to do in the office or something like that. They
want to know what the monitors do. What it takes to be a monitor. What it takes to monitor
a watershed and those things that are involved.
So I put this together kind of in the mind of "A Day in the Life of a Volunteer Monitor." So
sunrise over Lake Eufaula. A lot of these folks get up early to go to their monitoring sites
before they go to work. Some folks, first thing in the morning, may go to a training session.
This is Phase I of our training. Folks go through a three-phase training schedule. In Phase
I, we sit down in a classroom like atmosphere. We get them used to the test, and it's very
important for them to understand why they are testing. Not just the procedures to go through,
but why the dissolved oxygen test is important. How that is related to air temperature; how
it's related to water temperature.
Some folks may be attending the second phase of their training which we actually do at a site.
The entire training group goes out to a site. We go through the procedures again. We
practice collecting our samples. We practice in the field titrating our dissolved oxygen
samples; doing our apparent color test. This is a group on Spring Creek, which I'll talk about
later.
Page 180
-------
Then the third phase is where the monitor individually goes out with someone from our Water
Watch staff, which is me, and they go through the test a third time. Hopefully, by this point
they understand how the tests go. They don't have to have as much instruction. This is kind
of a third time is a charm, and we also do a site inspection to make sure the sites are safe.
Obviously, we don* I need~ someone" try'ing; To take a seed depth measurements^ feet off me
water in the middle of a bridge or something like that.
I've got about 500 volunteers. I think, while I'm down here there were two training sessions
scheduled and that probably put us over 500 volunteers across the state. A good third of the
volunteers are high school students. I hold them to the same quality control assessments that
I do any of the other monitors. They perform very well in this. As a matter of fact, they do,
on average, better than some of the adult volunteers.
Monitors collect nine basic water quality parameters; dissolved oxygen, air and water
temperature, ph. They'll do a secci depth measurement. Most monitors collect a nitrogen as
nitrates, a nitrogen as ammonia, an ortho-phosphate test, and then an apparent color test using
a standardized color chart.
This individual is on Spring Creek. Spring Creek is on the Ozark Plateau. It's a very high
quality water in Oklahoma. The group came to us originally because they had some concerns
to begin with about the fish population. As they began monitoring, they noticed that they had
some problems with the stream that were related to folks coming down and picnicking beside
the stream, and the very thing that they were coming to enjoy, they were causing problems
with. You can see there's some unofficial, if you will, campsites or recreation areas where
folks will build a fire. You can see the fire ring here. And because there's no trash cans,
they'll leave their trash, and they really pack down the ground in the riparian levels.
Obviously, they want to get down to the water and swim or fish. So their trails will cause
bank erosion and this type of thing. The Spring Creek Group, in addition to their water
quality testing, are sampling benthic macro invertebrates. Using these as an index of stream
health, they follow the EPA rapid bio-assessment and protocol too. We've modified that to
some degree for field purposes for our volunteers.
In addition to the insects and the water color, they also look at fish diversity as an index of
stream health. Also, most of our groups do physical monitoring, i.e., habitat assessments.
This is a group up at Meadow Lake in Enid. They're measuring the morphology of the
stream. They're going to do some flow measurements. This is a high school physics class.
They're trying to do a project looking at what's coming into the lake, what's going out of the
lake, and they're wanting to look at sediment loads. Meadow Lake had a diagnostic feasibility
study conducted on it by the water board over the last two to three years. As a result of that
work, we received a 319 grant to look at some of the problems of the lake and the watershed
and implement some BMP's. This is a classic slide of Meadow Lake. Real muddy water with
Page 181
-------
real great splots of green in it, so obviously, it's got some nutrient problems and some
sediment problems.
In addition to some of the other physical parameters that they're measuring, they've
constructed a bathometric map of the lake. The average depth of the lake is somewhere
between two and three feet. The deepest point is about three and a half. So it was really easy
to do a bathometric study on this. As you can see, he's got his tram set across the lake. Then
he uses a depth stick and his fishing tube to get all the way across and measure it at meter
increments.
Again, they're also doing a watershed study. This is all conducted by high school students.
It's a group of about 200 juniors and seniors, biology classes, ecology classes, physics, and
chemistry that are conducting this. They split the watershed into grids. Each class is assigned
a certain number of grids. They go out and there's a standardized data sheet that they fill out.
They collect some of the aquatic macophites in the area to take back to their classroom and
identify them. They've done a very good job for us up there. They identify things like real
obvious point sources. This isn't in the middle like watershed. It's just a real shocking slide.
And of course, the nonpoint source problems, such as shoreline erosion and nutrient
contribution.
In addition to our physical, biological, and chemical monitoring, our volunteers are very
involved in environmental education. As you heard Mike say, I'm on several committees and
working with several projects dealing with environmental education. Originally, this wasn't
a mission of the Oklahoma Water Watch, and as we began developing our monitoring
program, we realized people really had a thirst for not just getting out into the watersheds and
onto the lakes collecting this information, but they wanted to know what it meant. We started
with school age children. This is an outdoor classroom site in Taloga, Oklahoma at the
western portion of the state. With these students, we talk about things like the water cycle.
We try to do activities that make them think and get them involved with the environment and
their local ecosystems, and we try to also get them involved in some of the water quality
monitoring. Right now, our program is set up to certify individuals of high school age and
up. We don't have a lot of monitors that are in the middle school and elementary school range
right now.
We also do enhancement project sessions with our adult monitors. Once again, these folks
are really interested in understanding why dissolved oxygen and temperature are related. This
is a basic analogy class, where we talk about things like stratification of lakes. What is the
hypolimnion? Why is anoxia important? And like I said, they have a real thirst for this
knowledge and when they're in the field, you really see a jump in quality of the site specific
comments on their data sheets. Rather than saying, "Uh, well, there's scum on the surface
of the water," or "It smells bad," you get things like, "Well, there's algae mass coming from
Page 182
-------
downstream." This, of course, helps them in their projects, with using the data themselves,
and it also helps us. We use the data in our lake water quality assessment reports. We use
volunteer data on diagnostic feasibility lakes in the Phase I reports, so the data gets used quite
a bit.
We have volunteers that sample all across the state. In a week conducting training sessions,
I think I could probably put in about 2,500 miles in one week going from the Panhandle to the
Southeast and then all over the place. In here, he's taking his secci depth measurement. We
have folks that monitor water bodies anywhere from the eastern part of the state where we
have very clear, very cold streams that feed very deep and cold lakes, some of which in our
latest trophic state index actually fell out as alligatrophic. We have volunteers that sample the
lakes in the center portion of our state, which are very productive. Characteristic of fairly
high chlorophyll "A" values, which is an additional parameter that many of our volunteers
have started collecting data on. And we have quite a few volunteers in our arid western
regions where water is actually more valuable than money in some cases. This is an irrigation
canal coming from Lake Altos, where our second largest high school group, a group of about
150 students, sample a collection of three or four lakes on both the Wichita Mountain Wildlife
Refuge and the Altos Lugert Irrigation District.
So as the sun sets in the west of Oklahoma, we've had somewhere between 475 to 500
volunteers collecting data once a month at a specified date and specified time. They turn this
data in on a bi-monthly basis. Most groups do this electronically now. We're seeking some
funding in setting up a toll-free 24-hour bulletin board system to where they can drop that
information into our databases at anytime through a modem.
A few of our groups do it what they term is the old fashioned way and send in the data sheets.
All of these volunteers are very motivated. They're very dedicated. I feel very privileged to
have worked with most of these people, and to be honest, they've taught me as much as I ever
learned in school or from a book.
So thank you.
Moderator: Mike Bira
Thank you, Keith. Now we'll hear from the state of Arkansas. The speaker from Arkansas
is Gregg Patterson. Gregg is currently the Director of the Water Education Team, through
the Department of Pollution Control & Ecology. They do a lot of citizens monitoring,
primarily targeting schools. Gregg grew up in New York. He spent a lot of time in the
Catskill Mountains with his family and developed an appreciation for the outdoors. He
graduated with a B.S. in Journalism and a Master's Degree in Biology from the University of
Page 183
-------
Missouri. That led to a position with the state of Arkansas, and for about 8 years, he was the
Editor for the Arkansas Wildlife Magazine.
Gregg sits on the Advisory Council of National Project WET, which is Water Education for
Teachers, a national program. It's different from Arkansas WET, but with many of the same
goals. He's also a writer, photographer, a member of the Outdoor Writer's Association of
America, and Gregg has more than 250 published articles. Gregg brings an interesting
approach to this in that he's experienced in advertising. That's one of the things we're hurting
for the most in Citizens Monitoring. Also, he's a pretty avid fisherman and hunter. He can
put you on some of the best fly fishing in the country.
Speaker: Gregg Patterson, Director of WET Program, Arkansas Department of
Pollution Control & Ecology; Little Rock, AR
Thanks a lot, Mike. I appreciate the opportunity Mike has given me to speak with you at this
conference. It is exciting to be able to actually meet face to face with people like Gay la and
the Texas Program, and Keith's program, and also Clifford's program, which you'll hear
about after me. These are people and programs that, when I was setting up Arkansas'
program, I read a lot about what they were doing, and called them and talked to them on the
phone and got information.
I put my talk together here as an opportunity to let you know if this is the type of program
you're interested in—how you can go about doing that and give you some things that make
Arkansas' program unique. The reason why I do that is simply because if you want to set up
a program like this, you're going to have to make it work for your state and your localities.
I'm sure everyone up here would agree with that.
People in Arkansas have specific interests in water for a variety of reasons and you have to
tailor a program that's going to meet their needs. One of the mistakes we made right up front
was a bunch of biologists and scientific minds got together and said, "Hey, we're going to
create a water education program. We're going to have teachers involved, and students, and
citizens, and everybody is going to think this is wonderful." Well, we got three or four
months into it and fortunately we were smart enough to invite teachers and citizens into the
planning process, and after a while, they kind of sat back and said, "You know, look, guys,
if you're going to create a program for school kids, you need some people who have an
education background." So we saw that we had a biased focus due to our tunnel vision
scientific minds.
My agency, the Arkansas Department of Pollution Control & Ecology is a regulatory agency.
It writes permits for people. We write permits on discharges and whatnot, and then if people
Page 184
-------
don't follow the permits, we're the regulatory agency that goes in and does the actual
enforcement action.
We wear a kind of black hat in, our state so our .Directordecided that we needed to develop
a pro-action environmental education program. So hopefully 10 and 15 years down the line,
we can eliminate some of the problems that we're having to regulate right now.
That started the program. The key to success with the Arkansas Water Education Team is a
very narrow focus—education. The reason why we have such a narrow focus is simply the
players involved are an extremely diverse group of people. My original mandate, as defined
by my Commission, said I needed to work with citizen groups, environmental groups, and the
state education system, K through the University levels. I had to work with industry. I had
to work with agriculture. I had to work with state and federal agencies that have water
jurisdiction of which there are approximately 27 in the state of Arkansas, and anybody else
who was interested. So basically, I had to take people who I like to refer to as the folks who
normally don't sit with each other at the coffee shop and bring them together at the same table
and say, "Here's a project. Let's go do it." To do that, the focus had to be narrow.
So when people come in and are interested in getting involved with the Arkansas Education
Team, I tell them it's an education project. You are not going to see me as the Director of
the Arkansas Water Education Team standing up pointing fingers at people saying, "You're
a polluter and you need to change the way you're doing business. That's not my job.
Education is the narrow focus that brings people together to sit at the same table. And it's
been interesting, because some of the people that sit at my table, for the Water Education
Team Project, are people that the only tables that they've ever sat at together before was in
a court room and one was on one side and one was on the other.
I'm fortunate though. I get to sell Mom, hot dogs and apple pie. People are into
environmental education. They're into kids being involved in it. Everybody from
Kindergarten through Senior Citizens is involved in our program in some way. So in that
regard, it is an easy sell.
Some keys to success and what we've done with the program. Originally, we targeted
schools. Schools are one slice of the WET pie, so to speak. We targeted schools first because
we had a captive audience. Kids must go to school and they have to be there, so we targeted
them first. We also targeted them first because the infrastructure already existed where we
could go out and identify groups that would be interested in water education. The teachers
were very supportive of it. Our program is strictly voluntary. It is not a requirement. I'm
not down at the legislature in Arkansas lobbying them for an environmental education law for
the state of Arkansas. Now a lot of states have gone that way, and I see the merits of that.
But at the same time, in my program, the way it's set up, you've got to be passionate about
Page 185
-------
water and water education to do the program. If I make it a mandatory requirement, the
program would fail miserably. So it's strictly voluntary, and that includes our citizens, as well
as our schools or anybody else who wants to get involved.
The other key to success that we've done within the program is it's based on local support.
When we go out, number one, I don't go out and market the program, per se. I found that
with teachers, once one teacher knows about it, teachers go to a conference or some place
where they meet other teachers and they like to say, "Well, I do this, and you don't have
that." And they do it all for me. I don't have to market it. They're wonderful about getting
the word out about the program. So one of the key criteria that I look for is I want them to
contact me first, because that tells me that they really want to be in the program. We take
schools once they contact me, and we go out and we interview the school. We interview the
administrators of the school and we interview the teachers and students that are going to be
involved in the program. Those three components are absolutely essential for the success of
the program. I've got to have all three really passionate about the program to make it work.
I've had schools that I interview where the teacher's really gung-ho, the student's gung-ho,
and the administration is not. If the administration is not, believe me, the program will not
work.
The reason why we do this and put them through a real stringent interview process is simply
because we're funding each school to the tune of $6,000 and that's a big investment, whether
it's state dollars or foundation dollars or grant money that comes in from EPA or whoever.
That's a big investment and I want the people who support the program with the dollars to feel
that they're getting their money's worth. That's essential now. Congress wants to know to
the penny, are you spending your dollars right. My state legislature wants to know that. The
people who oversee the way I run the program want to know that. So I want to make sure the
quality is built in there.
Recently at Mountain Home High School, which is up on the White River, a famous trout
stream in Arkansas, we had four banks participate in the funding of the school. We had
Wapsi Fly Company, which is the largest distributor of fly tying materials in the nation. They
threw money in. A lot of the guide services up and down the river threw money in and before
we know it, we have $6,000 and we can fund that school. So our funding comes from a
variety of different sources. We allow the schools, then, to choose a site to monitor that's
important to them on a local level.
Gayla was mentioning, too, with her program, that 75% of the data that you're getting in is j
coming from streams that were never monitored before. The agencies that have some sort of f
water jurisdiction in Arkansas and need that kind of data are absolutely thrilled about this j
aspect of the program. Because instead of them going on the White River, where there are j
USGS gauges and PC&E is doing monitoring-I mean, the White River gets monitored to
Page 186
-------
death—they're hitting feeder creeks that come into the White River. The Buffalo River, a
national river in Arkansas, gets monitored to death by the Park Service, USGS, and us. But
the three schools that we have along the Buffalo, they're doing feeder creeks; Bear Creek,
Sugar Creek. All these creeks that run through agricultural areas and come in. So we're
getting great data on areas that have never been monitored before, whichIsarbTg~pdsitive~"
benefit for the agencies involved in the program.
Also, the reason why we allow these schools, or citizens groups, for that matter, (our citizens
program is just getting underway at this point) to get involved and choose the site themselves
is because then it's important to them. It's in their heart. I mean, that's their river, per se.
For instance, our kids at Jasper High School. They chose the local swimming hole on the
Little Buffalo River. Now why did they choose that? Well, their grandparents swam there.
Their parents swam there. They swim there now. And the big issue is, you know, animal
waste. Is animal waste trashing out their river? And they want to know that because mat's
where they swim. That's important to them. Now that may not be the most important place
in the state of Arkansas as far as my agency is concerned, but as far as the local people are
concerned, that is important to them. So it works real well.
The other factor is once you've taken a D.O. study or a D.O. sample five times, let's face it,
the thrill is gone. You turn the meter on. You stick it in the water.
The other factor that we build into local support of these sites is we built a network of what
we call "lead agency people" into the monitoring program.
What we do then is we train that person. That person is usually a fisheries biologist, a
ecologist, a hydrologist, a water chemist, or whatever, but we do a train the trainer's session
with them. They use the same equipment and know how to use that equipment. So that when
Mountain Home High School goes out to do their monitoring, they call Darrell Bowman of
the Game & Fish Commission, who lives in Mountain Home and works up there with the trout
program, and he goes out with them. They have a local contact. If they're trying to get a
hold of me or Philip in Little Rock, they're going to have a lot of trouble, because we're out
a lot. So we want them to have someone who is within the program, who if they meet them
in the hardware store and tell them that they need their titrater or some piece of equipment that
they have has broken down, they can tell them. They're going to meet them in the grocery
store or at church or somewhere before they'll ever see me. And it's worked extremely well
to have that local presence. Someone who has the skills and the scientific ability to help those
kids out.
Now, if you go around the schools that are in Arkansas and ask them who runs the WET
Program, chances are, they don't know my name and they couldn't care less who I am.
They'll tell in Mountain Home that Darrell Bowman and Game & Fish runs the program.
Page 187
-------
Over at Talihina High School in Oklahoma they're going to tell you Ron Bush with the
Ouachita National Forest runs the WET Program. Down at Camden in South Arkansas,
they're going to tell you International Paper Company runs the program because their lead
agency person is the water chemist down at International Paper Plant. And that's okay. It's
really popular with the groups that participate with me because it elevates their stature in the
community.
The Buffalo National River people—if you know any history about the Buffalo National River
in the early 60's~all the condemnation of land took place up there by the federal government
to establish the Buffalo National River—these folks' grandparents have not forgotten that their
land was condemned by the federal government. They have hard feelings. Okay, we're three
generations removed from that condemnation process, but the hard feelings still exist. So the
Buffalo National River folks jumped in to help right away because they want to build a good
relationship with those kids-the grandkids of those folks who lost their land who are in those
schools right now. So now, the kids are up there saying, "Hey, yeah, you know, Dave Mott,
the hydrologist at the Buffalo National River runs the WET Program." And so, that's fine
with me.
The other thing I found out, and some of you may have found out as well within your
programs, is I'm from Little Rock. People couldn't care less in Ozark, Arkansas what I have
to say, because I'm from Little Rock. Little Rock is the state capitol and they're not
interested. You know, anything from Little Rock is bad news, as my three Arkansas friends,
who just came in, will attest to. So lead agencies who are local are extremely important. That
local tie helps a lot with the program.
Coalition building. Anybody who is up here will tell you that is a key to any sort of education
program that you're going to come up with. We've got coalition agreements. I've got written
agreements. I don't go to people and say, "Here's my program. This is what you have to
do." I go to people and I say, "What is the message you want to get out about water education
and how can I help you get that message out? What are you willing to work with me on?"
So I've got, for instance, the Arkansas Environmental Federation, which is a coalition of
about 180 hardcore industries in the state. They are involved with the Arkansas Water
Education Team Program because they have a water message that they want to get out.
Arkansas Wildlife Federation is involved. I've got agreements with a variety of different
groups all around the state that may be just citizen groups or they may be hardcore industries.
They may be agricultural groups. You name it. So coalition building is important.
The other thing we did in coalition building is we looked at other environmental education
programs that were already there such as Project WILD, run by the Game & Fish
Commission, the state wildlife agency. Project Learning Tree comes out of the Arkansas
Forestry Association which is private non-profit group that works with forest land owners.
Page 188
-------
4-H, the RESQ Program, which comes out of Cooperative Extension and the 4-H programs.
We're all basically talking to the same audiences. So I went to the coordinators of all those
groups and I said, "Let's do this together, so that you're involved in my program and know
it intimately, and I'm involved in your program and know yours intimately." So I'm trained
in Project WILD and Project Learning"Tree"andy4-HTlESIJ/and-"ffieyre"ffauiectin~WET,~and:
when we do conferences, they're at my conferences and I'm at their conferences and training
sessions. Anybody who is involved in my program hi WET on a school level has to be trained
in Aquatic Project WILD as well. That's just a requirement. That's what we do. So we tie
those programs in. Then the four of us combine and do a quarterly newsletter called The
Ecotone, and get our message out that way as well. We're not off just doing our own thing
and going in our own direction. We're united in our environmental education efforts because
it all ties in together. So that's another thing that we've done in our coalition building.
Another key to success, you have to have a multiplicity of funding available to you. When
I first took the job, I had a certain amount of money that was promised to me, and when I got
there the first day—it's kind of like Keith's story about getting there on April 13th and on April
15th having to train 100 people. Well, I got there on November 20th, and on November 21st,
I found out the money I was supposed to have didn't exist. And they said, "Yeah, go ahead.
We need you to design this program. But by the way, you also have to raise the money for it.
We don't have what we thought we had." So you just roll with the punches.
How do we fund the program? We fund it through a variety of different ways. I've had three
different EPA grants. Mike's grants that comes in on Clean Lakes. We've got Environmental
Education grants we've gotten through EPA. Youth and the Environment program grants
we've gotten through EPA. Foundations. I go to foundations all over the country. They
offer money for certain projects. You need to check out as many of those as possible. Write
them. Find a way to fund it. The National Park Foundation funds three of our schools on the
Buffalo National River area because of the tie there. We'll work with them on some more
funding coming up. Department of Agriculture—there's a bunch out there. We also get
funded by, as I mentioned before, local industries or entities that are in the communities that
we are doing this work with. So you know, I might get International Paper Company to write
a check to fund something. They're interested in doing that because they have employees that
work at their mills and their kids go to school in that community. It's a good public relations
thing for them to get involved. I like to think of myself as a good salesman. But I think it's
the product that makes me a good salesman, rather than any capabilities I have on my own.
Then we have a unique opportunity that pops up every once hi a while out of the blue. Some
of my regulatory people within my agency will come or I'll get a call from my director
saying, "Well, we just had a settlement with Company X. They were violating air quality
standards, and in lieu of penalty, they're going to deposit $100,000 into your program." And
I go, "Yea! All right! I like that." You cannot depend on that because I never know when
Page 189
-------
that phone call is going to come. I love it when it does, but I never know. Other states I've
talked to have legislation in place that prevents that from happening. So it's not always a
viable option. But it's something that you could possibly look into. We've also had money
come into our program from citizens class action settlements with a variety of industries that
have occurred in the state. I'll get a phone call from a lawyer, who is a friend or something,
who worked on that, and said, "By the .way, we settle for a million dollars with somebody on
this citizen's suit and we're going to put X amount of dollars into your program." And again,
I say, "Thank you. I appreciate that a lot." My biggest suggestion there is just look at a
multiplicity of ways to get dollars into your program. I get very few state dollars that actually
come into the program itself.
I've told you all about the schools. We're involved in our schools and our citizens. When
they do monitoring, they monitor chemical, biological, and physical parameters on all water
bodies, simply because you cannot get a clear picture of water quality unless you measure all
three. You know, anything done to one of those parameters is going to affect the other two.
People tend to get caught up a lot in the chemical aspect of things. But physical and biological
are just as important. So all our people do macro invert studies as well as doing physical. We
measure overhead canopy, stream embeddedness, flows, with everything else. Our citizens
groups monitor the same way our schools do. The equipment is the same. The procedures
are the same the reason is I don't want an apples and oranges database. I want a clear concise
database that people who use it (biologists, hydrologists, ecologists, and the other agencies,
and they will use this data) can understand the strengths and weaknesses of the database up
front. If you are a scientist and you understand the strengths and weaknesses of a database,
it is a usable database. So we make sure of that.
How did I get a good database? Well, the guys who are using the database originally looked
at me and said, "There is absolutely no way that kids can collect data that is going to be
usable. You know, we've got these four-year degrees and eight-year degrees and it just can't
happen." So I just looked at them and said, "Fine. You guys design it then." So that's what
happened. We established a technical review committee and all the people in those agencies
sat down and they designed what piece of equipment would measure what parameter, and went
from there. So they're comfortable with it because they designed it.
I'll wrap it up then. One other part that we're doing. We're getting into citizens monitoring
right now. I'll be talking to a lot of other states. Don't reinvent the wheel. It's already been
figured out by somebody else. The success that my program will have is simply based on the
good brains of other people in other states who thought up these things way before I ever
thought them up. No idea is an original idea. I'm convinced of that.
One other program that we do is for students. We give summer jobs to our students who are
involved in the WET Program. We offer an opportunity for them to work with an industry
Page 190
-------
that is involved in water for one reason or another. And these are kids who are interested in
possibly pursuing programs or an education in college like that. So we have a summer jobs
program. If you want to hear more about that, you can call me.
But that's basically what's going on with the water education team in Arkansas, and it's a fun
job. Before I took it, I had my doubts about what was happening in the environment. I am
firmly convinced now that this environment will be well protected because of the people that
I work with on a daily basis who are out there—general citizens and students. I'm firmly
convinced. They will not let either the state agencies or the federal government or anybody
else mess it up. They are just more powerful than us. It's just that simple.
Moderator: Mike Bira
Now it's time for us to shift gears a little bit, like we always do when we come to New
Orleans. Cliff Kenwood represents Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation. We've heard from
three state agencies and their development of citizens monitoring programs. Now we're going
to hear from the Basin Foundation, a private entity, so to speak, and how they approach
citizens monitoring. Cliff has been Project Coordinator, for the Lake Pontchartrain Basin
Foundation for the past three years. The projects that he has now are four separate citizen
monitoring programs, and a submerged aquatic vegetation restoration program. He also
manages media relations for the Foundation and edits their quarterly newsletter.
Speaker: Clifford Kenwood, Project Coordinator, Lake Pontchartrain Basin
Foundation; Metairie, LA
A very wise woman I work with, Anne Rheams, told me if you're going last, make it quick.
People will love you for it. So I'm going to make this as quick as I can.
I work at the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation. We're known as the "Save Our Lake"
people around here, because of the "Save Our Lake" bumper stickers that we have around.
We have about 80,000 of them floating around on bumpers, lockers, boats, and places they
probably shouldn't be stuck to as well.
We have four active citizen monitoring programs right now and one that's sort of in the dream
phase. The first citizen monitoring program we started was the Bogue Falaya River Watch.
The Bogue Falaya is a beautiful coastal stream that flows into Lake Pontchartrain on the north
shore of the lake. People around there were very concerned about the health of the river.
They had high fecal coliform counts and that was being very well monitored by the
Department of Health. But they were also concerned because there was very rapid
Page 191
-------
development. It's a beautiful river, as you can see, and very uncharacteristic of anything else
around here. You don't get those pretty sandy bottom streams around here that much. So we
worked under an EPA 319 Grant with the Isaak Walton League of America Save Our Streams
Program to develop a biological sampling method there. We had to change the method a little
bit. We're monitoring benthic macro invertebrates. We use a D-frame net instead of the
usual kick seine net. But it works pretty well, however, our method takes a little longer.
Just basically for those of you who aren't familiar with it, the whole theory is why do you test
water quality? You want to know if the river is healthy. Why are you concerned if it's
healthy? You want to know if it's healthy for you and for the critters that live in it. So what
better way to find out if it's healthy for the critters that live in it than to look at the critters.
So biological sampling actually looks at the critters. The people scoop up the samples and then
they pick through the samples and find the little critters in there, like right there, and they're
taught to identify and count them. They get an indicator right there of stream health based on
what they find and/or don't find.
That program was funded under an EPA 319 Grant in Spring '93. It lasted through Spring
'94. It's probably going to be renewed for Spring, '95, so there's been a bit of a gap. But
the citizens are very interested. In a good faith effort, several of my volunteers continued
monitoring their sites just because they were interested and they wanted to see the program
continued, and it may have worked. The DEQ will likely continue the program.
Another program that is more or less completely different is a cooperative effort with the
Power Squadron, Coast Guard Auxiliary, Department of Health and Hospitals, and
Foundation to test waters at traditional swimming sites in Lake Pontchartrain. The
Department of Health and Hospitals trained the Power Squadron people in collection of the
samples to test for fecal coliform. Then the samples are transferred to the lab and tested. The
DHH accepts this data as if it were their own. We started with 15 sites on the south shore of
Lake Pontchartrain in January, '94. That went quite well, so by the summer '94, we added
15 on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain. That went well, so in the winter '95, we added
eight sites on Lake Maurepas, which borders Lake Pontchartrain. The theme of this
conference is success and this program has been very successful. The results have surprised
us quite a bit.
I think 70% of the samples from the south shore of Lake Pontchartrain came back swimmable.
And about 90% of the samples from the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain came back
swimmable, and I honestly didn't expect that. But this is the most extensive testing that has
been done of those swimming sites ever.
The next program we're involved with is our Canal Watch Program. The Power Squadron
Program is funded by the EPA's Johnston Basin Cleanup Fund, which was appropriated by
Page 192
-------
Senator Bennett Johnston, and is administered by the Lake Foundation's Program Office. Our
Canal Watch Program is funded by Kentwood Spring Water. This is a corporate partnership.
Ten schools on the south shore of Lake Pontchartrain are testing drainage canals for water
quality. Mike Bira usually draws this double headed arrow when he does these presentations.
I kind of hoped he would do it. But the far left would be education andthe farright:~of the
arrow would be enforcement. This one would fall much closer to the education end. This
program has gone very well. We've had ten schools. The kids have been very motivated.
They've come back with some excellent data. In one week, all these schools are going to
come together for a Student Water Quality Symposium and they are going to present the data
to their peers and after that they're going to eat lunch and have a press conference and tell the
world what they've found. So that should be very interesting.
Our next monitoring program is connected with our Submerged Aquatic Vegetation
Restoration Project. That also was funded by the Johnston Basin Cleanup Program. This
summer we went out with a bunch of volunteers and replanted eel grass in Lake Pontchartrain.
We're working with scientists from U.N.O. who have been researching the grasses for many
years and they're probably the most vital or the most productive habitat in Lake Pontchartrain.
Our first look at the numbers seem to indicate that about $75,000 of seafood is produced in
each acre of grass beds each year. So they are very important. They've been dying back
because of manmade causes, as well as Hurricane Andrew, and this is a slide of the replanting
effort last summer. Each two weeks, we've been going and doing water quality testing at each
of the enclosures, and there are three sites around Lake Pontchartrain each with four
enclosures. So we're getting a great deal of data from that. We're also measuring the growth
of the transplants. Pulling transects across the enclosures. This has been a fairly involved
process, so we've used a lot of college interns from the University of New Orleans and
Southeastern Louisiana University, and they've been spectacular.
The project that is in dream phase right now is another corporate project. We're talking with
a major company in New Orleans involved with water quality to do extensive testing on the
south shore of Lake Pontchartrain. Probably weekly testing at about 15 sites to try to lift these
"no swimming"signs. See if there are areas now that are cleaner. The lake is getting cleaner
and we hope that through intensive testing we can come up with some areas that can be lifted.
We've been working and I've been talking about this with our Program Director and with the
local company.
Another data collection activity that's often overlooked in citizens monitoring is Beach Sweep.
We do Beach Sweep each year. We have over 1,000 volunteers around Lake Pontchartrain
and everything they pick up, they record. Their data sheets are sent to the Washington, D.C.
Center for Marine Conservation for their database. It's an often overlooked area of citizen
monitoring, but it's a great way to involve someone in a monitoring type activity for only half
a day. It's not a lot of trouble for them.
Page 193
-------
I also wanted to show a very quick video. I notice that a lot of people who are involved in
citizen monitoring activities haven't been that involved with publicizing them. I think that can
be just as important. Through publicity about the program, you can educate the general
public. This is just a quick TV clip on our canal watch program.
News Clip:
Woman Reporter:
... Years to come. The Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation is coordinating it, and as Susan
Roberts reports, the drainage canals in your neighborhood are the target.
Susan Roberts:
For years, many people have speculated it was one of Lake Pontchartrain's biggest problems
- the canals. Now these kids are putting the water to the test.
Eric Alfonso, Kentwood Spring Water Company:
The Canal Watch Program is something that really spoke to us. It gives young people an
opportunity to get involved and to really give back to the community.
Susan Roberts:
Kentwood is putting up $20,000 for the program. Ten high schools from the area will be
supplying the manpower to test drainage canals in Orleans and Jefferson Parish. The kids are
looking for bacteria, which Stanton Moore says is more complicated than it sounds.
Stanton Moore:
They 'II be testing nutrients such as phosphates, nitrates, and dissolved oxygen. They 'II be
doing pH and total coliform.
Susan Roberts:
Danielle Davenport is testing phosphate.
Danielle Davenport:
.. .And I've learned that if it gets more than one part per million, that's really bad.
Susan Roberts:
Unfortunately, the State Department of Health has never had the money to test canals. Most
of its money is earmarked for swimming sites. But the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation
says that's okay. This way may be faster.
Page 194
-------
Car/ton Dufrechou, Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation:
This data will actually be something to supplement the ongoing water quality data in Lake
Pontchartrain right now. With the Kentwood and the high school program, people will find
out some of the sources of pollution, whether it's storm water infiltration or inflow. This is
going to be done a lot quicker than many other programs.
Susan Roberts:
For high school chemistry students, this is quite a pat on the back. A project of such
importance usually doesn't come until after graduation.
Female Student:
I feel it's so important because we're actually doing things that people are going to know
about.
Susan Roberts:
In seven months, everyone will know about Davenport's and the rest of her peers' findings,
which just may warrant immediate action. Susan Roberts, Channel 4, Eyewitness News.
Female Reporter:
In April, the students will hold a Student Congress on water quality, where they 'II —
[End of TV News clip.]
Clifford Kenwood:
I wanted to share that with you, because I've found that people really like water quality
testing. The media really likes it so you can get free publicity about your program. I've got
a stack of articles about that high on our programs. It really captivates the media and I think
that's an important way that you can publicize your program, rather than spend a bunch of
money.
That is it.
Moderator: Mike Bira
Thank you very much, Cliff. We've got maybe ten minutes. Does anybody have any
particular questions they would like to ask these folks? Assuming there's none, I would like
to quickly go through and ask each speaker what have been the two biggest challenges in the
development of their citizens monitoring programs? Start with Gay la.
Page 195
-------
Speaker: Gayla Campbell
Oh, that's sort of a tough one. I wasn't there from the beginning. I would say one of the
challenges is data management. The other continuing challenge is that there is a continual
need for support as we continue to grow in numbers of new volunteers. Although we do
publicize the program for Texas Watch, the last thing we really need to do is recruitment,
except for on some targeted watersheds that we're working with professionals, because
literally we can't handle it. So we're trying to make that balance. There's some groups that
really don't need a lot of support. But there's quite a lot of support from the Partners'
Program basic infrastructure which is integral to the success of Texas Watch.
Speaker: Keith Owen
In the beginning, I would have said it was funding. When talking about a volunteer program
or monitoring program, you always have to consider the scope and the scale. Your scope may
change from time to time. The scope being what it is your doing. And the scale always
changes. That's how much of it that you do. In coordinating your scope and your scale with
your funding, I feel that our problem right now is being everywhere the volunteers need us
to be. It's holding training sessions for folks that need training sessions. It's doing the quality
control assessments for people in a timely manner that have to have it. And I find that my
greatest frustration is not being able to plan about 30 hours in a day.
The second problem that relates to that is having the resources for monitors. When you've
got 200 high school students and only two or three kits to go around, that's a big problem to
them, because they get frustrated because they can't do as much as they would like. To me,
there's no greater danger to a volunteer program than frustrating your volunteers because they
can't do as much as they would like. So I would say outside of funding, which everybody can
always gripe about, that would be my two.
Speaker: Gregg Patterson
Well, I'll gripe about funding first. That's number one. We've been fortunate to get funding
from a variety of different sources, but it's something that I constantly have to stay on top of
to make sure that the money is coming in from somewhere, somehow. So fund raising would
be the first one.
Second one, like Keith was saying, is meeting the needs of the people that are out there who
are now your volunteer monitors. Once you offer them something, you have a responsibility
to meet their needs as to what they want to get out of the program. The last thing we want
to do and it happens over and over again, as you know. A state of federal agency will jump
Page 196
-------
up and say, "Oh, look at this wonderful program we have." And then the follow through is
pitiful. You've got to meet the needs of the people.
Speakers Clifford Kenwood
I would say one of the hardest things that I've had to deal with is firing volunteers. It has to
happen once in a while. Not necessarily fire them. I've only fired one. But to a couple of
them, I've had to say, "Look, I'm sorry. I'm going to have to throw away a few months of
your data." And they've quit. And that's very difficult, I find, letting people down like that.
But it's one of those things that you have to do, and even though I try to say, "Well, hold on,
we can work on this." They say, "Well, you mean I've been spending half a day on my
Saturdays out on this river doing this biological sampling and now you're not going to take
my data." And I'll say, "Well, it's a learning process." But sometimes that doesn't hold
water.
But also funding. Funding hasn't been that difficult for us, but it-will be very soon. Some
of our grants are drying up. But it's an easy thing to sell, I think. It's just you've got to go
out and actively sell it.
Moderator: Mike Bira
We're dealing with public funds here and we have to be accountable for every penny we
spend. We've been very fortunate, I think, to have Myron Knudson, as our Division Director,
who is a big supporter of citizens monitoring. He sees the value in that.
There was a lot of talk yesterday about the watershed approach and how we measure our
success. How do we show people this is a worthwhile effort? When I look at these programs
with anywhere from senior citizens on Grand Lake to Project WET with all these kids, I can't
put a number on that. I can't help think how beneficial it would be for celebrities and
legislators to be in Project WET. They've got a lot of clout, but if they were better informed
in some areas, we'd have much more benefit to the environment. It's very difficult to put a
dollar value on these kinds of activities. What's the cost? Or, what's the savings in avoidance
of problems down the road? That's really hard to put a handle on. When you are working
within a system that produces with reports and documents, it's difficult to compete with those
standard products. Citizens monitoring is more of an investment in the future than an actual
product, I think, and that's really a tricky situation with public money.
Are there any other questions? Any closing comments anyone would like to make?
Page 197
-------
Speaker: Gregg Patterson
I'd just like to say to anyone, if you want to learn more about Arkansas' Water Education
Team Program, Saturday, Jerry McKinnis' ESPN Outdoors is going to run a national piece
on one of the schools they filmed two weeks ago. So you can kind of see what they're out
there doing on site, and you'll learn a little bit more about our program that way.
Moderator: Mike Bira
That's great. You can look at this audience and see how interested the environmental
professionals are in citizens monitoring. I'm always defending that we're not teaching kids
to go out and splash in the water. We're actually providing valid scientific information using
the same methods that were used by the states just a few years ago in their databases. And
in addition to that, we're educating people to make better environmental decisions in the long
run. So it's kind of tough. Citizens monitoring always seems to be looked at as an aside. As
I gain experience in seeing how this is developing, I really think we need to dedicate more
time and effort into it. As I mentioned before, it incorporates everything that the EPA is
trying to do in our new focus on watersheds. Watersheds include people, too.
Well, thank you all for coming.
Page 198
-------
Watershed Team Building & Interstate Watershed Issues (10:15-11:45AM)
Moderator: Cis Myers, Senior Environmental Coordinator, Lower Colorado River
Authority; Austin, TX
One of the constant recurring themes that we have heard in the conference is that one reason
that watershed programs work is because local people become involved in their development
and planning, and as a result, become knowledgeable about common water resource issues.
This makes voluntary compliance possible and acceptable to land owners, because they have
developed a sense of ownership in what's going on around them.
Some of the principle components of this approach are the local partnerships; public
involvement; shared responsibility for implementation; voluntary approaches to problem
solving; nationwide functioning delivery systems, i.e., the government structures; basics for
watershed protection, farm management, and flood protection; trust of the system from those
who will be most significantly affected; and the ability to adapt to rapidly changing
circumstances.
Now what I would like to do is introduce all of our distinguished panelists and just tell you
a little bit about them. They are all equally as intelligent and good looking as John Duffy.
I hope they are as humorous and as much fun to listen to. That is my challenge to you all.
You may not leave until you have made the audience laugh at least twice or I will keep you
all here. I learned that technique from Duffy. I'm never ever going to just look at a group
again and say, "Any questions?" and look at those flat faces. I thought that was a great
technique for getting the audience to participate.
Now, I want to introduce the panel members, and then I'm going to ask each to share—I want
the panel and all of you to feel free to interrupt them with waving your hand if you have a
question about what they're doing~with you a positive experience from their watershed about
team building. Then I'm going to ask each one of them to tell us about a negative experience
that they went through in terms of team building or watershed activities, so that we might
learn from each other's mistakes and maybe avoid some problems for ourselves in the future.
Then I think I would ask them for their most humorous moment in watershed team building.
Then, how did they pay for all of this stuff? And were there some difficult people that they
had to deal with? Were they ever able to win them over? Or did they just finally run over
them? And that's sort of the gist that we'll go to. We're a small group, but it's quality not
quantity, and I hope that we'll just feel free to visit back and forth as we proceed through the
next hour.
Page 199
-------
Patty Murto is to my immediate right. I'm thrilled that she's here, because she's not from
Texas. That gives us a little credibility that not everybody has to be from Texas. I ran into
Patty's organization at Watershed '93 and listened to a presentation about the work they did
up there about team building. I went back and actually went through my list of attendees, ran
her down, and she was most gracious and agreed to come. She is Chair of the Carlton County
Board of Commissioners. She is in her third term, which is a four-year term. She is also on
the Independent I.S.D. #99 School Board. She's been on the St. Louis River Board for quite
some time and she's currently the Vice Chair. She is the Executive Director of the Volunteer
Attorney Program. She is also Executive Director of the Northland Mediation Service, and
Executive Director of Kid's First, a parental education for divorcing parents. She was
Working Woman of the Year in St. Louis in 1990, and National Director of the Year in 1991
of the ABA's National Association of Pro Bono Directors. That's quite a distinguished
background and we're pleased that you're here, Patty.
Richard Volk began his Resource Management career in 1979 while working to assist South
Pacific islanders to develop and manage their near shore fishery resources. During his initial
five years of work in that region, Richard served two years as a U.S. Peace Corp Volunteer
and later was employed by the U.S. based non-profit organization, The Foundation for the
Peoples of the South Pacific. Artisanal Fisheries Development and Coastal Resource
Management became the target of his efforts in both the kingdom of Tonga and in the
Solomon Islands. Following a brief return to the United States for graduate studies in '85 to
'87, Richard served the American Samoa Coastal Management Program from '88 to '92 as
their environmental planner. More recently, as Senior Resource Planner for the Island
Resources Foundation, Richard provided leadership for a team effort to develop special area
management plans for critical coastal areas in the U.S. Virgin Islands. He began his tenure
with the Corpus Christi Bay National Estuary Program in December 1993. Welcome,
Richard, and thank you for coming.
John Hassell is just giving us the straight scoop. He's married with two children. He's down
playing his professional credentials. All of us, who work in watersheds, know John and
respect the work that he does. He does have his degree from the University of Oklahoma in
environmental science. He is currently Director of Water Quality Programs for the Oklahoma
Conservation Commission since 1980.
Robert Morgan is from Arkansas, which is a fashionable state to be from these days. Robert
is the Engineering Supervisor for Nonpoint Source Management for the Arkansas Soil &
Water Conservation Commission. He's got a Bachelor's Degree in Civil Engineering from the
University of Arkansas, and he is a registered professional engineer for the State of Arkansas.
Patty, if you could start off by giving us a good example of team building that you've
experienced in your watershed.
Page 200
-------
Speaker: Patty Murto, Member, Board of Directors, St. Louis River Board; Duluth,
MN
I want to tell you just a little about where the St. Louis River Watershed is and where I'm
from. Where I'm from there was six inches of snow yesterday, which is right up by Lake
Superior. The St. Louis River Watershed covers about 3,600 square miles and dumps into
Lake Superior. It is three rivers: the St. Louis, the Cloquet, and the Whiteface. St. Louis
River is about 175 miles long. It drops about 1,100 feet as it goes through on its way to Lake
Superior. The Cloquet River is about 99 miles long and it drams about 750 square miles and
it drops about 300 feet on its way. And the Whiteface River is smaller than that and it drops
about 430 feet.
All of these rivers are very pristine. The reason why they are is that the property about a
quarter mile to a half mile on each side of the river is owned, presently, by a power company
that used that river watershed for reservoirs and for producing hydroelectric power. Over the
years, they've allowed public use of those rivers. Most of the public never had a clue about
who owned it and why they could use it. They just assumed they could use it and they just
assumed it was going to stay in this condition forever. Well, what happened was they made
a corporate decision to sell 22,000 acres of property along that corridor. The first sale went
to a place called Taylor Development, who proposed to put a condo development along the
river. Well, that just drove the Fond Du Lac Band of Chippewa crazy and all of the people
in that area crazy, and therefore, we started having public meetings.
I have to tell you that this process started in 1990, and we finally came up with this little plan
in '95. This was printed in February. This was not a short process by any stretch of the
imagination. And I saw some pamphlets out there on conflict resolution and I thought, you
know, we didn't deal with that very well.
First of all, we met as a group and decided that there needed to be a joint powers Board of
Directors, and then we started holding public meetings. There's three counties involved, plus
the Fond Du Lac Band, and so the three counties entered into a joint powers agreement.
Carlton County, the county that I'm from, is the second smallest county, so we got two
members. St. Louis County is huge. St. Louis County alone is bigger than most of New
England. I mean, if you add Connecticut and all those little states together, St. Louis County
is bigger than those states. So they got three members. Lake County had the smallest amount
of river. They got one member. And there's 53 affected townships in that watershed. They
got six members and they were elected members from the township association. Then there
was a member from the Fond Du Lac Band. So the joint powers was formed in '91 to try and
develop a plan for the management of the river and the land along the river.
Page 201
-------
The first thing that the Board did was to set up what we've called the Citizens Advisory
Committee (CAC). The CAC's membership-let me find them because it's broad. The
membership hit logging, which in Northern Minnesota is a big deal. We included loggers,
tourism and business people. There was a slot or two for each of these people. We included
environmentalists, county representatives, and people who were property owners along the
river. Their job was to set out a process~and they actually did all the work. The board
approved or didn't approve, for that matter, the work that the Citizens Committee did. And
all of the battles were fought in that Citizens Committee.
They had public meetings and we had public meetings. In this process, there were between
70 and 100 public meetings with people along the river and interested people from the region.
If you understand Northern Minnesota, we have the boundary water's canoe area. That
created some unbelievable dissension between Northern Minnesota folks and the feds. I mean,
they're still fighting to this day.
So the promise was that we would not turn this into a BWCA and right from the beginning
that was made very clear to the population and the public. But the public kept telling us at
meeting after meeting that they did not want what the river looked like now to change. I don't
think they had a clue as to what, but they didn't want it to change what it looks like now
because there's hardly anything on the river. I mean, 15 years ago, the state tried to designate
these rivers wild and scenic and they got killed. But our plan is more restrictive than a wild
and scenic designation and most places would have made it.
So if you give the population a chance to have their input and you talk to them about what it
is they want and what it is they want that river to look like, many times you'll come up with
a designation that looks more wild and scenic. But we did not use those terms anywhere
anytime in this process. We have terms like "remote" and "pristine", and we stayed away
specifically and on purpose of those terms. There were times between the loggers and
environmentalists on this Citizens Committee where they actually came pretty close to blows.
I mean, there was some real blood-letting in this process, and it took a long, long time.
We also involved a whole bunch of what we called technical advisory people and they look
like the people who are walking around here and were speakers at the EPA Watershed
Conference in '93. They're the U.S. Forest Service, the DNR Fish & Wildlife. DNR Trails
and Waterways, every area of the Department of Natural Resources had their own people.
We used county zoning people. We used county highway engineers. As technical assistants,
we used the U.S. Forest Service. We brought in everybody federal, state, and local who had
anything to do with water or land use along water. They would feed the Citizens Committee
the information that they needed to make their decisions.
Page 202
-------
So after a long, long time, the Board finally adopted this plan and some counties made
changes. I'll get to that when we get to the part about where you made your mistakes and I'll
share that part of it with you then. But each county adopted it slightly differently, because one
of the major fights was soil farming along the river corridor. Do you all know what soil
farming is? Contaminated soil farming. It's using petroleum contaminated soil and turning
it into the rest of the soil and it's supposed to clean up after so long. Well, I felt very strongly
that in Minnesota we have millions of unused acres and they could soil farm some place else
besides a quarter mile next to the river. It just didn't make sense to me. So our county added
a caveat that there would be no soil farming within a quarter mile of the river. One of the
other counties took our lead and adopted that. But the largest county, St. Louis County,
already had some soil farming along the river, so that, of course, they weren't willing to
change.
But as far as team building, there probably wasn't anybody state, federal, or local that wasn't
involved in some way in this process. I'm so thankful it's over. Although, it's not really
over, because I'm going to the legislature next week to ask for another $1.2 million because
we're buying up~and it will have state ownership-all of the 22,000 acres along the river for
the state's Department of Natural Resources to manage.
Robert, tell us about Arkansas.
Speaker: Robert Morgan, Engineering Supervisor, Nonpoint Source Management
Section, Arkansas Soil & Water Conservation Commission; Little Rock,
AR
What I want to do is talk about the process that we've gone through in Arkansas and also in
Oklahoma working with John on developing a management plan for the Illinois River in our
state. I've got a lot of slides here. I'm going to click through most of them and just get down
to the important part. Of course, we're funded by the EPA and ourselves.
Of course, we do have some lakes. This is Lake Prairie Grove in the Illinois River Basin way
up in the upstream. One of the things on the Illinois River. It's an interstate watershed. A
little over a million acres and it's just about split in half. Arkansas has the head waters which
are roughly 496,000 acres. This area has about 150,000 people in it now. Also, it has a
growing industry. It's the home of Walmart, Tyson's and J. B. Hunt Trucking. All sorts of
things are going on in the Arkansas side of the basin. It is probably one of the most
prosperous areas in the state right now.
Of course, some of the things we deal with are the poultry production and the cattle production
that always goes with poultry. This would be a dairy. There are several thousand dairy cattle
Page 203
-------
in the basin in Arkansas. Silvaculture is not a big component in this basin, but a small but
important part; especially in the Boston Mountain which is the southern part of the basin in
Arkansas.
Then there's an urban area. About six percent of the land is urban. Some of it is fairly old.
Fayetteville is over 100 years old and growing. In addition to that, there are thousands of
people that live outside of the urban areas in the basin, and most of those are using individual
septic tanks, dividing the land up into smaller and smaller pieces of property, and a lot of it
is going from old family farms into small hobby farmers. A lot of the old poultry farms are
being divided up from a large farm with small numbers of birds to small farms with lots of
birds.
County roads are another problem we deal with. There's over 2,000 miles of roads in the
basin and about half of them are gravel or dirt, and of course, gravel mining. Those of you,
who were in Martin Manor's session yesterday, heard all about gravel mining in Arkansas.
I'm not sure if this is in the Illinois River, but there are areas there that look like that.
And finally, there's lots of construction going on right now, especially with new highways.
There's a big new airport proposed and the cities are building everywhere. So construction
is a growing problem for us.
One thing about the Illinois River you've got to realize is it's probably the only river in North
Arkansas that's not heavily used for recreation. But there is some on the Arkansas side, and
on the Oklahoma side, it's maybe one of their heaviest used recreational rivers. That has
created a little bit of a problem for us, because a lot of the people in North Arkansas that are
interested in protecting some river are more interested in going east from the Illinois River
into the mountains and looking at the King's River, the Crooked Creek, the Buffalo River,
because that's where they spend their time.
The framework of our plan that we ended up with~an interstate agreement-is going to be an
important part, and that's done through the Arkansas/Oklahoma Arkansas River Compact
Commission. And then each state was going to have their plan with an objective. Then under
that, at least on our side, we started up looking at watershed sub-plans, but we ended up
looking at categories of pollution or categories of sources. For each category of impairment,
we came up with the BMP's, the programs, and the priority watersheds for implementation,
The environmental protection agency helped us a lot in setting this up. They sponsored a
number of meetings back in '91 and '92, when we first started working on the plan here, to
set up the frameworks and to try to improve the cooperation between the states. I think we've
come a long way at least on nonpoint problems.
Page 204
-------
Of course, we had several other programs going at the same time, including a Clean Lake
Study that's being done in Oklahoma. One thing that was going to come out of that is they're
looking at potential TMDL's for phosphorous at Lake Tenkiller, which is at the lower end of
the basin. Oklahoma has developed the SIMPLE model, and don't ask me what SIMPLE
stands for, but it's a nutrient loading model. They're running that on watersheds within the
basin. We have a program through the University of Arkansas monitoring sub-watersheds for
looking at nutrient loading and targeting things, and finally, we've been developing GIS.
Local jurisdictions--! thought we had some problems until I listened to the lady from Puget
Sound yesterday. At least we can get everybody in the room at the same time. We've got
14 different cities involved, three counties, and three conservation districts. I think she had
something like 1,200 cities involved. But all of these people have a role and an interest in the
basin. We've been especially successful in working with conservation districts because we
had a good relationship with the agricultural section. As well as with the federal agencies:
Soil & Water Pollution Control, Game & Fish, Highway Department, Health Department,
Heritage Commission, Extension Service, the Forestry Commission, National Resource
Conservation Service, the Consolidated Farm Services Agency, CFSA, EPA, and the Corp
of Engineers.
Now getting down to what I wanted to~how we got through developing this draft plan that
we've just completed last month and got our reviews from most of the federal agencies. We
started out with the data that we had on hand from the PC&E's data collection. We went
through a review of all the literature that's been developed on problems in the Illinois River.
And then we tried to gather what the perceptions were of problems in the Illinois River Basin.
I guess the perception process is where we started trying to build teams. We brought together
representatives from each of the groups that we thought would be impacted by management
of the river. John did the same thing in Oklahoma with his portion of the Illinois River Plan.
But we held four of these focus group meetings, and we asked the groups, "What do you
consider to be problems in the Illinois River Basin?" Of course, the first thing they did was
say, "Well, we don't want to work with the perceptions. We want you to tell us what the
problems are." So we had to explain to them that, "Until we get the perceptions of what is
wrong, we don't know where to look to find the problems. And if we don't deal with the
perceptions, whether they're real problems or not, we haven't dealt with what is needed in a
management plan." So that came around. We went through the quality management process
and got a list of potential problems
Along with our data and our literature search, which went together to form the issues, we then
brought all of our technical agencies together into an advisory panel. We gave the issues that
we'd generated from our focus group meetings and we said, "Here's what people see as being
problems related to the Illinois River, and what we see from the data we collected." We asked
each of these groups, "Have you got any additional data that would document that these
Page 205
-------
perceptions are problems or that they are not problems. If they are problems, could you tell
us what the best management practices would be to address those problems? And if it's in
your area of authority, what programs do you have that you could implement to address those
problems? Or if you don't have a program, what program do you need?" And we gave them
some time to work on that and then come back to us. Most of them were very cooperative and
came back within a few months and at least had a fairly good report for us.
From there, we put our management person on the project and he took all of the data and
reports from the Advisory Panel and put together a draft Management Plan. This is about a
100-page document. It's a really big thing. We sent that back out to all the members of our
Advisory Panel and said, "Here's what we have compiled from what you told us." What I
found here is they're really quite hesitant to put anything down to start with, but if you get
something on paper and take it back to them, then they'll critique it really well.
We passed that out, went over it, but we didn't stop there. We had a person assigned to this
project who visited with each agency individually. He spent a lot of time going through their
part of the plan, what was being proposed, and getting their comments. At the same time, we
went back to these key groups that were in the basin, including groups like the Conservation
Districts, Farm Bureau, Cattleman's Association, county judges, county planning
commissions, city planning commissions, public work directors, and Ozark Society. We
started going over the plan with them page by page, showing them what all was involved,
trying to solicit their support. It was fairly successful. We got all those comments and came
back to a second revision of the plan that we hoped would be more reflective of what
everybody, not only thought needed to be done, but what they thought they could do.
With that revised plan, we had made a commitment at our first meetings of the focus groups
that we would bring the finished product back to them and let them review it again. So we
held another meeting and invited everybody that had been to one of the first four focus group
meetings. We got their input and went back with a second revised management plan. That's
where we sit right now. That plan has been reviewed by the EPA. So what are we doing?
Although we've built a lot of support, we're really just now getting to the team building
portion of this, I think. Our plans are to take the revised plan back now to a couple of public
meetings in each county to get a little input, to take the modeling that's being done and
incorporate that into the plan, and then make a final plan which will go to implementation.
That's about where we are right now. What we've ended up with was, for each category, a
set of projects, and a time line for implementation. In agriculture it's pretty easy and we've
been really successful. They've already started implementing all these projects. In the urban
area, for instance, it's more complicated because we've never had a real good urban program.
So we've got to build the teams there to implement these. The best thing we've got going
Page 206
-------
right now to build teams in urban is if we can provide them with grant money to do the work.
Then they'll be willing to do it.
And as to what happens now. That's the real question. How do we make this thing go from
a document to something that's been implemented? The biggest deal that I can see that we'll
be using this for is to help when we're requesting resources to implement the projects. But
we need to go back and get our Interstate Compact Commission to endorse the plan. We may
want to look at something like an interagency M.O.U. Probably we need to start looking at
hiring a person to live in the basin whose job will be to generate these projects outlined in the
plan.
That's our Lake Lincoln, which started all this. Pretty little lake. Okay, Cis.
Cis Myers:
John, it seems to me that you would be the next logical person, because he referred to
Oklahoma several times. Do you want to talk about Oklahoma a little bit?
Speaker: John Hassell, Director, Water Quality Programs, Oklahoma Conservation
Commission; Oklahoma City, OK
Let me tell you about a project that almost didn't make it. This is a project that is commonly
referred to in Oklahoma as our Blue Thumb Project. If you ever come into an urban area in
Oklahoma, you'll notice that there are a lot of people that walk around with blue thumbs. It's
much like the green thumb, where the master gardeners go out and do great things with plants.
Well, our urban people are doing great things in water. I work for the Soil & Water
Conservation Agency in the state and we really have done more in the past in the rural area
and haven't done a lot in the urban area. So I was approached by one of our conservation
districts to come out and do some urban work.
So this Blue Thumb Project has really turned out to be more than what we ever anticipated it
to be. I was really bluffing a lot talking about how great it was going to be. But it's a
cooperative effort between Oklahoma State University Cooperative Extensive Service, the
Tulsa County Cooperation Extension Service, the Tulsa County Conservation District, the
Oklahoma Conservation Commission, and the Natural Resources Conservation Service. The
really interesting thing about how this project has come together is that everybody has taken
a real active role in making it work.
For instance, we established a volunteer program. By the way, Blue Thumb Project is in
Tulsa, Oklahoma, which is kind of in the northeast part of the state and it's one of the more,
Page 207
-------
I think, progressive towns that we have in Oklahoma. But they got together and took a
proactive approach to it. One of the very first things that our co-managers~who are Sue Gray
of the Cooperative Extension Service and Cheryl Cheatal of the Conservation District—decided
to do was to set up a Citizens Monitoring Program and call them Blue Thumb Volunteers.
So we have this District Conservationist there in Tulsa who's really sharp. But he's kind of
laid back. He never like moves or says anything. But he does stuff where really you don't
understand what he's doing. So we set up this Blue Thumb Program and all of a sudden he
says, "Well, you know, the NRCS has this Earth Team Program. If all these will become
Earth Team volunteers, then they'll be covered in case they get hurt while they're out doing
volunteer work." So all of a sudden, he started turning in all of these volunteer hours for his
Earth Team, which came about because of a 319 Grant that set up the Blue Thumb Volunteers,
and I'll be if they didn't get an award last year for the number of Earth Team hours that they
turned in. I thought that was pretty great. What a cooperative effort we had going there.
But anyway, so we had this Volunteer Citizens Group that's much like the Master Gardener
Program and they really have taken to this task. I remember when they first were trained.
One of them went out and she had her little badge on that said Blue Thumb Volunteer and I
think they even have their picture on it maybe. She saw this truck that was dumping
something out of it. She ran up and jumped on the side of the truck and looked in and said,
"You can't do that! I'm going to report you!" We kind of had to calm them down and say,
"You know, if you get out there and do that, you know, you'll get hurt. So don't be too
corrective on this stuff or too aggressive on it." But the Blue Thumb Volunteers have really
provided information to local citizens in Tulsa about the quality of urban stream systems and
how people can protect those stream systems.
After we got the Blue Thumb Program and the Volunteer Program started, Mike Smolen, with
Cooperative Extension out of Stillwater, Cheryl Cheatal, and Sue Gray approached the City
of Tulsa and said, "You guys aren't doing anything urban-wise as far as erosion and sediment
control. Why don't you let us do a training program for you?" Well, you know, sometimes
people who work in that area, and they're supposed to be doing the inspection and permitting,
they think they know everything. So the City of Tulsa said, "Okay, we'll do this. We'll buy
into a training program." So there was a two-day training program that was set up between
all the interested groups. They gave a pre-survey and a post-survey, and, I'll be, if it didn't
show that they didn't know a whole lot when they came in there, but they knew a whole lot
more when they left. It was such a successful program~and correct me if I'm wrong on this-
but I think we're going into the third training session in Tulsa-fourth training session in Tulsa
for these people. They have become so active in this program and see the benefit of it, that
it's really paid off.
Page 208
-------
We then had the homebuilders come in and the developers, and they said, "Well, listen, why I
don't you sponsor a program for us?" And they gave our local Conservation District and the !
Cooperative Extension, I think, $1,000 to hold that program. To take their developers and I
homebuilders and say r "This is what we really need to do when we're out there so that we can
have a better public image and really not cause the problems that have been caused in the
past." '
The Blue Program in Oklahoma has become a very commonplace name. I think one of the
most touching things that really showed me that it was a success was in November when I
attended a meeting of Conservation Districts—and water quality people in Oklahoma. You
may not have this in Minnesota, but water quality in Oklahoma is real environmental and they
don't really like that a lot. They like to think stewards of the land is where you get good
wheat production and stuff like that. But a Conservation District Director at this meeting that
I was at came up to me and said, "You know, I've just got to tell you this. You're not aware
of this, but before the Blue Thumb Program ever started in Tulsa County, we had no mission
and no direction. We would sit around at our Board Meetings and really wonder why we even
existed." Now this is a guy that's been on a District Board for about 25 years. And I looked
at him and I said, "That really makes me feel good because it shows me that you all really are
interested in doing something." That local Conservation District has taken that program and
they support it, they push it, they talk it, and it's like they live that.
So that, to me, has been the real success in the watershed partnership that has grown between
agencies and locals. In fact, it's gone so far that we've actually moved it into another area—
the Oklahoma City area. And just one last little story about how the system has worked in
Oklahoma City, so that you'll be aware of this, because we never know how other cities are
going to take it or what's going to happen out of it. Mike Smolen was driving down Interstate
35 going to Stillwater from Oklahoma City, and he noticed that the Highway Department was
doing this really terrible job on construction maintenance. So he called me and he told me
about it. He said, "I took all these pictures." So about a week later, I was driving down there
and the same thing was happening. Nothing had changed. So I decided I was going to call
it hi as a complaint. I had an NRCS guy with me. So when I called it in I said, "I've got this
NRCS guy with me and he tells me that this is terrible what they're doing out there," and the
guy next to me is really cringing, because he said, "Oh, no, they're going to put down that
the NRCS turned this in as a complaint." I said, "No, they won't." So anyway, about two
weeks later, we got a call from the State Department of Transportation in Oklahoma and they
said, "We want you to know we went out and looked at that and we didn't realize really how
bad it was—the job that they were doing-and we are requiring them to put in different types
of erosion control measures to protect that area. Also we want you to know that we're looking
at bringing in people from out of state that work in erosion control programs to do training
for our DOT people." All of a sudden, I thought, you know, that really is a success, because
Page 209
-------
the Blue Thumb people in Oklahoma County actually went out and visited with the contractors
and told them what types of practices they needed to put in, and it became successful.
So from a standpoint of Soil & Water Conservation Agency, we're really expanding our role
and our mission, as is the Cooperative Extension Service, the Natural Resource Conservation
Service. I think if you ever have an opportunity in your states or your area to get them
involved in your programs, that you should do it because they are real eager to get involved
and to participate in these programs.
Thank you very much.
Speaker: Richard Volk, Program Director, Corpus Christi Bay National Estuary
Program; Corpus Christi, TX
When Cis called me a couple of months ago and asked if I would join the panel to make a
presentation on watershed management, I said, "Sure," and it was a very quick phone call.
That was really the last communication we had for a few weeks. I guess I should have asked
what would you like the presentation to be about? If I had known it was going to be on
success stories and team building, I perhaps could have let Cis know that the Corpus Christi
Bay National Estuary Program is just beginning a four-year process, and that I think it would
be perhaps a bit presumptuous of me to stand up here and talk about success stories at this
point. I guess the good news is that when Cis asks me about failures, I can equally shun the
question and say that I think it would be presumptuous of me to talk about any failures we may
be having at this point.
I wasn't planning to really talk about the National Estuary Program, per se, and the process
which has elements of similarity to some of the other speakers' presentations with respect to
developing a comprehensive plan, involving stakeholders, and a consensus building approach.
In our case, we have what's called a Management Conference Structure that also uses
technical advisory, citizen advisory, local governments advisory committees, and then, of
course, a policy and management committee. So all of that is very similar.
Our main thrust is to develop a comprehensive plan for the bays and estuaries of the South
Central Texas Coast over a four-year period and then implement that plan over a period of 15
to 20 years, or whatever the plan calls for. But what I think I can do is describe a little bit
about the process we've laid out to help characterize and better understand nonpoint source
issues, and in particular, agricultural issues, since they comprise such a major component of
our watershed. And perhaps talk a little bit about some of the challenges that we already face.
Page 210
-------
Very briefly, our study area, to give you some perspective, comprises almost 12,000 square
miles of land contained within three coastal river basins of the South Central Coast of Texas.
The basins themselves comprise perhaps two to three times that amount of land. So we're
under no illusions that we're actually reaching out to all the stakeholders and will involve them
in this process.
\
Agricultural nonpoint source issues are a major concern for us. We have some 60% of our
land tied up in range land, and of the remaining portion, the majority is tied up in dryland row
crop agriculture. So most agriculture, including range land practices, is under private
ownership. Although that's the case in the majority of cases, perhaps as much as 30% of our
study area is under an absentee landlord relationship. In many cases, that's a large
corporation that is often using the agricultural land use for tax break purposes. So it's an
important piece of the puzzle for us in understanding what motivates farmers and producers.
Agricultural land is taxed at lower rates, and so when operated even at losses but in
conjunction with other enterprises, it can be a considerable tax break for a large corporation.
The bottom line is that ag producers are good business people. They must be to compete in
an increasingly competitive industry. This economic reality has to be recognized by anybody
who hopes to employ nonpoint source management measures within the agricultural sector.
In addition to that reality, profit margins for producers have dropped considerably since the
1940's. To compensate for that, production has increased in a combination of hybrid forms
of crops and livestock, and enhanced fertilizers and pest control measures. All of this makes
for a more efficient operation and increased production—also, more capital—higher capital
outlays for the entire ag sector as a whole.
I think this combination of factors which includes the fluctuating land values and the absentee
landlords, low market prices for commodity crops in order to maintain global competition,
high input cost and a high debt ratio leaves the producers, in many cases, very dependent on
an annual credit operating basis. They borrow money each year for their inputs and against
the collateral of their anticipated yield. And again, this is an important piece of the puzzle,
I think, because most producers manage and plan for short-term economic gains and very little
cash is involved. So certainly, their incentives for conservation and especially those that
might have a longer term return of investment is going to be much, much less than we might
anticipate without understanding these economic factors.
I wanted to give that little bit of economic background because our program, as I mentioned,
has not only resolved to get stakeholders involved in this process, but explicitly resolved to
understand local environmental conditions and agricultural practices. We have worked to hold
focus group meetings in the rural communities with the farmers to understand their concerns
about our program, and their concerns about the environmental regulatory initiative in general.
Page 211
-------
We have, of course, involved them as official voting members of our committees, and
recently, we held an all-conference workshop, where we developed a program vision
statement. It was interesting because one of our operating principles as a program for that
vision statement came out to be the need to incorporate watershed or bioregional planning
concepts in our comprehensive plan. Of course, this concept is representative of an ecological
continuum from an upper watershed to bays and estuaries to the Gulf of Mexico. I thought
that was a no brainer for a group of people who were setting out to develop a plan for a
regional long-term management plan for bays and estuaries.
But apparently, that was the threshold point for many people in our committees and primarily
from the ag sector, saying that such an approach sort of begs the question that we do have
problems and that they are interconnected. So maybe we shouldn't have this holistic or global
bioregional approach to solving problems. But let's identify specific geographically based
problems and then go from there to identify linkages. And so, it was an important
understanding for myself, and I think others, that we have a considerable perceptual challenge
in watershed management. Because those people, who live in the rural areas don't see on a
daily basis the visible effects of runoff. They, of course, feel that their contribution is a minor
component, which it probably is on an absolute scale. But we're talking cumulative impacts.
That concept, again, is just not there when you're living in a very flat wide open space of
South Texas. I guess it would be fair to say that there are perceptions out there that the water
doesn't even run to the sea in some places. In fact, it's true that we have sort of reverse
topography in certain areas. So we have a culture. We have a South Central Texas culture
that we have to factor into this equation.
In concluding, I think that the program is making ground by assuring the producing
community that our nonpoint source characterization efforts will be based on local or regional
data, wherever possible. We will spend money to collect samples, analyze runoff samples
from our study area, again, wherever possible, and to investigate local environmental
conditions and local practices. So overall, this calls for less emphasis on perhaps more
conventional characterization approach of GIS modeling in derivation of total loadings by
watershed based on book value of Event Mean Concentrations (EMC1 s), which was made
explicit as being not acceptable as an approach for our area. So that's not an easy task, with
less emphasis on that and more emphasis on trying to understand actual quality and quantities
of loadings from our agricultural acreage, and a true commitment to demonstrating the actual
in-bay and in-stream biological effects. It takes several years, as you all know. But at the
same time, we are going to investigate the economic cost and benefits of selected BMP's. So
that at the end of the process, we have taken some socio-economic concerns and plugged them
into the equation and, hopefully, we'll be able to come back in another couple of years and
give you a true success story.
Page 212
-------
Cis Myers:
I wanted to share with you a project that we're doing at LCRA—well, actually two that touch
upon partners that I haven't heard mentioned in the other presentations. One is the Lower
Colorado River Authority is a utility in addition to being a River Authority, and we cover 58
counties and serve about a 1.2 million people in providing electricity which gives us miles of
transmission and distribution lines. So one of the things that we're doing is we are actually
stringing by helicopter, as we speak, fiber optics on our transmission poles in part of our
district. So you go, "What does that have to do with watershed?" Well, what it has to do
with watershed is sustainable economic development. What it has to do with watershed is
quality of life for the people that live in the watershed. We are looking at using that fiber
optics in partnership with our cities and our rural communities, who are terrifically impacted
by watershed policies, to provide rural medical health care, integrated EMS communication
systems, and to work with their police departments. So that's just one spin that, you know,
if any of you are there working with a utility, you might want to contact us or look at whether
you have that potential for a partnership in your area for team building.
The other thing I'm working on is a 319 project. It's with the City of Smithville, which is a
little town under 4,000 on the banks of the Colorado River. Just perfect, right? Has a retired
white-haired executive as mayor who you would want to be your grandfather. He's one of
these who comes up and says, "Oh, thank you so much. Thank you so much. Now could you
just do this one more little thing for me?" It happens every time I go down there. This little
town is actually growing. They've got two new banks, a new grocery store, a new regional
hospital. Where every other county is closing them down, this one is building one. They're
doing a regional expansion for an airport. They're about to use up their infrastructure. It's
a perfect place where you can actually go in, do something and see it happening.
Carl Hutchinson met me down there the other day with some other folks from TNRCC and
EPA, and we rode around this town on this little train. It's really clear this is going to be a
fun project. I think it's going to be a flagship. Let me just tell you some of the partners we
have. We have a partnership with Texas A&M University in two ways. One is with their
College of Engineering. You write a 319 Grant one week and you get it the next right? Well,
in this week that kind of turned into a year, the erosion on the Colorado got really, really
severe. We had a very wet winter, which is not Russell's and Carl's fault. A whole lot more
of the bank went into the river. So now to construct the BMP is a whole lot more expensive
than what we had originally told them. But Arthur Talley is a pretty hard project manager at
TNRCC and he doesn't allow me to come back and ask for more money. So I got to figure
out a way to do this project for what they funded us.
So here's what we're going to do. We're going to use Master's Degree engineering students
at Texas A&M and have a design contest, give a cash award and see if these bright young
Page 213
-------
minds can't come up with a good structural design. Then we'll use the structural and
engineering consultant to actually draw the plans and put the seal. We're going to use the
prisoners from the Detention Center to actually do the manual labor. They're going to be
happy about being out working in the sun, and I'm going to be happy because I don't have to
pay them.
So those are two partnerships that I haven't heard anybody talk about. I was just going to tell
you in your communities if you get stuck on a project and you need some free labor, go talk
to your local county sheriff. Particularly, if you have a detention facility and it's a minimum
deal, you can do some stuff and not have to spend money—which for all of us is a big problem
these days.
We've flown the topos on the city and we're going to use an undergraduate senior level
engineering class to digitize them to one foot contours. Tom Curran is going to teach a little
engineering. He's going to go down there and teach some classes on nonpoint source. Then
he's going to take these kids to Smithville. Put them up at a Bed & Breakfast, which is a lot
cheaper than hiring professional engineers, and these kids are going to ground truth the topos.
They're going to go out and they're going to sketch out by streets where the problems are.
They're going to locate the culverts. So that's another partnership we're going to do.
The College of Engineering and the Texas Transportation Institute has written a major
proposal to NSF for about $50 million over the next 12 years. We're a partner in that
proposal. One of the components of that proposal is an engineering research center. Well,
what does that have to do with the City of Smithville? Well, one of the things they are trying
to do is train their engineers to reduce the level of disparity between academia research and
classroom teaching by actually going out and doing a job. So if they get this grant, the first
piece is this drainage study for the City of Smithville. Then if we get the continued funding,
we're going to do a comprehensive infrastructure plan for the city, which will include
water/wastewater, utility lines, and streets. We're applying for a grant from DOE on Energy
Conservation which will allow us to do a study to create a center of non-motor vehicles in the
downtown area. The City of Smithville now is a crossroad. It's a main street and another
main street that kind of cross with a little peripheral. So that would make some sense. We're
also working with the FAA and the Transportation Institute in terms of the expansion of the
regional airport. One of the things that makes this a very sexy project to them is because of
EPA and the 319 we will have already done the drainage surveys, and so that allows us to
lever the 319 money to go after the FAA money to be able to continue to do that.
So these are just a slightly different from the traditional watershed approach, and yet in our
area where we serve 58 counties, I mean, everything affects the watershed. If our folks don't
have jobs, it affects the watershed. I think we all know that environmental stuff usually is the
function of the economy. So if a town dies out, they don't care if they recycle. If they don't
Page 214
-------
have jobs and the kids don't want to come home, they don't care where the tin cans go. So
we really work on this, and I just wanted to share that with you, because you're going to hear
us, I think, at EPA and TNRCC and LCRA talk about the City of Smithville as our flagship
project as we go down the road.
Let's go to the humorous event. Who has a humorous team building event they want to share?
Let's wake these people up. John.
John Hassell:
I do have slides this time. Bob talked about the Illinois River.
Cis knows me in a very special way now. I've got to tell you about a program on the Illinois
River. Back in 1992 we got funded to do a project on the Illinois River and we were going
to kick it off with a tour. I don't know if you all know about the history of Arkansas and
Oklahoma and the Illinois River. But Oklahoma has this idea that the way you resolve
problems is to sue somebody else. So you always turn around and sue Arkansas. I mean,
every time I turn around, they want to sue. It's kind of like Oklahoma hasn't learned yet that
we've got to take responsibility. We want you to talk responsibility. So anyway, Bob calls
me and he goes, "You know, we really need to bury the hatchet." And I said, "Well, if we
have all these officials from Oklahoma come over, they're going to bury it in your back." And
he says, "No, no, I really mean we need to bury the hatchet. We need to have this program
that goes along together." So we had a tour. At the very end of the tour—and I bet you there
were probably 100 to 150 people there~we decided we were going to have a Bury the Hatchet
Program and so, wow! Here lies the hatchet that kept Arkansas and Oklahoma from working
together to protect the Illinois River. (Buried this day, May 5, 1992) Notice. See the little
coffin down there? Isn't that neat? You can't see inside, but Bob Morgan brought this little
hatchet, and it was his hatchet that he had when he was in Boy Scouts, and we put it in there
and we had this ceremony. We bonded. They didn't get the picture of me hugging him, but
I did do that, and we bonded. You notice the little coffin is all nailed up and we're getting
ready to lay that baby in the ground, and then everybody that was there got to come. You
know how at funerals sometimes you go by and throw dirt on the casket? Well, we did that.
We did this in really fine tradition. We sang. I can't remember the song. We have it taped.
The last thing we did is we left. Now, you might say, "Well, what so humorous about this?"
Well, two weeks later, this guy that works for me over in the Illinois River was driving by and
the sign was gone. So he thought somebody stole the sign. So I called over and I talked to
Ed Fight, who's the Scenic River Director, and I said, "Ed, where's the sign." He said,
"Took it down." I said, "What did you take the sign down for?" He said, "Our Commission
members said we don't want to bury the hatchet with Arkansas." I said, "What?" And here
we made this big deal. We had this big article about Oklahoma and Arkansas burying the
Page 215
-------
hatchet in the Tulsa World. So I called the Tulsa World and I said, "They removed the
hatchet and the sign." So the Tulsa World guy called the Scenic River's Commission and
said, "Where's the sign?" He said, "Took it down." So they had to write this big article
about how Oklahoma wasn't going to bury the hatchet with Arkansas.
Patty Murto:
How embarrassing.
John Hassell:
Well, you think it was embarrassing for you, how about me? I'm telling everybody we're
working together and we got this great team building effort. But I do want you to know this,
the sign is behind the Scenic River's Commission. The grass grows greener where the hatchet
is. They haven't picked the hatchet up. We're in the process of trying to get them to come
back—this is three years later—and actually let us erect this sign. That's my humorous one.
Cis Myers:
I hope you get to put that sign back up.
John Hassell:
I do too.
Cis Myers:
Okay. Who's next? Who has a humorous story? Patty? Or do you want to tell your bad
experience?
Patty Murto:
No, this isn't real humorous. This is just one of the things that happened in the process. In
the very beginning of the process, there was a major controversy over a landfill. One city had
a paper mill right on the river and there was a big controversy over that. We hadn't even
begun to write this plan. We hadn't even come up with what parts of it we were going to
cover or how we were going to cover it. All these people showed up and wanted us to take
a stand publicly on this paper mill. I just gave this speech. I said, "We're not ready. We've
just barely gotten formed. We don't have a clue as to where we're going yet. We're not
going to make this issue." Well, this environmentalist, not from my county, went into my
Page 216
-------
county courthouse and asked for my campaign records so they could prove that my campaign
had been funded by the power company.
I spent $500 on my last campaign. This guy just didn't have a clue how we operate in Carlton
County. We don't spend big money where I'd need corporation money for a campaign
anyway. Of course, in a small county, my county editor calls me right up and says, "Do you
know who just came in here looking for your campaign records?" So I called this guy up and
I said, "Why were you in my county looking up my campaign records?" He said, "Well, I
have a constitutional right to do that." I said, "I understand that. I understand you have a
constitutional right. But why didn't you just call me up and ask me? I'd have told you. And
if you didn't believe me, then you could have gone to the county." Well, the papers got a
hold of this. Of course, then there's this big spread in the papers. The point is that in the
beginning the environmentalists thought that I was just this awful person. In the end, they
thought I was their best friend. So I figured I did my job in the process and just kind of kept
the process going the way it was supposed to with nobody ever having a clue really where I
was.
Cis Myers:
I've one on our General Manager. We worked very hard to clean up our river. So they
cooked up this strategy that everybody was going to canoe the Colorado so that we could bring
attention back to the river and show that it was okay to be in a canoe, it was okay to dittle
your toe in the water, that you weren't going to get the plague or anything else, and that we'd
actually done something with this river. Which indeed we have. So we make this big deal
about all these canoe races and we challenge, of course, all the state agencies, and so Russell's
agency, and John's agency, and Parks & Wildlife, and everybody else—it was a requirement
that we all be in canoes. We had this great canoe challenge and canoe race. So we publicize
it and we get all the TV people and everybody lined up, and here comes our General Manager,
who is in his late 30's, good-looking fellow, and he walks down in his crisp Bermuda shorts
and his starched button-down collar to get in his canoe to lead off the canoe race, and slips in
the mud and falls flat on his butt right into the river. And I mean, we're all going, "That's
the boss! He's in the river!" So we had to pull him out. He was drenched. But I have to
give him credit. He got in the canoe soaking wet, and it took off, and it worked very well.
Actually, what we now do is use it as a way to draw attention to the river and we try to time
it with all the different local festivals that go up and down the river. We plug into the deal
and use it to continually work with the Chambers of Commerce to bring attention back to the
fact that we're working on the river and here's what we do. Which in itself is kind of
interesting, because in some cities they really like that.
And again, I think, what I would say in our case, if I were to say a negative thing, is
sometimes we have a tendency to go out and tell a community what their agenda is because
Page 217
-------
we think that's what it ought to be. The more successful approach I think we've found over
time is to go out and ask them what they need and then try to help them out. So that's
something that we're always self-critiquing about. Is this really our agenda or is it really what
they want? So I would say if it's one negative we've experienced it's sometimes I think we've
maybe pushed what we think the agenda ought to be, rather than listen to what they really
want the agenda to be.
Let's now turn to experiences that have not worked so well for you? Can you share some
experiences for some folks that are maybe starting a program or are maybe stuck with a
program or thinking about a program that might be helpful in terms of lessons we have learned
or mistakes we have made that we're willing to talk about? Robert?
Robert Morgan:
Yes. We've had several things that didn't work. But one thing that I noticed and Patty
mentioned it earlier. You've got to be real careful of the terms you" use when you're building
teams. We came back to our second focus group meeting in our Illinois River planning
process. So I knew what was going to happen, because I lived in Benton County for 40 years
and these same 35 people come out to every meeting. Not one of them has been in favor of
anything yet. But we had worked with everybody and we thought we had everybody lined up
agreeing with all the agricultural components, anyway, of our plan. They got up there and
basically accused us of taking their land. Well, what turned out is we had called for voluntary
implementation of agricultural BMP's, including cattle exclusion, and as one of a list of about
50, and they picked up on that and said, "Well, you're taking our stream banks away from
us." So we had a letter from the Benton County Conservation Commission which said they
weren't going to support it. So we had to go back and remove that terminology. It's still in
there. Still part of other BMP's, but it's not mentioned so blatantly and everybody is happy
now. So those terms are real important.
The other thing is some of these people that came to our second meeting-it wasn't actually
announced in the paper or anything^-we didn't turn anybody away. But one of the other
questions that came up was, "Why are you all so secretive about developing this? Why didn't
you invite anybody to participate?" This guy was from some group in Benton County. I said,
"Well, we tried to get everybody involved in these focus group meetings." I went back after
the meeting and went back through our invitation list and this guy had been invited to a
meeting. He just didn't come. So the point was if he didn't come, he wasn't involved. I
don't know how you go about dealing with those people. They're not going to come out until
something affects them. They're not going to come out to be proactive on these things. But
they'll come out and fight you at the end. We're still dealing with that kind.
Page 218
-------
Cis Myers:
It's the old story of people don't show up at a meeting because they're for something. They
show up at a meeting because they're against it. So you have to reach out, I think, and drag
them in.
Patty, have you got something you want to share with us?
Patty Murto:
Well, since we're done. There's probably a lot I can help you with. In Minnesota, and I'm
not so sure how it is in all the rest of the states, but in Minnesota, counties do the land use
zoning. This is not just a plan. This implemented plan is part of the zoning policies in each
county. So if there's a variance or a request, you have to go through zoning. The problem
is in my county, when we set up this Technical Advisory Committee and the Citizens
Committee and the Board, we thought we had all the decision makers. And we thought that
was extremely important. Even the reason why we had the numbers; three from St. Louis
County, because they've got a seven-member Board. If you've got three of them and you've
brought them in from the beginning, you've probably got an adopted plan by the time you get
done. The problem is the three hardly ever came. So if I was to do it over again, I'd try to
schedule it to make sure that those three County Commissioners were there all the time.
The other thing is the other two counties have given up pretty much their authority to make
decisions on zoning issues to their Planning Commissions. I didn't know that in the beginning
and nor did anybody else. Those three commissioners didn't say anything about it. But I
don't think that those three commissioners got a whole lot of understanding about team
building and buying into a process. But if I was to do it over again, I would make sure that
the people who actually made the decisions or were going to make the decisions were involved
in that process. So the Planning Commission members got all through with this process at the
beginning of '94 or the middle. It took us the whole rest of the time to try and bring up to
date two Planning Commissions who had not been involved at all since 1990. So here you had
gone through these years of process and coming up with what you had. The Citizens
Committee gave this plan to us one step at a time. First we got the land use and the forest
management practices. After that, we got the agricultural practices. Then we got the
recreation and the Fish & Wildlife. And finally at the end, we got the Culture and the
Archeological stuff. So each time, through each process, and there was a long time before
the next one was done, if we'd been giving those things all along or had those Planning
Commission members, it wouldn't have taken forever to buy in the Planning Commission.
Then the Planning Commissions made changes. Then the Citizens Committee is like, "Listen
folks, it took us four years to come up with this process. Who do they think they are being
Page 219
-------
able to change it?" And so it got to be pretty ugly towards the end in trying to bring people
up to speed who had not been involved. So I would go back and make sure that the Citizens
Committee group should have had the Planning Commission members—the people who make
those decisions. And it's not always the elected people. Of course, you probably could never
change the makeup of the Board. The Board was very clearly only going to be elected people.
So that by the time you got to the end of the process, you had bought them in and you didn't
have to try and educate them from the beginning. That's our biggest mistake, I think, that we
made.
Cis Myers:
Do you all have a great experience that you want to share with us in terms of humorous or
something that you've done that you're willing to share that was either really positive or that
you'd just as soon avoid?
Question:
I'd like to ask a question of whether anybody has any experience with multiple state and
multiple region projects. In other words, a project that overlaps states and possibly even EPA
regions and how you deal with those.
Cis Myers:
Anybody on the panel want to tackle that? Do you have multiple states?
Patty Murto:
There's a process called an Nimagi River Basin Process that's going on between Minnesota,
Wisconsin and different counties right now. They wanted me to sit on that Board and I said,
no. I've done this five years now in fighting for a river plan. I'm taking a break. But they're
in the process of setting that up very similarly to how we set up the river plan. They're going
to just involve all those players.
Cis Myers:
We've got some experience in terms of the Gulf of Mexico, because Texas isn't the only state
that borders on the Gulf of Mexico and our River Authority, actually goes all the way down
to the Gulf of Mexico. So we're working with a Coastal Zone Management Plan and that
Commission, and there's some stuff going on between the states. We're a pretty small player
in it, but we try to pay attention to what's going on. We generally input through the General
Land Commissioner in Texas, who is the lead on the Coastal Zone Management Plan. Of
Page 220
-------
course, Texas has multi-agencies that are involved, of which Texas Natural Resource
Conservation Commission is one. So it's complex.
And then the other place that as our entity is, again, sort of peripherally involved, but not so
much, is NAFTA, because it runs right down 1-35, which is the Interstate Highway that starts
somewhere way up north and goes all the way down to --
Patty Murto:
Starts in my city.
Cis Myers:
Starts in your city. Well, it goes through my city! So we're neighbors or sisters or
something. But the interesting part of that is, we don't actually border on the Rio Grande.
There's not a River Authority that runs the Rio Grande, and so EPA and TNRCC are basically
trying to work that function out, and that may go to some sort of multi-state commission, but
it's not there yet. But for an agency like ours, it's hard to get our folks, particularly in the
rural counties, to understand that NAFTA has something to do with their lives. I mean, even
if it's only the increased transportation up and down, or the ability for their communities to
maybe grow and put in a cottage industry, or the economic impact that may have, or where
the transportation routes go. So there's again an impact. Some people would say a subtle
impact. We think it's a little more serious. Almost to the point where we're starting to offer
optional Spanish courses at our company at lunch. Just so that we will have a core of people
that will speak Spanish to be able to deal with it. Because we know that we will probably
wind up doing some consulting and some cross-training with some of the water agencies from
Mexico. At least, we're under discussion with EPA on that.
Thank you for coming to the session and staying with us. I hope you have a real enjoyable
rest of the day. Thank you.
Page 221
-------
Page 222
-------
Permitting Activities Supporting the Watershed Approach. Part 2 (1:15-2:45PM)
Moderator: Warren Davis, Director, Watershed Management Division, Texas Natural
Resource Conservation Commission; Austin, Texas
I am the Division Director for Watershed Management Division. Our division handles
industrial and municipal discharge permits for the state of Texas.
We have three speakers this morning-Larry Caldwell, the Director of Engineering, USD A
Natural Resource Conservation Service, Stillwater, Oklahoma; Marnie Winter, the Director
of Environmental & Development Control Department, Jefferson Parish, New Orleans; and
Gordon Austin, Chief of Environmental Affairs, Sewage & Water Board of New Orleans.
Larry Caldwell has been working in the Oklahoma Director position since 1985. He got his
B.S. Degree in Agricultural Engineering from Iowa State University. He was born and raised
in Northwest Iowa. He's a P.E., married, and has two teenage daughters. Please welcome
Mr. Caldwell.
Speaker: Larry Caldwell, P.E., Director, Engineering, USDA Natural Resources
Conservation Service; Stillwater, Oklahoma
Thank you, Warren. For the last couple of days, we've heard many speakers talk about the
need for both a strong educational and technical assistance program to compliment a
regulatory program. This afternoon I'd like to talk about some of our experiences in
Oklahoma concerning the EPA General Permit for Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations
(CAFOs).
Before I get into the presentation, I'd like to acknowledge the co-author of this paper Dr.
Mike Smolen, who is a water quality specialist and Professor of Biosystems and Agricultural
Engineering at Oklahoma State University. Copies of the formal paper are available upon
request.
As was mentioned yesterday, Oklahoma has been blessed with a wealth of natural resources
and for many years Oklahoma has given considerable attention to protection of these
resources. With an increasing amount of public awareness, Oklahoma has continued to stress
the need for protection of Oklahoma's ground water and surface water problem.
In recent years, Oklahoma has also had considerable amount of attention given to the
increasing livestock operations within the state—primarily, swine and poultry operations that
Page 223
-------
have grown in the last four to five years. A new urgency in animal waste management was
reached when EPA Region 6 issued a General Permit for Concentrated Animal Feeding
Operations, called CAFOs. This permit, issued in February 1993, required compliance with
very short deadlines. Initially, many of the producers in the state were unaware of the General
Permit or the requirements under it. It soon became very obvious that there was a critical
need for a strong educational and technical assistance program for the producers within the
state.
This afternoon I'd like to briefly summarize the requirements of the CAFO General Permit;
describe the educational program that was developed through a cooperative effort of a number
of agencies; briefly discuss the technical assistance that has been provided; and then close with
some reflections on a few lessons that have been learned hi this process.
Throughout this conference, we have heard a number of references to the history of the CAFO
Permit. The 1972 Clean Water Act defined CAFOs as one of 27 industries that were to be
permitted. The 1974 Effluent Guidelines provided additional info'rmation and definition of
CAFOs. There was really very little activity, either on the state level or the EPA level for
about the next 20 years. It wasn't until concerns were expressed by some producers,
environmental groups, and the courts that EPA Region 6 issued a Notice of Intent for a
General Permit in July of 1992. Following a public comment period, the General Permit was
issued in February 1993. This Permit covered four states: Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, and
New Mexico. These states did not have a state delegated NPDES program, so EPA could issue
and administer the General Permit without having to go through the state program. Arkansas
was the fifth state in Region 6, but it was not included in the General Permit, since they had
state authorization.
Producers had to comply with four main actions within the General Permit. To help you
understand some of the challenges the producers were faced with and the challenge for the
Education and Technical Assistance Program, I'd like to go through each of these actions
briefly.
The first action was the Notice of Intent. This was simply a one-page form and very easy to
fill out. It needed to be submitted by May 10, 1993, which is 90 days after the issuance of
the General Permit. In fact, that is the only piece of paper that needs to be submitted to EPA,
unless additional information is requested for some particular site. But the first big decision
the producer had to decide was if they were a CAFO. This question, "Am I a CAFO?" was
repeated hundreds of times across the state of Oklahoma in 1993; sometimes repeatedly by the
same producer pounding his fist on the table! In a lot of cases, the definition of a CAFO was
very straightforward, and in other cases, it wasn't quite so straightforward.
Page 224
-------
The definition for CAPO is contained in the Federal Register 40-CFR-122, Appendix B and
it includes information on four main items: number of animals, whether they are fed or
maintained, if they are housed or confined in a non-vegetated area for at least 45 days of any
12-month period. That seems quite straightforward and in many cases it was. But also in
many cases, it was not. In terms of numbers, an operation is definitely a CAFO if there is
more than 1,000 animal units that equates to the following numbers for different species.
Table 1. Number of Animals Equivalent to 1000 Animal Units under the CAFO Permit
("!atf»pnry Animals pp.r 1 000 Animal unite
Slaughter or feeder cattle 1,000
Mature dairy cattle 700
Swine over 55 Ibs 2,500
Sheep or lambs 10,000
Turkeys 55,000
Broilers with continuous
unlimited water systems 100,000
T.ayinp hens linniH manure systems Ifi Oflf)
Mid-sized operations between 300 and 1,000 animal units are a CAFO if they discharge
through a manmade conveyance to waters of the U.S.; and that's where some of the concerns
or questions came in.
Initially, there were a number of questions from some of the small livestock auction barns
across the state. Almost every county had at least one auction barn. There were a number
of concerns whether they were actually CAFOs, and that was determined by an analysis of the
number of animals on the premise; whether they were actually fed, or whether they were just
passed through; and the number of days animals were present in a 12-month period. Stocker
operations also raised considerable questions. These operations varied considerably from year
to year, depending on the number of cattle that were purchased and the weather conditions.
The question involved whether they were confined in a non-vegetated lot for 45 days; the
weather could vary that from day to day or year to year.
The cost of the determination if an operation was a CAFO was considerable since the CAFO
Permit required detention of all runoff from the confined area from the 25-year, 24-hour
storm. Many stocker operations and auction barns elected not to be a CAFO. Some of them
submitted an N.O.I, initially and then later sent in a Notice of Termination. They have since
been operating their facility so that they are not a CAFO, by having less than the number of
required head, or less than 45 days. Many of those are still keeping records to document that
they are not a CAFO.
Poultry is big in the eastern part of the state. There were also concerns on how many of these
poultry operations were actually CAFOs. Basically, it came down to broiler or dry litter
Page 225
-------
operations were not considered CAFOs unless there was a problem with management of
storage of their waste.
Hog confinement systems generally are total confinement operations with no outside drainage
area. But due to the concern for discharge from the 25-year, 24-hour storm, many of those
were determined to be CAFOs. They varied anywhere from a small farmer owned size
operations to some of the larger, more extensive commercially owned operations. There are
several mid-sized type of operations being constructed across the state. Many of these do not
meet the CAFO requirements for the General Permit but many producers are requesting
technical assistance to meet all the CAFO regulations regardless.
Oklahoma also has several dames across the state. Most of them are smaller sized. Many of
those have some type of controls and lagoons for the waste from the milk parlor. Many
needed to be retrofitted and enlarged to control the runoff from the holding areas around the
dairies. Oklahoma has a lot of beef feed lots across the state, primarily in the western part
of the state. Sizes range from 2,000 head or less up to as many as 50,000 head, primarily out
in the Panhandle. Many of these had some type of retention facilities prior to the General
Permit.
You can see that there's a number of different type of operations, size of operations, a number
of different situations for producers to address. Once the decision was made whether they
were a CAFO and an N.O.I, was submitted, there were still three more actions that the
producers needed to take. One was the preparation of a pollution prevention plan. Basically,
this plan documented all the management and the structural controls that were planned to
control the waste from the operation. The following six main sections were required in the
pollution plan: (1) Description of the operation and potential pollution sources, (2) waste
management controls, (3) preventive maintenance, (4) erosion prevention, (5) employee
training, and (6) inspections and record keeping.
The next action was construction of a retention facility. This was the most costly of all the
actions. The facility was required to store the 25-year, 24-hour storm from the confined non-
vegetated area plus a minimum 21-day storage for the manure. Markers had to be in place
so one could tell exactly when the pump-down needed to be started.
On existing facilities, of which there were several lagoons across the state, there was also a
need for a "certification of no hydrologic connection." That was a long way of saying, "Does
the lagoon leak within the prescribed requirement?" This also posed a question on many of
these old lagoons where there were few records on how they were constructed, when they
were constructed, or types of materials they were constructed with. An additional analysis for
certification was needed.
Page 226
-------
The last action grouped a number of items into operations and maintenance. First the most
obvious was the pumping requirement to pump down the facility to always maintain storage
for the 25-year, 24-hour storm. There were record keeping requirements for rainfall, water
levels in the storage facility, and waste application. There were quarterly and annual
inspections for the facilitor to see that everything was functioning according to the design.
There was also a requirement on reporting discharges if they were to occur.
All of this had to be done in a relatively short time for the producers to, first, be aware of the
General Permit, make a decision of whether they were a CAPO, and then comply with the
construction of the retention facilities, as well as preparation of the pollution prevention plan.
For the large CAFOs, those that were more than 1,000 animal units, this deadline was
February 1994, one year after the issuance of the General Permit. For mid-size operations,
those between 300 and 1,000 animal units, the deadline was February 1995.
Cost of compliance varied considerably across the state depending on the size of the operation,
the type of operation, whether there was a drainage area. One of the biggest cost items,
obviously, was the construction of the retention facilities, which could vary anywhere from
as little $5,000 to $15,000 for some of the confinement systems to as much as $20,000 to
$40,000 or more for some of those areas with a contributing drainage area. There was also
cost, in some cases, associated with preparation of the plan, record keeping, and maintenance
activities, besides the sampling of any particular discharge.
You might ask why anybody would want to be a CAFO. One of the most obvious reasons was
to avoid some risk of violation of the Clean Water Act and the potential fines that could occur.
Also, a big plus is that it would allow a discharge and the discharge would be legal if it was
less than the 25-year, 24-hour storm and there were chronic rainfall conditions. You may get
two inches of rainfall a day for three or four days in a row, and as long as it was previously
operated according to the design, that discharge would be legal under this General Permit.
Some sampling requirements would also be involved. Also, it provided a public relations
vehicle for some of the operations and somewhat of a defense from unwanted attack from
neighbors.
The challenge became how to get this information to the producers, so that they were aware
of their responsibilities under this General Permit. It was decided to form a CAFO work
group among a number of cooperating agencies. This work group consisted of representatives
from the following agencies: Natural Resources Conservation Service, Oklahoma State
University, Cooperative Extension Service, Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Oklahoma
Department of Environmental Quality, and Oklahoma Department of Health. The group
consisted of eight to ten people who met quite frequently, generally every two weeks. The
purpose of this was to discuss questions that would come up and keep all of the questions and
stories straight. The primary purpose of this work group was to provide some consistent
Page 227
-------
responses and interpretations among the various agencies assisting the producers. There were
also a number of other supporting organizations working with this group: industry
representatives, equipment dealers, consulting engineers, etc. There were a number of other
people that worked periodically with this work group.
One of the first actions of this work group was to develop an information sheet. Contrary to
what some people may believe, very few producers subscribe to the Federal Register or read
it on a nightly basis. The General Permit consisted of 29 pages in the Federal Register with
rather small print. One of the first actions that was done was to prepare a four-page
information sheet. One of those pages was the Notice of Intent form that the producer could
fill out and submit. The information sheet was written in non-technical language and tried to
detail the main actions of the General Permit. This particular information sheet was shared
with the other three states. Each of the four states issued the information sheet with little
differences concerning their state agency requirements and addresses.
The next action of the work group was preparation of question and answer brochures which
addressed commonly asked questions and the commonly given answers that had come up
through different meetings. There was a series of four of these that were put together and
distributed through the NRCS and extension offices.
There were also a number of training conferences conducted throughout this period. There
were two satellite conferences in April of 1993 for both the agency field staffs, as well as
producers. This was one month before the NOI submission deadline. There was a large
technical conference that was held in Oklahoma City in October, 1993 and five regional
workshops. The satellite conferences were held out of Oklahoma State University. There
were actually two conferences held on the same day; the afternoon session was for agency
personnel. The folks on camera were those from EPA and Oklahoma Department of
Agriculture, Natural Resource Conservation Service and Extension. The ASCS was also there
to talk about cost share programs. This session discussed the major provisions of the General
Permit, and provided a call-in question and answer live session. The evening session was
billed for producers; they could either tune in on their own satellite dishes or come to agency
offices to view the program. This session also had a call-in question and answer type process.
This program was down-linked to approximately 35 sites around the state.
In October, 1993 a technical conference was held in Oklahoma City and approximately 260
people attended representing agency personnel, producers, consulting engineers, etc. Again,
a number of people from EPA, Department of Agriculture, Extension, and Natural Resource
Conservation Service were in attendance. A number of technical presentations were made
during the three-day conference.
Page 228
-------
Following in November, 1993 there were five regional producer meetings held around the
state. Each of those were intended to address specific one-on-one type of situations with
producers and were tailored for the types of operations in different areas of the state. Those
again were sponsored by the Extension Service through the County Agents in cooperation with
the NRCS personnel.
Another activity taken on by the work group was the development of a CAPO record book.
There were a number of record keeping requirements in the General Permit. The notebook
was prepared so producers could easily keep track of the records and also have information
on what to do in case there was a discharge.
How did producers respond? Oklahoma had not had a lot of regulatory activity by the state
for some time, so the first response by the producers was a little anxiety and a question of how
far was EPA going to require them to go. Producers responded in the short period of time.
They had from February 1993, when the General Permit was issued, until May 10, 1993 to
submit N.O.I's. By June, 1993, 385 Notice of Intents had been submitted. Of those, 130
were for operations with greater than 1,000 animal units, 175 were operations between 300
to 1,000 animal units, and 80 were for operations with less than 300 animal units (smaller than
CAFO size).
The implementation deadline, February 10,1994, came quickly. There were 85 requests from
large CAFOs that went to EPA for request for an extension. EPA responded to these
extensions by issuing administrative orders where the producer was put under a notice,
basically, an Administrative Order, an order stating they were in violation of the General
Permit and were given until July 1, 1994 to respond to terms of compliance with the General
Permit. This was reacted to differently by a number of people. Some of the producers felt
like they were being viewed as bad actors, when in fact, they were trying to comply with the
provisions of the General Permit. The listing of all those that requested extensions and their
addresses were released to the area newspapers.
By July 1994, there were 80 Notice of Terminations that were submitted; the state wide total
was down to about 300 N.O.I.'s. At this time, the number has reduced down to about 250
active Notice of Intents. The breakdown is about one-third large operations and two-thirds
smaller operations.
The CAFOs were scattered throughout the state of Oklahoma. Technical assistance requests
came for planning, design, and construction of waste retention facilities; certification of "no
hydrologic connection," preparation of waste management plans, and then the completion of
the pollution prevention plans. Each of these required site specific considerations because of
the wide variation of rainfall across the state, anywhere from 16 inches out in the Panhandle
Page 229
-------
to more than 50 inches down in the Southeast part of the state. Types of operations and the
conditions varied widely across the state.
Types of assistance that was provided by Natural Resource Conservation Service included
topographic surveys, soils investigations, designs and construction assistance. About 140 sites
have been investigated including almost 300 soil samples that have been submitted to the soil
mechanics lab. The soils analysis was for determination of liner requirements. The design
and computations for the waste facilities, preparation of drawings for the facilities, and then
the construction staking and inspection for the retention facilities was a major workload.
Also, information was provided by Extension and Natural Resource Conservation Service on
proper procedures for pump-out of the storage facilities, as well as proper application of waste
on the disposal area. This came at a very busy tune that was difficult to keep up with on-
going workload. For NRCS personnel, it was the last year for compliance plans for the 1990
Farm Bill. On top of that, in an effort to follow with the Administration's request for a
reduction of number of federal employees, a number of NRCS employees responded to a
retirement incentive that was offered in April of 1994. There were 52 employees that retired
in Oklahoma on April 1, 1994, which was 13% of the work force. Many of these employees
were field office employees that had many years of experience providing direct assistance to
the producers. All of this occurred during the activity on general permits.
The following is a summary of the assistance provided as of October 1, 1994.
Table 2. Status of SCS Technical Assistance Provided During FY 1994
Niimher _
Constructed 49
Designed/Awaiting Construction 72
Surveys 83
Soils investigated 111
Total in progress 1 78 *
nenHinp nn ar.tinn taVpn _ 87
""Includes 77 beef, 21 dairy, 80 swine
You can see the various categories. One hundred seventy-eight projects were worked on and
49 lagoons or holding facilities were constructed. Since October 1, 1994, there have been an
additional 50 lagoons or storage facilities that have been constructed. We are presently
working on another 50 that's anticipated to be done by October of this year. By October 1
of 1995, there will have been 150 lagoons and holding ponds constructed under this CAFO
permit.
Page 230
-------
Consulting engineers also provided a significant amount of technical assistance; primarily on
the larger operations and for some of those operations where NRCS could not get there in a
time that suited them. Initially there were few consulting engineers that were available in the
state to work on this due to the minimal activity in the past. There were about 10 to 15 active
consulting engineers that were working within the state. There were about 30 consultants that
attended the Oklahoma City Technical Conference. Soon after that conference, there were a
number of requests from consultants for technical materials on waste management handbook
and standards and specs, and especially Tech Note 716, which dealt with sealing requirements
for lagoons and holding ponds.
In July of 1994, the Oklahoma Legislature provided special funding that allowed the state to
hire three engineers to also assist with providing technical assistance to producers for CAFOs.
This also proved to be invaluable for providing assistance. Reflecting back on the last couple
of years, what has been learned?
1. A cooperative effort by representatives from state and federal agencies and the livestock
industry can be very successful in conducting an intensive educational program. By everyone
working together from the beginning helps with communication and taking care of questions
as they arise. This approach helps keep rumors down and keeps everyone working together.
2. The very short deadlines that were contained in the General Permit caused a lot of anxiety,
both among the producers, as well as agency personnel. It was a lot to expect in a two-year
period to have all the permitting and construction completed. Also, the regulatory agencies
should have addressed how the technical assistance needs were going to be provided prior to
issuing permits with such short deadlines. Anytime regulations are issued, there is a need for
technical assistance to assist producers in getting them implemented. This impacts many other
agencies.
3. A state delegated program would allow better communication and administration of the
program. Last year, there was an agreement signed between EPA Region 6 and the Oklahoma
Department of Agriculture, where the Department of Agriculture agreed to administer and be
the first line of communication on all CAFOs, and the Department of Agriculture personnel
are out inspecting each of the CAFOs to communicate with each of them throughout last year.
That has helped considerably.
4. There has certainly been an increased awareness of proper waste management techniques
and operation of retention facilities.
5. Finally, a stringent regulatory program certainly gets attention, and a strong education and
technical assistance program can help reduce some of the resistance that develops.
Page 231
-------
Questions?
Question:
What was the cost share on the lagoons and holding ponds as far as the service Soil
Conservation Service or whoever, funding some of these facilities? Was there a cost share
between the operators or was it entirely their responsibility?
Answer: Larry Caldwell
Question was, a cost share available, and if so, how much for the construction of the facilities
for the lagoons and holding ponds? I'd say it varied anywhere from absolutely no cost share
to as much as 50 to 60% in some cases. The ASCS A.C.P. Program and long term
agreements provided some cost share assistance in some counties. The Great Plains Program
also included some construction of waste management facilities. Many of the new operations
for expansion of Tyson and Cargill, did not have cost share available there because of the
ASCS cost share requirements.
Question:
I just want to follow that up. Were there examples where agencies bought equipment such as
pumping equipment that was moved around from facility to facility in order to reduce the cost?
Answer: Larry Caldwell
Yes, as a separate operation from this, the Oklahoma Conservation Commission purchased
some pump out equipment that is available to producers to move around to pump out a number
of lagoons. Initially, they have been set in some areas that have historically had dairy lagoons
with very little pump out done in the past. And that pump out equipment is now available on
a fee basis to take care of expenses. That has been a good service to a number of the existing
facilities out there.
Warren Davis:
Thank you, Larry. We're going to now move from Confined Animal Feedlot Operations onto
permit related activities. Our first speaker will be Marnie Winter. She is the Director of
Environmental Development Control Department, New Orleans. Marnie received her BA and
MS degrees in Biological Sciences from the University of New Orleans. She has been
employed with the Jefferson Parish Environmental Department for 14 years. She has been
Director of the department for five years. Please welcome Marnie.
Page 232
-------
Speaker: Mamie Winter, Director, Environmental and Development Control
Department, Jefferson Parish; New Orleans, LA
Thank you. First I'd like to put in perspective where Jefferson Parish is, for those who aren't
familiar with this area. We're right next door to New Orleans. We are a parish of about a
half million people. We have four incorporated cities within the parish.
This is a cross section of Jefferson Parish at Causeway Boulevard, which is in the central
portion of the east bank of the parish. The parish stretches from Lake Pontchartrain at its
northern most point and crosses the Mississippi River and extends southward down to the only
populated barrier island in Louisiana, and that's Grand Isle.
This is a cross section which shows that we're basically hi a bowl. Lake Pontchartrain is over
on your left. You can see the levee for Lake Pontchartrain and then the city is below that
levee, and then on your right is the levee for the Mississippi River. The city is mostly at zero
mean sea level, and at the lowest point is three feet below sea level. So our job is to get the
water out of this bowl and pump it out into Lake Pontchartrain, or on the West Bank into the
Barataria Basin.
Jefferson Parish owns and operates 280 miles of open drainage canals and 39 major pump
stations. Basically, the water goes into culverts like this on the sidewalks and streets, runs
under the ground, and enters canals through pipes like this. This is a medium size canal. This
is a large canal on Veterans Boulevard. This is a pump station bar screen. This is another
bar screen. This is one of our pump stations on Lake Pontchartrain. This is the lake side of
the pump station. This is right at Causeway and the lake.
The total capacity of our drainage system is 21 billion gallons of rainfall a day. This area
receives an annual rainfall of 60 inches. In 1992 and 1993, we were required to submit an
application for a municipal separate storm sewer and NPDES Permit Application to EPA.
When we did that, we had to include the cities of Harahan, Kenner, Westwego, and Gretna,
because these cities operate the sub-surface drainage and the street drainage that goes into the
canals. So our permit application is complicated by the parish operating the canals and the
cities operating the sub-surface drainage that enters the canals.
Another complication is the way the canals interconnect. We have big pipes coming in from
areas and smaller pipes. If we locate a problem hi one of the canals, it's often difficult to try
and trace it to its source, because depending on which pump is on, stormwater can move in
different directions and be discharged at different points. For instance, on Lake Pontchartrain
we have five major pump stations. One of those pump stations can pull water from the canal
on the other side of the parish. Depending on which pump station is on, water can travel to
Page 233
-------
any one of these pump stations. So in order to trace something to its source, you have to back
track and find out which pumps were on, and try and do it that way, which makes it very
difficult.
This is an intersection of two major canals. You can see how it would be difficult to track
something in this system. The major goals of our storm water management program, which
is the essential part of our Part 2 application, is to establish a program for data collection of
water quality and potential sources, and to build upon existing management practices through
enhanced public education and participation, and to encourage continuance of existing
Jefferson Parish programs.
The first thing we wanted to do was to develop a comprehensive water quality management
program. A lot of the data that we have on our canal system, the lake, and the Barataria Basin
has been collected over time and hasn't been collected in a very routine fashion. So we
wanted to develop a comprehensive program, parish-wide, to collect data. To do this, we
separated the parish into sub-basins. Then we took out-fall pipes that dram an area of 50 to
100 acres and we categorized these areas by land use, either commercial, residential, or
industrial. We're focusing on the industrial areas to begin with, because as part of our permit
application process we did wet weather field screening. What that showed us is that there are
more pollutants coming off of industrial areas than residential and commercial which is kind
of what we expected. So we're focusing on these 50 to 100-acre industrial areas and sampling
the out-falls from them. When we detect a pollutant that's at a level that's of concern, we
backtrack through that sub-basin. That's how we're approaching it, rather than trying to
approach it from the major pump stations at the lake front. It's just too difficult to try and
track it back into the system, so we're doing sub-basins.
This slide shows one of our samplers and the flow meter. This is another one set up in a
drainage pipe.
We did a search of data history, data collected by the Lake Foundation and the Corp of
Engineers, various DEQ programs, and our own data. Most of the data showed that the
primary pollutant of concern is fecal coliforms. We know that because of subsidence in our
area we have a problem with bypasses and overflows. So the parish has an existing aggressive
sewer point repair program to detect leaks and correct the leaks. That's where we are putting
the bulk of our money right now as far as addressing storm water problems. We also want
to focus on identifying the source of the fecal coliforms. We know that a lot of it is from
bypasses and overflows, but we've never really tried to characterize what is coming from pets
and animal populations along the lake front and the marshes on the West Bank.
Other objectives of our management program are to support existing programs. This slide lists
some of our existing programs. The Environmental Department for the parish, which is the
Page 234
-------
department that I'm Director of, was doing a lot of things before our permit application and
our management program that happened to coincide with some of the goals that EPA has set
up. The department has been in existence since 1978 and in 1979 the parish passed a
Drainage Disposal Ordinance which limits the level of certain pollutants that anyone can put
into the drainage system.
It also required businesses and industries to have a permit from the parish. In 1984, when the
state formed the Department of Environmental Quality, we changed our ordinance to say that
if an industry has a permit from the state, an LWDPS permit, or an NPDES permit from
EPA, they are no longer required to have a permit from the parish. So now the way that we
work our ordinance is we steer businesses into the state and federal permit programs, and we
work very closely with the state DEQ. We're able to respond to complaints and reports better
than them, sometimes, on a local level. We have a lab and we'll go respond to a complaint,
take samples, and very often, DEQ uses our analytical data in their enforcing of compliance
on industries. We have staff that have testified at various hearings that DEQ has. They've
been able to issue fines and require permits and enforce then: permits with our assistance. So
rather than have a three-permit system, we just stay with the two-permit system.
Since 1982, we've had an ongoing canal sampling program. At that time, the parish realized
that they were going to switch all the sewage treatment plants to discharge to the Mississippi
River. We used to discharge into Lake Pontchartrain and now they all discharge into the
Mississippi River. We wanted to get some background data so we could show the
improvement, and over time the water in the canals has been improving. In 1988 and 1989,
we also put in new sewage treatment plants all over the parish. We consolidated 23 sewage
treatment plants into four sewage treatment plants that were significantly upgraded.
The Environmental Department also reviews any non-residential building permit. For any
business coming into the parish, we have to review their building permit application. If it's
an area of the parish where there is not any sewage, which we still have some pockets and
areas that don't have sewage yet, then we work with the Health Department or DEQ to make
sure that they get an adequate package treatment system in place. If it's a car wash, they're
allowed to go into the storm drainage system as long as they can meet DEQ's permit
limitation. In general, we usually steer them into the sewage system because our limits are
less stringent and that's the better place for car washes. So by reviewing the permit
application, we hopefully can correct problems before they are placed in the ground.
We also have a program where some of our personnel are trained by the Louisiana Department
of Agriculture in how to monitor pesticide and herbicide application. We have a contracted
company that sprays our canals annually and we have staff that randomly monitor their
activities and sometimes find that they are spraying when it's too windy or things like this.
So this helps us cut down on problems of that nature.
Page 235
-------
The Sewage Department has an effluent infiltration abatement program and a point repair
program, and these are designed to detect and repair leaks and breaks in the sewage lines.
Our Drainage Department cleans out catch basins. They clean the banks of canals, pick up j
litter. This is a crew cleaning out a catch basin of leaves and debris. A lot of people don't j
realize that these catch basins end up going to the lake and use them for garbage cans or j
sweeping their yard waste into them. We also have a contract with an Emergency Response j
Company. This company must respond within one hour of our call. They clean-up hazardous
and non-hazardous spills, leaks, etc. I would say about six to eight times a year we use this
contract if we have an unknown material that's found in a canal. It's very often hard to detect
who is responsible for it. So the parish calls this contractor out to get the material out of the
canal before it ends up in the lake. What happens is vacuum trucks can very easily pull into
a residential neighborhood and put their pump hose into one of those street culverts and just
release the contents of their truck. We find that we get some waste from grease traps and
sometimes some paint and solvents mixed in. We just get a report that it's in a canal and we
can use this contract to have it picked up in a timely manner before it gets washed into the
canals.
We also work with the Health Department. They enforce the state sanitary codes and make
sure that septic tanks are up to code. Four major components of our plan are to identify and
control non storm water discharges, to reduce pollutant runoff from construction sites, to
reduce pollutant runoff from industrial sites, and reduce pollutant runoff from residential and
commercial areas. We have developed a packet of information that we give out to all new
construction. When they go to our Inspection and Code Enforcement Department for a
building permit, they give them this packet, and they can call us for questions. It lists BMPs
that they can use. It tells about the Notice of Intent form. And it has a checklist that they can
use to make sure that they are following their storm water pollution prevention plan. We
periodically have people who go through the parish and inspect these construction sites to
make sure that they have sediment fences up where they should.
We also had a grant last year from the State Department of Natural Resources to develop a
check list for their coastal nonpoint pollution program. We developed a checklist to use for
construction sites that are less than five acres and another checklist for automotive shops,
which are a problem in this area. There's a lot of them and they're really not highly
regulated. We have a checklist that we use to inspect them and then make recommendations
based on their answers as far as storage and housekeeping activities.
Some of the goals of our program are to develop and distribute information to contractors,
which is what I was just talking about, to encourage public participation in the storm water
program by reporting violations. We have a 24 hour number people can call and report storm
water violations.
Page 236
-------
This is a construction site and we're requiring these sediment fences around the construction
site. One of the problems we find is that after the sediment fence is put in place, if we get a
heavy rainfall, the sediment fence just falls in. Unless you have somebody go back and check
on these sites, it's left like that, and they don't function properly. This is a filter cloth put
over one of the catch basins.
We also work with DEQ on a storm drain stenciling program, and we provide the kits that
have spray paint and the orange vests, and we have scout groups and civic associations that
come borrow the kits. Some of them supply the paint. If they don't have the money for the
paint, we cover the cost of the paint. They spray in their neighborhoods with the message
"Dump No Waste Drains to the Lake."
We also have some other education projects with the Lake Foundation. We are funding some
tours by high schools of our drainage pump stations. As part of the tour, the students stencil
storm drains around their school. Then they go tour the pump station, learn how it works,
learn the capacity, look at the bar screens and see the litter that is caught on the bar screens.
They learn what people are actually throwing into the canals, and then they walk along the
shore of the lake collecting and categorizing trash. We feel like this is an important program
because it gets people at an early age. A lot of the people litter around here. It's already too
late for some of the older people, but if we can get to the younger generation, I think we can
be effective.
We also have ordinances in place like a Pooper Scooper Ordinance and an ordinance that all
garbage cans and dumpsters have to be leak proof. We have an ordinance that says you
cannot dump any litter into ditches or canals. But the problem is most of these ordinances are
not enforced. We're working with our parish attorney's office to develop some low cost fines
for these violations so that we can make them enforceable.
We had UNO's Urban & Waste Management Department do a survey of our residential waste
stream. They actually went out and surveyed what people are throwing away in their garbage.
They found that household hazardous waste in our area was predominantly coming from
workshops and automotive activities. The bulk of it was mostly used oil and waste paint. So
we have in Jefferson Parish a recycling facility that collects that used oil. Texaco has recently
put some stations around Jefferson and Orleans where people can bring their used oil. We feel
like there's adequate places now for people to bring their used oil. The next problem we're
tackling is waste paint. What UNO's survey found was that 64% of our household hazardous
waste was latex paint. We're having our first waste paint collection day this coming Saturday
for Earth Day. We'll be collecting unused leftover oil paints and latex paints, and Safety
Clean will be taking the oil paint and Mid City Green will be taking the latex paint and
recycling it, mixing it.
Page 237
-------
Basically, our goal/objective is to focus on source controls. Because of our situation with the I
large amount of rainfall and the necessity to pump it out, any end of pipe treatment would be
very, very costly. So at this point, we're trying to approach the problem at its source and in
that way we go after industries and industrial discharges. We work with the state to get those
industries into compliance and we're working on educating residential users. They also can
cause problems. We feel if we approach it that way, we can hopefully reduce it before we
have to treat it at end of pipe.
That's all I've got. I guess I'll take questions after Gordon. I
I
Warren Davis:
Thank you, Mamie. The second half of the team is Gordon Austin. Mr. Austin is currently
the Chief of Environmental Affairs for the New Orleans Sewage and Water Board. This
office is responsible for coordinating all environmental matters for the board, both as
enforcement of local regulation for sewage, drainage, and water regulation, and as a public
utility subject to state and federal environmental regulations. Please welcome Mr. Gordon
Austin.
Speaker: Gordon Austin, Chief, Environmental Affairs, Sewage and Water Board
of New Orleans, LA
Thank you. Much of what New Orleans does in our circumstances are very much the same.
In fact, in the process of filing these storm water applications with EPA, we actually
cooperated in much of that effort due to the similarity of conditions and circumstances that we
face. New Orleans was initially founded between the Mississippi River and Lake
Pontchartrain in a marshy area on the only habitable land. When Bienville founded the city
in 1718, was along the riverfront. Conditions stay pretty much the same from time to time
when we get heavy rains. Had this conference been held a week ago, last Tuesday, we had
a four-inch rainfall event in a three-hour period that did cause some street flooding in the
lower parts of the city. The Sewer & Water Board maintains a drainage pumping station that
is capable of handling one inch of rainfall in the first hour and a half inch thereafter.
Unfortunately, nature doesn't always cooperate and we do have these significant rainfall events
usually about twice a year. We do have the inconvenience of some street flooding during
those events.
Much like Jefferson Parish~you can't really see this very well, but this is a layout of New
Orleans between the eastern part of the city, which borders on the Rigolets, which is the lake
outlet, Jefferson Parish to the west, which is bordered by the 17th Street Canal, which is a
large drainage canal, Lake Pontchartrain to the north and the river to the south, which actually
Page 238
-------
dissects the city into the East Bank and West Bank. The point of this slide was to show that
the city really is an island, if you will, completely surrounded by water.
The point of this slide is on the left of the slide you can see the relative elevation of Lake
Pontchartrain and to the right we have the river elevation. What lies between is a cross
section of the city of New Orleans. You have various baselines on this particular slide that
show different sites and locations, streets throughout the city, and it's quite a dramatic
circumstance. We average about five feet below sea level for the entire city. So whatever
water, rainfall in particular, and potable water that may be discharged to the storm drainage
system due to cooling water use, industrial water, has to be pumped out of the city.
This is a view of the lake front. To the right-hand side, this is a drainage out-fall canal at the
lake front. To the right-hand side—this and I believe the next slide—show part of the levee
system at the lake front, which we saw in the previous slide as part of the storm protection
system around the city. The Orleans Levee Board is the state agency responsible for
maintenance of this ring levee system that because of topography and rainfall is virtually a
necessity of life hi the city. Otherwise, it couldn't be inhabited. The City of New Orleans—
and again everything I'm going to say pretty much applies to Jefferson Parish, too—
experiences on an average about 60 inches of rainfall a year, which take place within about
100 days a year where we have significant rainfall. I think that will be today and tomorrow,
I'm sure.
If we're lucky enough tomorrow, in conjunction with this conference, we're having a tour,
part of which will include a visit to Drainage Pumping Station 6, which is the largest pumping
station in the world. It's currently a 10,000 cubic foot per second capacity station, which I'm
told—if you want to try to visualize this~can empty a ten square mile lake that's about 13 feet
deep in a 24-hour period. It's a pretty significant structure. Those groups that we've been
able to have on tours out there have been impressed from the engineering standpoint, as well
as just the massive nature of the drainage task that the Sewer & Water Board maintains.
The rain that hits the street is conveyed through both open and closed drainage canals. This
is an open canal. This is what it looks like after about a half-inch of rain. With good rainfall
events, the level in that canal will rise to the bulkhead level along that canal. Again, this is
a covered canal under construction. This is a cross section of the covered canal which shows
one of the larger cross sections. They run from about eight feet across to about 28 feet on
some of the larger ones. As you go through the city, in the older part of the city, the more
developed part of the city, you won't see drainage because it's for the most part covered
canals of this sort. But the Sewage & Water Board aside from construction is required to
maintain these storm water conveyances also. This is a shot of a station on the west bank of
the city. But it's intended to show how these larger canals, as in Jefferson Parish, empty to
open canals and then go to the pump stations for discharge to Lake Pontchartrain. The total
Page 239
-------
system capacity is 29 billion gallons a day and is equivalent to the flow roughly of the Ohio
River. So last Tuesday, for instance, or going back a couple of years, I think the most
significant rainfall event we've had has been close to 15 inches of rain in a 24-hour period.
A rainfall event occurs, we're running this system virtually at capacity. It's quite an operation
unto itself when we have to do that.
This is a shot of the inside of Station 6 just of the pump motors. These are the pumps
themselves right after construction in about 1928. This is a low RPM, high efficiency pump.
It's about an 85% efficiency low lift pump that was designed and developed by A.B. Woods
back in that period between about 1915 and 1930. He did such a fine job of the engineering
aspect of this that these pumps are still in operation and still capable of handling the kind of
rain load that I mentioned previously. These are being augmented with more modern design
pumps, but they don't come anywhere near matching the capacity of this particular design.
These pumps have been utilized hi the Netherlands and portions of Japan to reclaim, like in
New Orleans, low lying areas for uses as populated cities.
This is, coincidentally a structural storm water control which exists at all of our pumping
stations. This is a shot of the screen array at Drainage Pumping Station #6. It shows what
is called a climber screen. I don't know how much of the detail shows up to the audience, but
the screen itself is made up of a bar screen with about a six-inch space in between, which
obviously is not going to be very effective in catching styrofoam cups or dissolved or floatable
material like waste oil. Initially that was not the prime concern. What this is intended to
serve as is for removal of large timbers, Volkswagens, mattresses, and material on that order
which could damage the pump and jeopardize storm drainage capability in the city. That is
an obvious as far as life and property which are very real concerns.
This is probably about two years ago. This is the lowest lying area of the city. This was, I
believe, an 8-inch rainfall event. This flooding condition existed probably for the better part
of a day, not much longer, but is very reminiscent of some of the old lithographs from the
mid-1800's, where at that tune this was really a fact of life hi all of the city, not just the most
flood prone areas. If you look at this, this is really curb to curb. You can see a street curb
in the right-hand side of it. Again, this is actually the bottom of the bowl, if you want to
envision the city as such. Of course, we pray it doesn't rain most of the time, but sometimes
it does.
The reason I wanted to show most of these slides was to emphasize the fact that the storm
drainage system in the city of New Orleans, as it's been developed, was developed starting
with the drainage commission in 1896. It merged with the Sewage and Water Board in 1903
with the prime intent to prevent what we see in some of these previous slides—street flooding
and the obvious detrimental effect on property and commerce, etc. Of course, the system as
we go on is becoming more efficient. We have a target of being able to handle one inch of
Page 240
-------
rain per hour through a rainfall event, and that is a very significant large drainage system.
Obviously, when we get these 8, 10, 15-inch rainfall events that exceed our 100-year events,
which we seem to have about every couple or three years, we've designed a system that is
very capable and able to handle those kinds of typical rainfall events.
When EPA issued the storm water permit requirements starting in 1990, the challenge that the
Sewerage & Water Board faced and still is, is how do we accommodate the needs of the city
to prevent flooding and also address the obvious concerns and issues that relate to storm water
and water quality control? In viewing our system, and the obvious priorities that are at hand,
the only manageable way to do this was to be very aggressive in addressing the source control
aspect of water pollution control. Much of what Mamie had described in her presentation
earlier is a part of what Sewerage & Water Board is currently doing and has done prior to the
regulation to manage the source end of the pollution component. The primary tool that we
have available is a storm water ordinance. It existed since 1972 as a control ordinance that
regulated (and is still in effect) the quality and the type of material that is acceptable for
discharge into a storm drainage system. Specifically, it prohibits high B.O.D., high T.S.S.
discharges, waste oil, and a variety of other parameters that was set into the ordinance in a
concentration specific fashion. What we see with the storm water regs is an obvious
requirement that this particular ordinance, as effective as it is, be updated to be more specific
about source pollution through the two-part application process. This involves the very
exacting and very intricate process of identifying the types of pollution that were in the system
and the origins, whether it be residential, commercial, or industrial activity in areas that were
involved.
We also are very much aware that in order to be successful with a Storm Water Pollution
Control Program you have to provide very heavy emphasis on the public education component
for two reasons. One, the substances that enter the storm drain system that create the
receiving stream problems are functions of our individual lifestyles. We hope to induce some
behavior modification through education processes with school kids like the storm dram
stenciling. The Sewerage & Water Board has been successful in a number of other areas such
as art projects and various outreach projects through the school, where we make the kids
aware. And what we're tracking on really is if you followed the recycling of aluminum cans
and other materials, the children really are not only the future, as far as success of those
programs, but in most cases and in my personal experience, the enforcement. They
understand that what you put into a catch basin results in a discharge to Lake Pontchartrain.
They can grow up with this very obvious idea as well as influence parents, friends, and peers
to correct their behavior. So that is one component of the public education issue here.
The other major influence that we found on storm water quality has been the pathogen
component—the raw sewage component. This is a phenomenon not unusual to New Orleans.
If you follow EPA activity, just about every, if not every major city in the United States has
Page 241
-------
been subject to some involvement with EPA to address I and I inflow infiltration issues.
These ultimately result in very significant expense as it relates to sewage system repair and
remediation. As far as public education is concerned, it ends up on all of our shoulders as far !
as—and I'm talking about individual rate payers~to bear the cost of the required infrastructure j
remediation. It's important to be very definite in making that point to all of our customers, :
our rate payers, that in identifying the problem and identifying the remedy to that problem, I
that the cost component is definitely significant. It's an obligation of all of us to make a very I
definite effort to allow our customers to buy into the necessary expenditures to correct these
significant nationwide problems.
We're coming pretty close to the time here. I guess what I'll do is open up the floor to
questions, if there are any, and I'll let the moderator go ahead and referee that. Thank you.
Warren Davis:
Thank you, Gordon. The floor is open for questions. Don't forget we still have Larry up
here in case you have questions on CAFOs.
Warren Davis:
What percentage of the pumping stations are the original ones that are 50 to 60 years old?
Answer: Gordon Austin
The system includes 21 major pump stations. We have two on the West Bank, which is much
smaller land area and 19 on the East Bank. Of those, probably 75% are the older type. The
station pumpage has been augmented with some newer type pumps. But again, they don't
come anywhere near the capacity or efficiency of the older pumps. The one main pump
station on the West Bank is a new facility. Most of the stations in the New Orleans east area,
I think, we have four large pump stations out there that are the newer design, if you will. But
the rest are the older type.
Question:
Does the city itself manufacture replacement?
Answer: Gordon Austin
They are one of a kind parts and luckily all of the molds and fabrication parts are still
available. In fact, the foundry still exists that manufactured the older pumps. It's really
Page 242
-------
amazing. The need doesn't arise that often to retrofit or rebuild the pumps, but when that
does occur, we build them the old way and they last.
Page 243
-------
Page 244
-------
Nonpoint Source Watershed Activities - Part 1 (1:15-2:45PM)
Moderator: Russell Bowen, Chief, State Programs Section, U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency, Region 6; Dallas, Texas
Today we're going to talk about watershed protection and the nonpoint source program.
As mentioned several times before by previous speakers, basin planning and watershed
planning is really nothing new. In fact, Tom and I were talking just before the panel began
that since 1972, Section 303(e) of the Clean Water Act has required basin plans. When I came
to work with EPA in 1976 we were finishing up some of those original basin plans. We have
gotten sidetracked off those basin plans. Other things took precedence; a construction grants
program and a municipal enforcement program. Then in 1987, when the Act was amended
and Section 319 of the Clean Water Act was added (that dealt with nonpoint source pollution)
one of the priorities of the Amendments was we would fund nonpoint source plans that address
problems on a watershed basis. Watershed was a priority funding area that we should look
at. I know in our region and I'm sure in Region 5 we've made that a priority for funding.
I'm really pleased to be able to moderate the panel today. We have three distinguished
speakers. Each of the speakers are going to talk about a watershed plan, and what you're
going to notice is there's going to be a tremendous difference in scale. So we're going to start
with the largest project first. Our guest speaker from Region 5, is Tom Davenport. Tom is
the Acting Chief of the Wetlands & Watershed Branch. They are responsible for the Region
5 Nonpoint Source Program, the Clean Lakes Program, the Wetlands Program (with planning
and regulatory aspects of the Wetlands Program) and also the watershed programs in the
region. Tom has a B.S. degree from the University of Wisconsin in Stephen's Point in
Forestry Management and a B.S. degree in Natural Resource Management. He also has a MS
from University of Washington in Hydrology and Statistics and a Masters in Public
Administration from Sangemon University. So Tom will start off first.
Speaker: Tom Davenport, Acting Director, Office of Watersheds and Nonpoint
Source Programs, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 5;
Chicago, IL
Thank you, Russell.
Russell asked me to talk to you today because we've had some experience in watershed
management. He was looking for an example where we started large and we ended up going
small, and we could report some accomplishments. The example I'm going to talk about is
Page 245
-------
a result of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement between the U.S. and Canada. This
agreement basically sets broad general goals for the parties. The parties in this case are the
states and the provinces, and then it becomes EPA's goal as the federal link in this to oversee
the state activities and to assist them in developing efforts they are implementing.
The example I'm going to present today is Annex 2, and it covers phosphorous reduction.
Earlier today we heard about the Cuyahoga River being on fire. We identified Lake Erie
being devoid of oxygen due to eutrophication problems and the perch dying and, basically this
was the result of the creation of a lot of dead zones. I think the Gulf Program is undergoing
this same experience at this time.
One of the things that the Agreement called for was a phosphorus loading reduction. The
Agreement did not set the actual targets when it first started. What we did was we formed a
work group, and we did what we call a gross scale TMDL. We figured out what the loading
was now, related it to the average concentration hi the lakes. Then we figured out what the
loading from point sources would be if they were all in compliance. That became a very key
issue and I'll get into that later. But we looked at what is the potential for reduction and that's
how we calculated what the target loads would be based upon attaining a lower average
concentration. For Saginaw Bay this would be 440 metric tons based upon the existing load,
then the U.S. would have to reduce their loading into the Saginaw Bay by 225 tons. The
states would take these values and create a management plan to decide how they're going to
get their required load reduction.
I want to talk about Lake Erie because Lake Erie is a lake that had multiple parties involved.
Here is Saginaw Bay and the only reason I pointed it out, is on previous charts you saw it has
only U.S. goals and Saginaw Bay is completely surrounded by Michigan. When you're
looking at Lake Erie, you have drainage from Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio going in there.
We divided the load reduction down to study then we went to the hydrologic unit codes,
because we basically thought we were going to have to focus on a watershed basin and
recalculated the load reduction on a basin basis.
What we did then was look at the potential within each of those states on how to get load
reduction. Now Pennsylvania was very small, 15 tons, and you have 26 square miles. It was
primarily in agriculture. You can see by the most part Ohio had the largest share to reduce,
490 metric tons; Indiana had 90; Michigan had 195; and New York had 20 tons. The nice
thing about it is since we based these goals on what the land use characteristics were, mainly
using agriculture as the predominant factor in determining what load reduction you could get
back. The nice thing was before we started, Indiana had already met their goal of 90 tons just
through conservation tillage. So then the focus became more on how are we going to assist
Ohio and Michigan. Michigan developed a general watershed plan, but the one that went
down the scale, that Russell is talking about that he wanted us to get onto, was Ohio.
Page 246
-------
Basically, what they did in Ohio was they went by river basin first. The major river basin that
we'll focus on today is the Maumee. The biggest one is right here. Then there is the
Cuyahoga in black. When you look at what they did and why the Maumee; it drains 4,850
square miles as you can see and it covers portions of 17 counties and 80% of the land surface
area is hi cropland. When you look at the erosion rates in this area, you're looking at erosion
rates of generally less than five tons per acre. You're looking at a soil tolerance loss of three
to five tons per acre. So basically, people don't feel they have an erosion problem. That was
going to be a very hard point to sell people on. The soils in this area have a high clay content.
As we all know, these clay particles are easily suspended in water and they have chemical and
physical properties that strongly absorb phosphorous, thus, creating our problem.
We went through and did some general modeling. We saw that this watershed contributed
46% of the phosphorous going into Lake Erie, 30% of the sediment, but only had 3% of the
flow, the water flowing in. So we picked this one as the priority basin to work in.
When Ohio broke it down by basin, they gave different loading reduction goals by basin and
they really did it to the land use that was in cropland. When you look at what they then turned
around and did within the basin, they went through and they went county by county, and they
proportioned different load reductions for each county based upon land use. And the reason
why that became important is that the federal government and the state government implement
programs on a county basis. When you're developing any type of implementation strategy in
a watershed, you have to look at the jurisdiction and the authorities you're going to use to
work on this. It became very important.
One of the things we did in this case is that we knew we couldn't deal with the whole
watershed in a timely manner. It's just too big. So Ohio devised a strategy where they did
what we called phased approach consisting of three phases: Phase I, Phase II, and Phase III.
Phase I is counties and areas immediately adjacent to the Maumee main stem. We figured if
they're right next to the main stem, if pollutants get in there, it's going to be a straight shot
to Lake Erie. Phase II had secondary drainage of the Maumee and those would be like creeks
that would show up on the USGS map. Phase III is the areas that are drained into the
secondary thing. Some of those will show up as intermittent tributaries into the Maumee and
those kind of areas. When you look at what we did, we put together a package that would
cost about 10 or 12 million dollars. Then we looked at the reality of what we could fund. We
put together a package of $641,000 federal dollars and then based upon the efforts that was
developed the local match was $5.6 million. When you look at how money was targeted for
the Phase I areas immediately adjacent to the main stem, we allocated 68% of our federal
dollars into those counties and 32% went into Phase II. Since there was insufficient money
to fund all of the stuff that needed to be done in Phase I and Phase II, no funds were put into
Phase III, because we thought that would be like spreading our effort too far.
Page 247
-------
When you look at where we saw we'd get the biggest bang from the buck, and Ohio used
some economic modeling to look at this, they saw three practices that would come up with the
biggest bang for the buck. One was an equipment cost component. That was where we would
buy down the cost of conservation tillage equipment in the watershed. Second was the tax
rebate component. That dealt with if you would go out and manage your land in a certain
manner, installation of cultural practices that provided more winter cover, or you instituted
a permanent land use change. Then the third one was an animal waste component. The
animal waste component by far was the most costly on a per unit basis. But Ohio dealt with
three animal waste sites and that was 2,900 tons of manure that we covered.
Looking at sign ups, we basically had less than one participant per area, two to ten, and then
the big one was 12 to 40. When you look at what was done, you need to just look at the
Resource Management Systems (RMS's). Ohio instituted a new progress reporting
requirement as part of this. Ohio required them to do a minimum amount of RMS's. You
know, if they did an equipment buy down, since we weren't actually cost sharing on the plan,
as part of the agreement, they would have to agree to manage a certain amount of their land
under an agreed to RMS that was developed by the Ohio SCS, now the NRCS, the Ohio
Extension, Ohio EPA, and Ohio DNR, and the district would get together and prescribe
practices. The thing that I thought was pretty good was the first year Ohio had people all
commit to doing more than they had to.
We're looking at the 542 RMS's-implemented that covered 131,691 acres. What your really
looking at is minimum. Because of this, our coverage was actually three to four times greater
than what was reported. You see a nice distribution. These red areas become very important.
In this red area, they had a project going on parallel to this called OCAP, which is the Ohio
Conservation Action Project. Basically, it was built off of the county level plans, where the
districts got together, agribusiness, industry, educational institutions, and local businesses, to
put together an action team to really help them meet their phosphorous load reduction. The
one hi red became its own formal unit and it has stated as such, called OCAP, but it's very
much industry and agribusiness led. They had a tremendously high sign up base. It was
reported to me they also were one of the few areas that had banking institutions involved in
the development of the county based plans.
So what does this really mean? You look at what the goal was. It was 301,000 pounds to be
reduced. It was a five-year period for us because the implementation was staggered over three
years, and the final implementation won't be done till 1997. We got 545,000 pounds,
considerably more than our goal. Then you look at the sediment was 22,000 tons. We almost
doubled that hi terms of what we reduced. Basically, there was a lot of commitment, a lot buy
in, and minimum federal dollars. We had basically approved the project to last four years.
The federal dollars were gone in 18 months. That's how high the sign-up rate was.
Page 248
-------
So what did we learn from all of this? That we needed all stakeholders involved. I know
that's a very common thing to say these days, but this is where Ohio had them all involved
and it worked. But you have to take the time to educate the people that are on the stakeholder
committee. One of the biggest problems I see is that some of the counties that didn't have an
existing well working effort had to sit down the first day and said, "Look, we need a plan to
get to this goal." They had to spend time educating the people that were brand new to this and
what the water quality problems were and how they related to it. A number of the county soil
and water conservation districts took people around on tours to show them these are the
problems. They would show them flat pieces of ground and say, "This piece has the potential
of contributing this much erosion, this much phosphorous." Mason Mungle said the first day
about how you can go up and down the hills of Oklahoma. Well, in Ohio, in this part, you
can just stand and look for miles. The only thing there are houses and barns and silos.
Number two, a common purpose was identified. Everyone was going for the phosphorous load
reduction. This became very important because the administration in our region said if we did
not reach this phosphorous load reduction due to these nonpoint source control plants, we were
going to come back and get them out of industry and municipalities. We were going to get
the load reductions one way or the other. That became a very strong point to get these other
people involved, and they were some of the biggest pushers.
One of the things that we had a real problem with was that Canada after two years reported
success. Then when we started looking at their numbers, they basically counted getting people
into compliance. That was a false load reduction. The U.S. assumed basically everyone was
already at compliance, so getting people into compliance didn't mean anything to us in terms
of the phosphorus load reduction goal. Then just getting their sewage treatment plants into
compliance enabled them to reach their goal, which really upset a number of our states when
they were having to go out and beat the doors to do that and didn't receive credit. A clear and
attainable goal was established. Basically, allocating the load reduction on what the potential
was based upon land use was a very effective way to do it.
Number four, leadership was shared. The project did not belong to one entity. This was good
and this was bad. It became bad from a financial point of view, because no one wanted to
pool their money. Everyone wanted to write the individual checks. So in some cases, people
were getting three or four checks, and the amount of time and paperwork it took to make sure
that we weren't paying for the same thing twice was phenomenal. But it did allow the
Governor to get out and the Ohio EPA Director to get out and stand on tillage equipment and
give people great big checks to say, you know, "We helped purchase this." So from the PR
point of view, it was really good. But from a money management point of view, it was
lacking.
Page 249
-------
I think once the locals had their county plans, the thing we noticed is that in future years they
would try to compete for normal Section 319 projects, because they had already spent all the
special Maumee River money and they were over achievers. One of the things we tried to do
with 319 in our region is that we try to spread it around to build local capacity in other places.
These people who were high achievers under this program, when they didn't get additional
money, they would write us all those letters, saying things like, "After two years, why aren't
you continuing to fund us?" And you write them a letter back, "This is only supposed to be
a demonstration, not an ongoing program." It became very frustrating that the 319 Program
was not established to be a board scale implementation program. It is established to be a
demonstration program that really ties your hands on what you can fund. Because when you
start to get into broad scale implementation, then you can reward people like this on a
consistent basis and not have to try to fudge the rules and guidance. So if we can get that
changed it's going to be a really good thing.
The project was flexible. The project avoided a rigid structure for making decisions.
Basically, once the allocations were made, it was up to each county to come up with how they
would get the load reduction. And when a county came in with then* plan, if it just made the
most common sense or it seemed most practical, we'd say yes to it. They would do an annual
evaluation. We noticed the ones that were kind of marginal quickly changed their plans after
the first year to become more in line with everybody else. But we weren't telling them, no,
they couldn't do it that way. It was basically they had to figure it out on their own with
assistant from the local agriculture agencies. You have to allow that flexibility, because
getting the bankers involved in one area was a very innovative aspect and it really paid off.
No one else was doing that, so if we had had this rigid criteria, maybe we would have
questioned why they did it. But instead, it was like, "We tell you what you have to do, what
level you have to perform to, and you tell us how you're going to get there," and it was fine.
Number 6, local ownership was established. Local people were responsible for their county
plans. They were very proud of them. A number of counties, the moment they hit then- load
reduction goal, they would send in letters saying, "We've done this." They would declare it
a success. The thing that amazed me is they kept trying to do better. I mean, it was their
problem and they were trying to deal with it. I think when you look at this, you have other
spin-offs. The reason why we only tracked phosphorous and sediment is at the time that was
the only two formulas we could get everyone to agree on. But there was tremendous benefits
in terms of pesticide management. There was a dramatic increase in I.P.M. hi the area. That
has continued on through other programs. The USDA, when they got water quality money,
put extra people in the area to provide the necessary technical assistance to do an on-farm plan
on ground water and surface water. So by designing these tillage systems and associated
practice, Ohio wasn't transferring the problem to another area.
Page 250
-------
Then the last one is not up there. It's one I called the factor you can't control for. The lake
is remarkably clean now. We want to claim credit for the quick clean up; but it happens to
be from the zebra muscle. The zebra muscle has moved in and is filtering all the phosphorous
out. I don't think it's a good nonpoint source control device, but it's been very effective.
Now the problem is that the fisheries people are telling us that due to what we've done and
what the zebra muscle has done, we might have taken too much phosphorous out of the
system, now, we have to look at these long-term impacts on the fisheries.
Question:
How hard was it to convince the people in the upper portions of the watershed that the lake
was something they needed to be concerned about? Was that a real issue?
Tom Davenport:
It wasn't very hard at all, because Ohio had some aerial photography taken after a major storm
and it showed the sediment plume just going right out into the lake, and they could all identify
that as sediment.
Russell Bowen:
Our next speaker is Sandi Formica of the Arkansas Department of Pollution Control &
Ecology. She's an Inspection Engineer there for the last three years. She's in the
Environmental Preservation Division. She has a BS and an MS degree in Chemical
Engineering from the University of Arkansas and she's going to talk to us about the Buffalo
River Project.
Speaker: Sandi Formica, Inspection Engineer, Arkansas Department of Pollution
Control & Ecology; Little Rock, AR
I'm going to talk to you today about a project we're doing in Arkansas. It's called the Buffalo
River Liquid Waste Demonstration Project. It's funded by our agency and 319 money from
EPA. The project is located in the Buffalo National River Basin in the northwest part of the
state. It covers the basins in blue here, about six counties, but it's mainly in Newton and
Searcy County. It's primarily in the Boston Mountains. This is a picture of the lower part of
the river. It's a national river managed by the Buffalo National River Park Service, which
manages about 13% of the 840,000 acres. It's designated by our agency as a extraordinary
resource water and natural scenic waterway. This is the highest ranking that we give in the
state to a water body. It's known nationally for high water quality and also for recreational
use.
Page 251
-------
There are many possibilities for both nonpoint source pollution and point source pollution in
this watershed. All of these things are taking place. You have septic tanks, confined animal
operations, land clearing, etc. Our project basically focuses on confined animal operations
and we're looking particularly at operations that have liquid waste systems. As you probably
know, Arkansas is number one in the nation for growing poultry. We're number 15 for \
growing swine and we have approximately 800 small dairies in this state. Along with this, f
over the years, we've seen an increase in nitrate concentrations in the northwest part of this
state and, as of now, we only have a causal relationship between the increase in nutrients in
the waters and also an increase in confined animal operations. There are also other sources
of nutrients—septic tanks, fertilizers and natural sources.
The way that we manage the waste for these confined animal operations is we separate them
into both liquid and dry systems. The poultry operations are mostly dry systems. They store
the waste in the houses and then land apply the waste using dry manure spreaders. The
confined swine operations are primarily liquid operations. The waste is flushed from the
storage areas and held in holding ponds. Later, it's land applied to pasture.
We require permits for liquid waste systems based on the Natural Resource Conservation
Service's Best Management Practice for a liquid system. They consist of the following
components (a Waste Management Plan for a liquid waste system will have some of these
components but not all of them): They are designed to protect water quality from the waste
at these facilities, but of course, there is potential for pollution. You can have pond leakage.
You can have pond discharge. You can also have waste leakage from the animal houses. You
can have improper land application of the waste and improper dead animal disposal. This is
an example of pond discharge. You can see this sort of thing happening with these liquid
waste systems all over the state. This is an example of solids build up in a liquid waste
lagoon. The problem is that the solids' build up will reduce your capacity and so there's more
potential for discharges or improper land application.
This is an example of a pond that, basically, the level in this pond has never changed, at least
the two years that I have visited the site. So there appears to be potential that there is pond
leakage going on here. This is an example of waste coming right from one of the confined
animal houses.
This is a farmer that is land applying his waste with an irrigation system. It appears that this
is okay, but there had been a three-day rain event occurring at this time and it was raining at
the time this photo was taken.
This is an example of improper dead animal disposal. The pit here is 15-feet deep and doesn't
meet our guidelines. It's basically full of dead pigs.
Page 252
-------
This is an example of a dead disposal pit that was being used at the time. The part that you
are seeing hasn't been used yet and the water you see is shallow perch ground water. This pit
also does not meet our guidelines.
This is what we're trying to protect. This is one of the tributaries to the Buffalo. This has
some really fine water quality. If you follow the discharges from these ponds, you'll see
pristine sites that will look like this with excessive algal growth. Occasionally, we have
reported fish kills.
So what led us to the Buffalo River Watershed was we had a farmer apply for a Liquid Waste
Permit and he was going to be located within two or three miles of the river. So we went and
looked at the confined animal operations in the watershed. We visited 16 of the 21 permitted
facilities, and what we found was that they had similar problems to the photos that I just
showed you.
So that takes us to this study. We decided the best thing to do at this point was to do a site
investigation of these farms. The study objective is that we wanted to monitor and evaluate
the effectiveness of the existing Best Management Practices, look at the data, and then if we
felt that there was a need to implement new or modify Best Management Practices, we would,
and then go back and reevaluate these practices. Then our study goal is to reduce the amount
of waste leaving these sites, to reduce the number of permit violations within the watershed,
and to improve the waste management within the watershed, and then eventually whatever we
find, we want to implement this statewide.
We're the primary agency involved in this project. Both the Water Division and
Environmental Preservation are working on the project. We have six swine farmers that have
agreed to be project participants and allow us to do the study at their site. Lots of people are
supporting the project. We have a couple of professors from both Arkansas and Kentucky that
provide technical support. The Natural Resource Conservation Service, Arkansas Soil &
Water Conservation Commission, and the Geological Commission have all provided technical
support. On the local level, the National Park Service, the Ozark National Forest Service, the
Newton County Conservation Service, the Jasper High School WET Team, and also some
additional Newton County land owners have all provided support from helping us get office
space to sharing equipment.
This is another map of the watershed. This shows the major tributaries that are draining into
the Buffalo River and our six farm sites are located at the headwaters of three of the major
drainages. All of these farms are sow-pig operations. They have approximately 200 sows,
six to eight hundred pigs, and one farm does have around 450 sows. Their waste management
system primarily consists of having a settling basin and a holding pond. Then they land apply
the waste with a manure spreader.
Page 253
-------
This is one of our farm sites. The pond in the foreground is a settling basin and then in the
background you see the holding pond. To the right, you see the manure spreader. This is
another manure spreader. We usually call them honey wagons. This holds 1,000 gallons.
This isn't a good picture, but this is the field that one of the farmers spreads on, and it's about
two to three miles from his waste system. If you think about it, over 120 days, there will be
close to 250,000 gallons for a farmer to have to dispose, and so that's a lot of trips with a
1,000 gallon honey wagon.
This is a pond. This particular farmer is one of the few that uses an irrigation system. You
can see the pipe running across his field there.
In order to accomplish our objective, we're collecting the following data. We're documenting
the waste management practices. We're doing water quality monitoring. We're soil
sampling. We're doing aerial photography, field verification of soils and geology, and we're
doing a rainfall simulation study that we've contracted with the University of Arkansas.
Basically, through this study we're looking at runoff from land application sites.
The farmers are helping us with the documentation of the waste management practices. We've
provided notebooks for them and they keep track of the time they spend on their facility and
the time they spend on their waste management. This is an example of the form that they fill
out on a regular basis. We also provided forms of their land application sites, they keep
records of how much waste they apply, and then they highlight the area that they apply it to.
We do regular site visits to the farms where we're recording information on the waste system
whenever we do the visits. This is Tony Morrison. He's installing a staff gauge in one of the
manure ponds. Obviously, he's a very dedicated worker. When we do our site visits, we
record pond levels. We look at dead animal disposal, house leakage or discharges, and we
also look at land application if that is going on at the time. We've installed staff gauges at all
of the waste ponds.
The water quality data that we're collecting is through automatic samplers and grab samples
for surface water. On sub-surface water, we're using monitoring wells and lysimeters. We're
also collecting biological data. We have four continuous monitoring sites. Three of them are
at one of our farm sites where we're measuring the total loads leaving the farm site. This
station is at the pond levee. Then there is a stream that runs along side the pond and we have
a station upstream of the farm and downstream of the farm. You can see in this picture there
is Sigma Sampler that we use to collect samples and also to monitor the stream level. This
is the fourth continuous monitoring site. It's a control site that we're using for comparison
purposes. Then we're also collecting grab samples at springs and seeps and any streams
where we don't have continuous monitoring stations.
Page 254
-------
We have 20 ground water monitoring wells that are installed. Most of them are up-gradient
and down-gradient of waste storage systems, and there are also a couple we have on land
application sites.
Then the last thing I wanted to talk about is the rainfall simulation study. We contracted the
University of Arkansas, who has expertise in doing these type of studies. They are looking
at the four major soils in the Buffalo River Watershed and they're basically raining on these
soils and collecting runoff data.
This is another picture of the Buffalo. What we hope to gain from this is to find management
practices that protect water quality and minimize the amount of waste leaving these farm sites.
That's all. Thank you.
Russell Bowen: .,
Our next speaker is Jan Boydstun from the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality.
Jan has been in the Nonpoint Source Program for quite a while with Louisiana. She has a
Bachelor of Science Degree from Southern Illinois University and a Master's of Science
Degree from Southern Illinois University in Environmental Sciences, Biological Sciences, and
Photograph. So we welcome Jan.
Speaker: Jan Boydstun, Nonpoint Source Coordinator, Louisiana Department of
Environmental Quality, Baton Rouge, LA
I'm going to talk briefly and then show you slides, and then talk a little bit more. I don't
know if all of you are familiar with Section 319 and what it is supposed to accomplish.
Probably most of you are. But I thought I would give you just a brief overview of that and
then tell you how our state is working to try to accomplish the goals of Section 319. Section
319 basically asks the states to do a variety of things. It asks us to assess the state waters and
to determine what percent of our water quality problems were related to nonpoint source
activities.
Let's first differentiate point source from nonpoint source. For point source discharges, you
can walk up to the pipe. You can take a sample. You can send it to the lab. You can analyze
it. We have authority to regulate it. We can place a limit on the discharge from that pipe.
We can tell industry what they can discharge. We can tell the wastewater treatment plant what
they can discharge.
Page 255
-------
Nonpoint sources are not quite so simple. We got into the ball game in 1987, when the Clean
Water Act was revised. The EPA indicated that even when we met all of our goals and
objectives for the point source program that our water bodies would still not be fishable. They
still would not be swimmable, and the majority of the remaining problems would be nonpoint
source. Nonpoint source is related to all types of land use activities. It does not have a
discreet conveyance. You can't walk up to the pipe and catch a sample. So it becomes much
more complicated to try to figure out what you want to do about that.
Louisiana does have a program and we do have a successful program. I want to talk about
a watershed project that we've implemented on the Tangipahoa River. It drains into Lake
Pontchartrain, so you don't have to go very far to see the area we've been working in. I'll
give you an overview of water quality issues, of land use activities, and how this project has
evolved. It really has become more than we anticipated. We got into the problem to solve
one issue, which was fecal coliform pollution, and a host of other issues surfaced, and though
.interagency coordination and concern by the people, about their water quality in this area,
we're addressing all kinds of things that we didn't anticipate getting into when we started.
As I said, Section 319 stated that the state had to have an assessment report. We had to
identify what our water quality problems were. We had to identify what type of land use
categories contributed to those water quality problems, and then we had to devise a
management strategy. Section 319 was fairly flexible. It left the state a lot of latitude. It
allowed us to determine what type of management strategy. We could have a regulatory
approach or we could have a non-regulatory approach. Since most of the agencies don't have
authority over these land use activities, we opted for a non-regulatory approach. I wasn't sure
when we got started if this was going to be workable or not. I didn't know if we could get
20 agencies in a room, everybody decide what the problem was, divvy up the responsibilities,
seek funding, and problem solve. I think we found out that that has worked. We have an
interagency committee. I chair that committee. We meet every other month at DEQ. We
talk about our water quality problems. We talk about the strategies we can implement to
correct them. I apply for the funding. I try to convince EPA they should put the funding in
our state to solve some of our problems. We've been pretty successful in doing that.
We've identified our water quality problems through a GIS System, based on our water quality
monitoring network. We have problems in estuaries. We have problems in bayous, in rivers,
in lakes, and in some of our coastal areas, just like all of the other states do. The area that
we're going to be talking about is a stream that flows from the Mississippi/Louisiana border
down to Lake Pontchartrain.
A breakdown of our data. This is always interesting for people to see. When you pick up the
newspaper and you read about the Exxons and everything else, everybody thinks everything
is point source related. But when you look at our pie charts, you can see that of our water
Page 256
-------
quality impairments, based on the 1992 305-B Report, 69% of our water quality problems in
our rivers are nonpoint source problems; within our lakes, 58%; within our estuaries, 51 %;
and within our wetlands, 75%.
We identified the land-use activities that contribute to these nonpoint source impairments, and
found that agriculture, forestry, urban runoff, and resource extraction such as sand and gravel
activities, salt water intrusion, which is a real problem in our state, and septic tanks all
contribute to the problem. That's enough to keep a small staff, even an army busy for quite
a while. You have to begin to figure out where those land use areas are within your state.
Louisiana is primarily a rural state, as are most of the southeastern states. Interesting when
you plot all of it. The dark green areas are the remnants of our bottomland hardwoods. They
typically reside along streams and along rivers. The hatched green lines~I don't know if you
can see that—but a large part of our state is pine, harvested in pine. In fact, trees are our
number one crop. We harvest more trees than anything else. The yellow areas that run down
along the Mississippi River alluvial plain and come on down toward the Mississippi and go
over a little to the west there into our coastal plain is agricultural. We grow cotton. We grow
soybeans. We grow rice. We grow sugar cane. The area that we're focusing on,
Tangipahoa, is primarily dairies. We also have forestry activities there and we have a lot of
unsewered areas. Not so atypical of nonpoint source watershed projects.
You have to begin to divide your land use up and overlay that with water quality. In this
situation, we're looking at percentages of agricultural use. You can't see all of that. But it
helps us target our areas to say, if you've got an area that's 71-90% agricultural land, you can
probably guess that that's where you ought to be working.
This is an urban map. It shows the same thing. It allows us to begin to target which areas of
the state have water quality problems based on urban activities. The area we've identified in
Tangipahoa River did have some urban problems that were localized, but it was primarily
agricultural and septic tanks or unsewered areas. This is the Tangipahoa River. It's hard to
see. There's some people swimming in there. You aren't supposed to do that anymore.
There is a health advisory on the Tangipahoa River. Back in 1988, there was a thesis that was
published and the thesis indicated that due to fecal coliform concentrations in the Tangipahoa
River that it was probably not safe to swim there.
There's a girl scout camp, the Whispering Pines Girl Scout Camp on Tangipahoa River. The
Girl Scouts got behind this issue. They decided they had been swimming and canoeing a long
time in Tangipahoa River and they wanted to continue to do so. So they wrote the governor
of our state and said, "DEQ should be out there trying to keep the waters clean. We want to
find out what the problem is." The DEQ implemented an intensive monitoring program. We
did find out that both the Girl Scouts and the thesis were correct—that we were exceeding
primary and secondary contact recreation. The Department of Health & Hospitals and
Page 257
-------
ourselves issued a joint health advisory that it was no longer safe to swim or to tube in this
river. This is a scenic stream. It was heavily utilized for tubing, and canoeing. A large part
of the economic base within Tangipahoa Parish was based on recreational use of this river.
This was not a popular decision when the health advisory was posted.
We decided that we needed a lot of agencies to help us with this. This was one of the first
watershed projects we had within our state. We initiated this in 1989. That was even before
319 money started to come about. The 319 monies started hi 1990 and they grew in 1991 and
have grown since then. So we sat down with very little authority, almost no money, and tried
to figure out what we were going to do about this problem. We decided that primarily what
we were going to do was to get some help from other agencies. So we formed a task force
with Department of Environmental Quality (my agency) as the lead, Department of Health &
Hospitals to help us work on some of the septic tank issues or unsewered areas; the Soil
Conservation Services (this is an old slide), they are the Natural Resource Conservation
Service, to help us look at the dairy situation; Agricultural Stabilization, now Consolidated
Farm Service Agency, to help us with funding; Soil & Water Conservation Districts for
technical assistance and for outreach; Cooperative Extension Service for education; Louisiana
Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, because this is a scenic stream and Wildlife & Fisheries
has authority over scenic streams.
We knew that dairies were a problem. When we began to look at the river through our water
quality monitoring, we estimated about half of the problem, 50%, was from dairies. A third
of our dairies within the state, 273 dairies, are located within this parish and drain to the
Tangipahoa River. When cows are out on the field, they can cause some fecal coliform
problems just from runoff from pasture. But certainly, when they're in a holding area to be
milked, that's when you begin to have a concentrated animal feeding operation. We do have
authority over concentrated animal feeding operations, even before Region 6 issued the
Confined Animal Feeding Operation (CAPO) permit. Most of these dairies are 100 to 120
cows. So the state had to be able to designate a water quality problem before we could begin
to implement our permit program.
We decided to send letters out. Every dairyman within Tangipahoa Parish got a letter from
the Department of Environmental Quality, which was not very popular. It indicated they had
two options. They could either install a no discharge system that was certified by Natural
Resource Conservation Service that would result in no discharge to waters of the state and then
DEQ would leave them alone, or they would have to apply for a wastewater permit.
When I began to go out and do inspections of dairies, this is typically what I found. This is
the cement trough that the cows walk up. The milking barn is in the back. There is
absolutely no treatment on this dairy farm at all. It goes directly down into a tributary of the
Tangipahoa River. So whenever it rains, fecal coliform levels are exceedingly high.
Page 258
-------
This is the SCS. We went out and looked at the situation. They recommended that the no
discharge system was really an excellent way to go. So we decided to work with them on this.
This is a system that has been installed and it's beginning to fill up. This is one that is fully
operational. Much preferred to what I saw when I first went out to see some of the dairies.
There is a pump associated with this system, so that the dairyman can pump off the liquids and
distribute it through piping out across his pasture. Now the nutrients and the fecal coliform
can go there, which is where they should be instead of in the river.
This is what we found in many places. I don't know if it's easy to tell what this is, but this
is the old two-cell oxidation pond system that was installed back in the 70's. There's nothing
wrong with that system if you keep it cleaned out. But after about 10 or 15 years, if you
never do anything to it, it begins to look like this, which is just a solid cake across the top, and
basically its runoff is just running over the top and out. So it's not very functional. So we
decided another idea was to contract with the Cooperative Extension Service to hold some
educational sessions to show them that they could clean these systems out and make them
operational. We thought that one thing we would like to see them do for tertiary treatment
for the two-cell oxidation ponds was to install a constructed wetland system. We wanted to
offer them as many options as possible, understanding that if a dairyman did have a two-cell
oxidation pond, then he may not need another lagoon. What he may need is to make what he
has functional and install a contructed wetland for tertiary treatment.
Some of the other problems we have are camps or unsewered areas. One thing about
Louisiana, people enjoy their water bodies. They live on the water. They use the water. They
have camps on the water. The downside of that is many of them don't have treatment
systems, individual sewage systems, that are functioning as they should. Many times they are
not cited as they should be. Many times they are not there at all. It is just a straight pipe out
to the ditch.
This is another example of seeing home sewage systems. Sometimes they are sighted in the
proper locations, sometimes they aren't.
This is an example of a type of nutrient load that you see coming off of some of these systems.
See all of the vegetation growing in these areas. If you construct that properly, that can work
for you. So we sat down with DHH and we decided what should we do about this. Within
this parish, we had quite a bit of support. They passed a new ordinance. They said, "Before
you can have your electricity turned on in a new residence, you must have the residence
inspected. You must have it inspected to find out if your home sewage treatment is
functioning, if it's been sighted properly, if it's working as it should." This was effective.
Since that time, 3,000 new systems have been installed in Tangipahoa Parish. Approximately
Page 259
-------
one million gallons a day of raw sewage or improperly treated sewage has been taken out of
the ditch and drains to the Tangipahoa River.
We also implemented an educational program about maintenance and operation. I'm attending
a Shellfish Workshop this week a few blocks down the road. We're talking about this issue
of fecal coliform and it's a tough issue. We think sighting is one of the major problems; 87%
of our soils in Louisiana are not suitable for septic tanks. Septic tanks should never have been
installed in these soils. More than one million people hi the state of Louisiana use septic
tanks. So you have a problem there. The other problem is once they are installed,
maintenance and operation. Most people don't have a clue how their septic tank works. They
don't have a clue that there needs to be maintenance and operation on a regular basis. So we
started a multi-parish educational program. That's what this parish map is all about. We
decided to pull together the parish sanitarian, the Soil Conservation Service people, the
Extension Service people. We started in Tangipahoa Parish and we had a very successful
educational program. We won an environmental excellence award for that program. We had
a host of educational outreach activities to begin to educate the people that they were part of
the problem, and if they ever wanted to swim in their river again, they were going to have to
take responsibility for cleaning up that problem. It's been so successful that we've begun to
expand those activities into all of the adjacent parishes; Washington, St. Tammany, St.
Helena, Livingston, East Baton Rouge Parish, East and West Feliciana. We're now going to
move down into the Barataria Terrebonne and eventually statewide, educating people that
home sewage systems need maintenance and operation.
Forestry. These are some of the offshoot activities that have resulted from our efforts. The
other fact I want to tell you first, before I get into some of these offshoot issues are as a result
of our efforts, in 1988, the average level for fecal coliform bacteria was 8,000 cells per 100
mil sample. The state water quality standard, depending on primary, secondary contact
recreation, has to be 200 to 400. Peek levels were at 30,000. Sometimes 120,000 cells per
100 mil. In 1994, the average range was 1,700. So we've brought the average down from
8,000 to 1,700 with cooperative efforts. The only money that was put into the area was
USDA cost share money through the President's Water Quality Initiative, back in 1989. They
had $1.1 million to assist dairymen for cost share. The state legislature passed funding which
added $600,000 of state funds to assist with cost share. The rest of it has been done by the
people themselves.
Clear cut forestry is an activity that still occurs within our state, except along a scenic stream
you must leave a 100-foot buffer. We're working with the Louisiana Forestry Association and
the Louisiana Office of Forestry to educate loggers that they need to utilize best management
practices. We're beginning to see some sedimentation problems within the Tangipahoa River.
I was at a meeting with the drainage board just this week, with Dr. Hastings, talking about
some of these problems from Forestry, so there's a lot more activity we need to do working
Page 260
-------
on the forestry activities. Since we've begun, our first survey showed that about 50% of
foresters used BMPs. The most recent survey done last year indicates we're up to 80%
compliance with BMP implementation.
Urban drainage is another problem within this watershed; within all watersheds. I know these
drainage ditches were designed by engineers. Nothing like concrete and straight shoots to
move water quickly. But they don't work very well for treatment. Any pollutant that gets in
that is going to stay in that. There's very little potential it's going to be assimilated by a tree
or a blade of grass or anything else.
We try to educate the people that what goes down those storm drains, winds up within their
river, within their bayous, and within their lakes. Most of the public still doesn't understand
that storm water runoff doesn't go to the wastewater treatment plant. Most of them think it
does. So you have to educate them that that's not the case. So education outreach is a major
part of any watershed project.
This is an activity with the Scouts getting out storm drain stenciling. They have a great time
with this. We have buckets and they have everything else for teaching them to not dump
waste. It drains to the bayou. It drains to the river. Or it drains to the lake. This has been
a very successful program. It's been used in every parish, every city throughout the state.
I just never cease to be amazed at how many people want to participate in this effort.
Getting people out hi the stream. We have a citizens monitoring program that's going to kick
off in Tangipahoa River. Dr. Hastings is going to be helping us with that. He's in the
audience today. We were talking about that this week. There's no better factor to get people
interested in what goes on in their water body, than to get them out and understand that there's
things that live there and that the pollutants that go in there are going to affect what lives
there.
The last issue is drainage. That we want to help educate people that drainage areas along
streams can be natural habitat areas. They don't have to be cement areas. That this type of
a drainage area can work just as effectively as a cement conduit. So we're trying to work with
the drainage boards to implement natural vegetation and work toward natural habitat along
their drainage areas. What we want is to have good drainage, but also to improve habitat.
We want streams that we can use, that we can swim in, and the people within the area to care.
Only a couple of closing remarks. The things that we learned from this watershed project.
It takes everybody. It takes all the agencies. It takes a concern. It takes a concern at the
local level. There will never be enough government. There will never be enough money to
clean up all the water bodies. The people themselves have to take the initiative that they want
to use their water bodies again, and in this situation, that has been the case.
Page 261
-------
We started over there working with a very small amount of money to clean up this river.
We've had measurable results. Now they are not only concerned about fecal coliform and
home sewage and dairies, now they're concerned about forestry activities. They're concerned
about urban runoff. They're concerned about drainage and not just using herbicides on their
drainage ditches. I never cease to be amazed at how once you get it started you can evolve
into a whole multi-effort process. I think that's what we've done there.
Russell Bowen:
Before I open it up to questions, I made a few observations from the three speakers. A
systematic approach is the key. I think that follows along with some of the things the speaker
this morning said about anecdotal information. That's just not the way to go. What we have
to do is to demonstrate to people that are not scientists and the general public, .that a systematic
approach is the best way to go about this. In each one of these speaker's presentations, you
saw that. Regardless of the scale, you saw a systematic approach.
The other thing is that the data needs will vary depending on what you're trying to accomplish
and how severe the problem is. You may have to spend a lot of time just convincing people
there is a problem. Also, what is the real problem? I noticed there was some discussion on
BMPs. Particularly, is the BMP bad or is it just poor O&M. Is it a good BMP not being used
right? You have to get down to that level of detail. A lot of people don't like to do that. But
the devil's in the details. That's where the work really gets done. You must have the right
players. It's key. You really have to set back and say, "Who do we want to bring into this?"
There's no guarantee they're not going to jump boat once you get started, but you have got
to get them in there to start with. In each case, there was a carrot and stick approach. The
carrot varied as far as the size, and the stick was used judiciously, I thought. We've been
trained that's the way we approach things. And here it was happening in each case. In
Region 5 they said "If the nonpoint source isn't taken care of it, we're going to tighten down
more on the point sources." I guess, I wanted to ask Tom later maybe to speak on that. Did
you get support from the point sources as a result of that? To get out there and push the
nonpoint source contributors.
Then finally, what came out is that you need to address the worst problems first. You've got
to have success early to keep people with you. Now, I would like to open it up to questions
for anybody on the panel.
Question:
In each of the cases that you brought forth the evidence, a river that had a lot of recreational
uses or a national scenic river or a tributary to Lake Erie. Something that would clean up and
regulate some things. Something that's been on the public's mind and in the media and these
Page 262
-------
were all real good successes. It's good to hear about them. In having a watershed that doesn't
have those kinds of uses, do you often get similar successes or is it harder to bring in all these
partners and stakeholders? The people that seem to have the highest stake.
Answer: Tom Davenport
Well, there's one that we worked on up in northern Illinois the Waukegan River. It's seven
miles long. It's mainly an urban drainage area. They just wanted to know what they could
do. I mean, you look at it. It's just a little piddly~you know, it's dirty, dumpy, trashy and
stuff. But we held out some stuff for them to do and they responded by putting in lunker
systems and they created a pool riffle thing in the parks. They cleaned up all the trash and
now they got something they're proud of. But people just going by, like I went by and it
didn't mean anything to me. But these local people saw it as their river, their resource. But
we provided them help and now they got fish coming back.
Answer: Jan Boydstun
I'll be happy to speak to that too. I have found the same experience. Nine times out of ten,
the people are anxious to use their water bodies. They want to use their water bodies. They
want their children to be able to use the water bodies in the future. If you can educate them
how their activities cause pollution, nine times out of ten, they're happy to take every step
they can if it's an affordable step. So that they can utilize their water bodies. I don't think it
has to be a scenic stream.
Answer: Sandi Formica
We're starting with the Buffalo River Watershed just because it's probably our most
extraordinary resource water. Whatever we learn from this we hope to apply to other
extraordinary resource waters, and then trickle on down.
Answer: Russell Bowen
There's a publication out—and help me on this, panel. I think it's called America's Rivers.
But anyway, one of the articles in it that I thought was extremely enlightening was that
everybody knows their home address. You learn that when you're five years old. That's the
first thing your parents teach you is what's your telephone number and what's your address,
in case you get lost. You know, that every time you move the first thing you do is you
memorize your new address. But how many people can tell you what basin they're living in,
what watershed they're living in, and what are the uses of that watershed? To me, that's an
area, from an educational point of view, that we could really focus in on. If we want to write
Page 263
-------
a curriculum for schools, that may be a good one. Particularly for natural science courses.
To me, that's something that we've kind of overlooked.
Carl. Next question.
Question: Carl
Tom, earlier you talked about one of your activities being equipment buy down. You said it
was not a cost share. Would you explain what buy down is?
Answer: Tom Davenport
Yes. An equipment buy down is that we would set a price like $3,000 for a no till planter.
We'd take that right off the top. If a guy came in and was going to buy one for $13,000, Ohio
gave him $3,000 right off the top. So then he only has to come up with $10,000. Then if he
wanted to retrofit a planter, it was $100 per roll. Ohio would buy down his initial purchase
price. Or else another way to look at it is we were giving him a greater part of his down
payment.
Question: Carl
Your payment went to the dealer?
Answer: Tom Davenport
No, to the land owner. To the person who was purchasing the equipment. You know, I made
it sound like everything was successful. We had two practices that bombed real quickly. So
then we just shifted more of the money into the equipment buy down. That second part about
the taxes and stuff, that was kind of a bust. Because you know when you look at permanent
land conversion, it was like a net loss of $60 per acre to the farmer, and after that was figured
out, I mean, interest in that just died on the vine. And then for the winter cover crop, we're
trying to give them $100 an acre to help establish it. Well, we had one cold winter and they
couldn't get it established, and after that, no one wanted to invest in that. So we need more
research and technology. So while a lot of ideas are good on paper, when you really go to
apply them, the economics and common sense have to come in.
Answer: Sandi Formica
He wants to know if we have any regulations on how close we can land apply waste to
streams, and then also if there's any limits on nitrogen loads to pasture. As I said earlier, we
regulate or we have permit requirements for liquid waste, and for liquid waste application,
Page 264
-------
there is a 100 foot buffer strip between-actually, it's not a buffer strip. You can only apply
within 100 feet of a stream. Then also, in the waste management plans, the limits for nitrogen
loading is based on how much the plant can uptake. So depending on whether they're growing
fesku or bermuda grass, that determines what the loads will be on the pasture for nitrogen.
Okay?
Answer: Jan Boydstun
Within the project area I was talking about, we really don't have rules or regulations about the
buffer. But we are working with Natural Resource Conservation Service and every dairyman
has a farm plan, and soil testing is involved, so they can make a determination of what the
land application rate should be.
Moderator: Russell Bowen
Sandi, I was going to ask you. On that buffer, is that irregardless of slope? The 100 foot
minimum?
Answer: Sandi Formica
Well, they're not allowed to land apply on slopes greater than 15%. Also, on the dry waste,
there's management practices they should follow, but it's voluntary. So they could actually
land apply up to a stream, and unless we show that there was a water quality problem we
couldn't cite them for anything.
Answer: Jan Boydstun
Same with us.
Answer: Sandi Formica
Well, the limits as far as the land application, they're not water quality based. They are based
on plant uptake. So part of what we're doing in our study is we want to see, using those
limits, with someone with a liquid waste system, it would be part of their permit. What kind
of impact does that have on water quality and is that acceptable? So yes, we're doing some
of that. The University of Arkansas has already done several studies with the rainfall
simulations looking at runoff after the land application of liquid swine waste, and they've also
looked at the land application of poultry waste, too. Did that answer your question?
In our study, when I showed the plots where they're doing the rainfall simulation study, we
also have lysimeters installed. So we're measuring infiltration. I don't have any of that data.
Page 265
-------
We just started collecting that, so I don't have that data with me. But we are looking at
infiltration, and then we also have some ground water monitoring wells on land application
sites.
Answer: Jan Boydstun
We do, too. Works the same way.
Moderator: Russell Bowen
I think as a follow-up to a previous question, with regard to whether it's a common stream or
a scenic stream, it seems to me in cases where it's questionable as to what the real problem
is, you need more data. You need more research. You need more localized data that's unique
to that area. In other cases, what I heard Tom say in the Region 5 study, that it was a gross
estimate of what was needed. The problem was fairly evident. They estimated the load
reductions. They determined what was attainable. That's a key, if it's attainable. And then,
they overshot their mark, and it apparently worked. They didn't need that level of detail that
is sometimes needed. But that will vary from site to site.
Answer: Tom Davenport
I might also comment on that Tangipahoa study. One of the things that was kind of unique
about it, I thought anyway, was that we were trying to correct a surface water runoff problem-
-a fecal coliform problem. In doing that, you need to also raise some concerns about
contamination of ground water if we hold all the nutrients in ponds and then spread it. And
so, they did some ground water evaluations, too. In other words, you don't want to correct
one problem and create another one. So that was an interesting facet that we looked at.
Answer: Jan Boydstun
Yes. Basically, what we did was we sat down with our Ground Water Division and we looked
at what portions or what components of this project should we be worried about from the
ground water issue. Of course, the obvious one is you need to understand the soils that you
have. In Tangipahoa, we primarily have clay soils. But there was concern because there was
a sand lens about 10 to 12 feet down. It doesn't run through the entire parish, but through
portions of the parish. We were afraid as we began excavation for the lagoons that we would
hit that. So our ground water people went out and they were there for the soil core borings.
Soil analysis was done. Sighting determinations were made so that we would avoid that in
most situations. We also did ground water monitoring associated with it so that we would not
create nitrate contamination problems as we tried to address the surface water issue.
Page 266
-------
Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation (1:15-2:45PM)
Moderator: Carlton Dufrechou, Executive Director, Lake Pontchartrain Basin
Foundation; Metarie, LA
Ladies and gentlemen, I appreciate all of you coming back from lunch this afternoon. I'm
Carlton Dufrechou. I'm the Director of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation and I
believe I've had the pleasure to possibly not only meet most of you, but work with a good
number of you, too. If I get boring anywhere through this, please just tell me and we'll
answer specific questions and then go out and have some fun.
We're going to try to do this very loosely and very quickly this afternoon. What we would
like to do is give a little overview of Pontchartrain's restoration. To my right is Dr. Steve
Gorin. Steve is our Program Director. He's going to talk specifically about some of the
major restoration programs and projects. Next to Steve is Anne Rheams. Anne is our
Education Outreach Coordinator and will tell you about a good number of the activities we
have in all of the school systems throughout the area, as well as some of the teacher's
workshops. And to Anne's right is Neil Armingeon. Neil is our Environmental Director.
Neil is the guy who actually takes all the problems and turns them into solutions. Neil does
all kinds of good things.
What I'd like to do is tell you a little bit about the foundation. We're private, nonprofit and
a bit unique compared to possibly other restoration programs. We have a Board of Directors
that is elected by our membership. There are 14 Directors on the Board. They represent the
parishes surrounding the basin. With that, may I start some slides?
The mission of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation, ladies and gentlemen, is restoration
of not only Lake Pontchartrain, but the entire Pontchartrain Basin. We actually have two
drainage basins influencing Pontchartrain. The area highlighted in yellow is the Pearl River
Basin. The area in white is the Pontchartrain Basin. The reason we show both of them is
although we call Lake Pontchartrain a lake, technically, it's an inland bay. We have a title
exchange through Chef Menteur Pass and Rigolette's Pass, which are in the very southeast
portion of the lake, right over here. So actually everything in the Pearl River Basin does
influence Pontchartrain.
The physical limits of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation are shown on this slide. The
northern border would be the Florida Parish, the Mississippi/Louisiana state line. The
southern border here in New Orleans is the main line Mississippi River Levee. We go to the
southeast down to the Chandeleur Islands, to the east to the Pearl River, to the west to the
Amite River almost to Baton Rouge. We've got some pretty diverse turf in here. We've got
Page 267
-------
a tremendous urbanized area, the metro New Orleans area, a good deal of smaller
communities that are expanding on the north shore. We have the wetlands to the southeast of
us in St. Bernard and Plaquemine and an industrial corridor from New Orleans up river to
Baton Rouge, and a good deal of farming activities throughout the entire north shore.
All those activities have actually added a good number of sources of pollution to the basin.
I start at the upper left. That would be runoff from farming activities. Upper right would be
sewage from some of the smaller communities. The bottom right would be manmade salt
water intrusion entering from the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, a deep draft channel that was
dredged in the late 50's, early 60's. The large arrow in the center is pollution from urban
runoff from storm water. The small arrow in the left corner would have been manmade
diversions from the Mississippi River, specifically diversions that were unnatural that didn't
mimic nature. And the red slash in the center of the slide indicates shell dredging. Shell
dredging was eliminated in Lake Pontchartrain about five years ago. It was an ongoing
industry for, my goodness, almost about 40 or 50 years. When the shell dredging was
eliminated, the bottom of the lake started tightening up again, and actually we've experienced
a tremendous increase in water clarity in the past few years with the elimination of the shell
dredging. All those sources of pollution ended up with this sign and numerous other of its
compadres around the entire perimeter of Lake Pontchartrain and in many of our rivers and
bayous.
How we started to address this was a little bit different from the estuarian programs. We went
out to the public in our planning process and actually started in 1990-91 with a series of four
public meetings in the basin in Metarie, Mandeville, Destrehan, and Hammond. The purpose
of the meetings was actually just to ask the public, "What do you folks feel are the problems
facing the basin?" It started off hi small groups, anywhere from numbers like the groups we
have this afternoon hi this section to about 50 to 60 folks and ended up with 55 concerns from
the meetings. They were grouped hi five broad categories. The categories were education,
outreach; renewable resources, our fisheries, forestry; institutional, meaning the.governmental
aspects of the restoration (who is actually coordinating the restoration); pollution; and uses.
Uses could be fishing, hunting, forestry, and all that other good stuff, and development.
The thing that surprised us when we got the numbers back was—I thought all the time that
pollution was the number one highest priority in the minds of all the public~but actually
institutional was, and that's where the Foundation got its direction. Institutional, meaning who
is coordinating the restoration? So we tried to redirect our efforts a little bit to be overall
coordinators among all the local, state and federal agencies.
We went from that first phase into the second phase of our comprehensive management plan.
We reviewed the concerns identified in Phase I and started to develop solutions to those
particular concerns. In this instance though, we brought the agencies in. Both the state, the
Page 268
-------
local, and the federal agencies. Everyone from the EPA, Corps of Engineers, and the U.S.
Fish, on the federal level; the Department of Environmental Quality, Health & Hospitals,
Natural Resources on the state level; down to the local communities, the parishes; and the user
groups, whether they are fishery folks or civic groups. Everyone was involved as well as the
business community.
The results of Phase II were future direction. Actually, some plans, some specific plans and
general directions on how to continue the restoration. The major challenges identified in
Phase II were storm water runoff, ag activities, salt water intrusion, and sewage.
Speaker: Dr. Steve Gorin, Program Director, Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation;
Metarie, LA
The Foundation was organized in 1989 and the Program Office began to operate in 1991. We
started with two projects; a storm water treatment project and a comprehensive management
plan or CMP. We received appropriations through Congress, earmarked for us through the
EPA. We work with the EPA on all of our projects on a cooperative basis. From the work
of the CMP, we identified those particular areas where efforts were needed. Through a back
and forth dialog with our Congressional delegation, we were able to get appropriations that
addressed those particular areas of concern. They came to us and said, "You've got a
Comprehensive Management Plan. Now what do you find out from that management plan that
the citizens of the basin are interested in?" From that, we got our first large appropriation
through the efforts of Senator Bennett Johnston and Representative Livingston. Guess what
we call our program? The Johnston Basin Cleanup (JBC). It's under the JBC that we have
proceeded from what we learned in the comprehensive management planning process. In that
planning process, we developed a lot of relationships. We learned who the people were.
They learned who we were. They learned what we wanted to do and what our position was.
When we started out, a lot of them weren't sure whether we were a regulatory agency or just
exactly what we were.
Our particular role, as we defined it, is as an advocate, as a catalyst, a facilitator, a watchdog,
but we did not regulate. That required that we work closely with the agencies. We found
that was very helpful. These agencies had projects. There are a lot of good people in these
agencies that were trying to get things done and they welcomed the cooperation. They
welcomed the idea that there was a means of getting people together outside of their normal
process. That has helped us tremendously. So we've been working with federal agencies,
local agencies, the EPA has been a big help, advisory groups, and in sort of a non-
confrontational mode.
Page 269
-------
I'd like to tell you about and show you some slides of some of the projects that we have
developed to address the problems in the basin. When we first started out, I remember in the
General Session some people were saying, "Well, how do you find the watershed?" It was
rather easy in our case, because the watershed was defined by the state. This is the Lake
Pontchartrain Basin within the hydrological boundaries as defined by the state. The whole
state has different basins in it. But the topography changes throughout our basin. We start
at the Mississippi line. Up here where it's high rolling ground, we have large open rivers,
and as we come closer and closer to the shore, there is a primarily rural area, a dairy farming
area. I'll show you more about it later. As we get closer to the shorelines of Lake Maurepas
and Lake Pontchartrain, we get into our wetlands area. As we come down on this side, we
have the urban areas and out here we have less populated areas, and right in here, we actually
end up with an open marsh where we get most of our oysters. This is one of our most
productive oyster areas.
A lot of our environmental problems started with the demographic movement throughout the
basin. As you see here, we started in the northern area. This was traditionally rural with pine
tree forests. This area was open with a lot of fishing camps in here. We started with the
founding of New Orleans. This being the Mississippi River, Lake Pontchartrain, and this
Lake Maurepas. This was the old section of New Orleans. It started at the river in the high
areas and built up. As this became more congested, then people moved out here to Jefferson
Parish. That was in the 50's. This whole area has now built up, so it's very densely
populated. It started as a bedroom community, but now it has industry and other commercial
ventures. Then people—the young people especially—started to want to get out of this area
because the prices were so high. They had this newly built causeway right here. This is what
we call the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway. It's now four lanes. It's 23 miles long and it
opened up this whole area. People have been migrating from this area over into the north
shore. So we have a lot of urban problems that have come up in what was normally a rural
area.
Here on the south shore, we have a levee system, this whole area is very low. It's been built
up and it's now completely surrounded by levees to keep the high water out, and some of these
areas here were as much as four to six feet below sea level. The Mississippi River Gulf Outlet
that Carlton referred to is this here. We'll talk about that and the levees a little later.
This isn't a very good slide. But I brought it in to illustrate what's happening on the north
shore. Everything on the north side of the lake we call north shore, and of course, the south
shore on the south side. This is Tangipahoa Parish, which is one of the parishes that start at
the lake and goes all the way upstate almost to the Mississippi line. We call the parishes
across the lake the Florida Parishes. You might hear me refer to them as the Florida Parishes.
You can see the large number of waterways that we have on the north shore. All of these little
blue lines are waterways that connect into our major river, which is the Tangipahoa, and these
Page 270
-------
little spots that you see here, are dairy farms. There are 273 dairy farms in Tangipahoa Parish
alone, and there are approximately 600 dairy farms on the north shore in the Florida Parishes.
This has become a major environmental problem.
As we went into a management plan for the basin, we found that there were problems
throughout the basin. We found the people on the south shore were saying, "All your pollution
is coming from the north shore. That's not us. It's all coming from these dairy farms." We
got on the north shore and they said, "It's all you people on the south shore that are putting
your storm water into the lake that is causing all the pollution." So to get around that, we
have projects all around the basin. We try to address problems throughout the basin.
This is—of course, many of you are familiar with it—is the result of dairy farming. This is one
of the things that happens. In washing down, they get a lot or runoff, a lot of water runoff
with a high solid content. It's a major problem that has been polluting our rivers and our
streams with high levels of nutrients and fecal coliform. One of our projects that we have is
a cost share program that compliments existing ASCS—pardon me if I use the old acronyms.
I'm still not used to the new ones, Randolph. I think everybody will understand me. But the
ASCS and the Soil Conservation Service, the SCS, had programs going, but they had run out
of funds. There were still 100 or so farms that had not built lagoons. So one of the things
that we have is a project to cost share with the farmers on a 50/50 basis for the construction
of no discharge retention lagoons. In putting this program together we've dealt with DEQ,
the SCS, the ASCS, the Soil & Conservation Districts, and with the farmers. The farmers in
this area have been a very important part of all of our planning. Without them, we couldn't
have put it across. But we have been able to do it. Like I said, we compliment existing
programs. The SCS designs and watches construction on it, and we cost share with the
farmers.
We also have a program there that I need to mention, cleaning these lagoons out. Very few
of these lagoons had been cleaned out, something like the problem with septic tanks. We have
a program, a cost share program, in which we will share up to one-third of the farmer's cost
in cleaning these lagoons out on a periodic basis and pumping the nutrients from the pond into
their fields.
Other problems that we have—this illustrates it—are small treatment plants. All through this
area that was rural and has been developed, there were small treatment plants that were poorly
maintained or not properly maintained. They were built by developers and then left to
homeowners that do not know or are unwilling to maintain them. So we have been working
with St. Tammany Parish, which is parallel to Tangipahoa Parish, on water quality programs.
We're cost sharing with them now on a project to develop a comprehensive sewage planning
ordinance. Because it was a rural area and they've got so many developers moving in, they
didn't have any real handle on how to enforce some of their sewage plans. So they, in
Page 271
-------
conjunction with the USGS, who is bringing in a lot of data, are developing a program right
now.
We also have had significant problems with septic tanks on the north shore. There are many
rural poor families there that don't have community sewage. They have individual septic tank
systems. We've had an education program working with the Department of Health &
Hospitals and DEQ to help them clean these things out. But we found that there was no
facility that the pumpers could take their materials to. Many of the municipal plants had been
shut down to them because they're overloading their plants. So we have a cost share program
with Tangipahoa Parish to develop—it's under construction now~a regional septic tank waste
disposal unit that will take this waste and process it. This has been very, very productive.
A lot of people are excited and we hope that it will move to other areas.
Here we have another particular problem that we have in parts of the basin. Some of you will
see this if you go out on tour with us tomorrow—our fishing camps sewage. These
traditionally were out in the lake and there were no facilities. We're trying to help some of
these camp owners get some sewage lines for them to tie into municipal systems.
On the north shore, again, I talked about development and the problems with construction, and
this is a major problem. It's runoff from the construction site that is entering our rivers and
our streams and polluting them to the point where they're killing them off. We have a project
that we're just starting up that we hope will go a long way. It's a demonstration project with
a builder that has 1,200 acres adjacent to the wetlands. He came to us and said he would like
to develop an environmentally sensitive subdivision in the area, and we are working with him.
We're funding Tulane University to do the science to develop the best technology for our area.
The contractor will put in any construction needed and follow any of the suggestions that we
have for the units. There will be an adjacent control unit and the project will be scientifically
done. It is our plan to use this subdivision as a model for other contractors to use for their
developments on the north shore. This model is badly needed. There's a lot of construction
on the north shore and a lot of clay in the soil. We have heavy rains and it really loads up our
rivers and streams.
On the south shore we talked about the levee system. You'll see this tomorrow. This is the
17th Street Canal Pumping Station. This is one of the pumping stations in the foreground
here. You see the trash coming down our drainage canals. These are drainage screens. This
is an old pumping station built around 1900, 1910, and it puts out 10,000 cubic feet per
second. At one time it was the largest one in the world. A lot of things in New Orleans we
say we're at the bottom of the line on, but our drainage system in New Orleans is one of the
best in the world. The problem with this is that it pumps into the lake. The lake takes all the
storm water. But that's another deal.
Page 272
-------
Here's something. Remember I told you Jefferson Parish was a newer parish? Well, this is
one of the pumping stations in Jefferson Parish. It does the same thing. This one puts out
about 4,000 cubic feet per second. We had a project going to build a constructed wetland as
a pilot study to see if we could treat the storm water runoff and take some of the pollutants
out. We worked a long time on this. We thought we had it in place, but we could not finally
make a deal for the land. We haven't given up on it, but at the present time, we're looking
for another site.
Those that were with Cliff this morning or earlier today learned about our monitoring system.
We've worked out a deal with the Power Squadron, which is a private organization, to pick
up samples for us, and the Department of Health & Hospitals is analyzing the samples to see
how much fecal coliform we're actually getting out in the lake. We started out on this side
of the lake with 15 sites. The Power Squadron on this side picks it up pro bono. We pay
some gas on it, but for most of the stuff, they don't want any money to do it. The north shore
Power Squadron heard about it and they wanted to do it too. So we've got 15 sites out on this
side and then the Lake Maurepas Society heard about it and they wanted to do it. So we've
got eight sites up here. We're finding out some surprising things. We're finding that some
of these areas that could be recreational areas, especially down here on the south shore, are
not showing up with high fecal coliform counts even after heavy rains. So our next projects
will be to see if we can't open some of these areas up to swimming.
We have recently signed an agreement with the University of New Orleans to do a conceptual
study on how we might open this area up to public access in an environmentally sensitive
manner. That will be done with graduate students, and we're going to start that in the fall.
This is the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MRGO). At one time it was a lot narrower than
there. It's a shortcut to the Gulf and brings ocean going vessels in here and you can see
what's happening to the wetlands here. This has been one of the sources of salt water
intrusion. In building the canal, the outlet, they cut through some of the major ridges and
have allowed what held the salt water out. This is the result. We've got swamps that have
been killed off. These are dead cypress trees.
The last project I want to talk about is in St. Bernard Parish, which borders along the MRGO.
We have a project there now to take some of the water that has been secondarily treated that
was supposed to go to the Mississippi River, and try to get that reversed to go over the levees
into the wetlands. We now have projects around the state, particularly in Breaux Bridge and
in Thibodaux, that show that you could discharge secondarily treated water without harming
the wetlands.
If there are any questions that you have about any of these projects I'd be glad to talk about
them.
Page 273
-------
Question:
Is that a natural connection between Lake Maurepas and Lake Pontchartrain?
I
Answer: Steve Gorin !
Yes. That's a pass. That's the major pass. It's Manehac Pass. j
I
Question:
I didn't know if that was manmade.
Answer: Steve Gorin
No, that's a natural pass. Like Carlton talked about before, that brings in the fresh water but
some of the salinity changes. We have subsidence through there. -We've had some damage
in that area due to subsidence and salt water coming in but not to the extent that we've had in
other parts of the lake. The lake itself is connected to the Gulf by two natural passes, as well,
through the Rigolets and the Chef Mentur.
We also have an education outreach program that we have been able to implement that as part
of our JBC. I'd like to introduce Anne Rheams who is our Education Outreach Coordinator,
who will tell you about that program.
Speaker: Anne Rheams, Education Coordinator, Lake Pontchartrain Basin
Foundation; Metarie, LA
One purpose of this conference is to talk about partnerships. In the field of education, you
cannot be successful without partnerships, and we're learning that throughout the whole
environmental field. Education and public outreach was a major goal requested by the public
during The Lake Foundation's comprehensive management planning process. They want to
know what is going on in the Pontchartrain Basin. There are so many different sources of
information from different entities that people just wanted one source, a clearing house, a
place that they could call and find out what was going on. They requested outreach, a group
to go out and actually help them to learn about their ecosystem. In response to this need, the
Lake Foundation's education/outreach program has developed school programs. The
Pontchartrain Basin is made up of 16 parishes and each parish has its own school system. As
you know, schools go from K through 12, plus the universities. That equates to a lot of
schools in this basin.
Page 274
-------
The education department at the Lake Foundation is composed of myself and Heather Wilson.
With this limited staff we have had to begin partnerships with school systems and with other
entities to spread the word about the Pontchartrain Basin. Nobody spreads the word faster
than kids, ands they bring it home to their parents.
Many of our education programs involve taking students and teachers on field trips especially
related to urban stormwater runoff. The south shore of Lake Pontchartrain, in particular the
city of New Orleans, is crisscrossed by drainage canals. New Orleans averages 65 inches
of rain average per year. A couple of years back we had 120 inches. All of that rain falls into
what is called the city in a saucer. New Orleans is a city that is built like your sink, your
basin. It is below sea-level. In order to drain the city all of that water must be pumped out.
What we try to show students on these field trips is that along with that rainwater comes
pollution and litter—big pieces that you can see and pieces that you cannot see such as used
motor oil. We have formed many partnerships with groups that organize students such as the
Summer Bridge Program. Seventy-five summer school students volunteered to pick up trash
along a drainage canal after touring a pumping station.
The field trip includes storm drain stenciling. Traditionally, in New Orleans and Jefferson,
we have thought of storm drains as trash cans. It is a major challenge for us in New Orleans
to educate about urban runoff because of the "Mardi Gras mentality"; we measure the success
of Mardi Gras on the tonnage of trash. The more trash, the better. People do not realize that
runoff and its associated wastes do not go to a treatment plant. Our drainage water is not
treated. We cannot hold all that water back long enough to treat it.
Two of our most successful partnerships are with the New Orleans Sewage & Water Board
and with Jefferson Parishes' Environmental Department. These two organizations have
provided funding and staff time to help the Lake Foundation implement its urban stormwater
education program. They allow us to take students on a tour of their pumping stations so that
students can see the drainage system in action and we can show the types of pollution that gets
discharged into the lake. This partnership helps these two organizations meet their stormwater
permit requirements for education.
We get the students involved in the cleanup and we also get them involved in education. The
Art on the Lake Project is an example of a very successful education partnership Thanks to
funding from the New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board we worked with the New Orleans
Public School System very closely for a year on a major production called Art on the Lake.
The purpose of this program was to take students on field trips to educate them about urban
runoff pollution into Lake Pontchartrain and for them to take this information back to their
peers. The students created projects that described the pollution problems and solutions. Some
of the projects included fictitious animals such as Ponchie, the Lakeness Monster who actually
Page 275
-------
floated in the Lake during our Art on the Lake festival. The students painted little tears on
him because he is upset that his home is polluted. They did some other things like banners.
These banners have been very popular, hanging in their schools and at City Hall in New
Orleans for the Earth Day Festival. They created a musical entitled Beauty and the Beach,
in which the main character was a Frenchwoman, Marine Debris, who was very trashy. In
total 400 students were involved in the program.
The Lake Foundation was able to create a teacher resource packet on urban stormwater
pollution based on the Art on the Lake project that is handed out at teacher workshops. The
materials in this packet include a video, an activity guide and calendars.
Another successful partnership is with the Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge, the
largest urban wildlife refuge in the country. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife and Lake Foundation
conduct ecology programs for inner city students. For most of these students it is the first
time they have ever been to wetlands. Some of them have never fished in their lives.
We also do adult education workshops, teacher workshops and outreach at festivals and
environmental fairs. We use a lot of volunteers for our outreach program. We produce
teacher resource materials that are specific to the Pontchartrain Basin. If you're interested in
this beyond what I've discussed, please just give us a call or talk to me afterwards and we'll
get you some more information.
Question:
How do you handle liability issues taking the kids out on the bayou?
Anne Rheams:
Working within the school system is the best route because they have insurance.
Speaker: Neil Armingeon, Environmental Director, Lake Pontchartrain Basin
Foundation; Metairie, LA
Since I am batting cleanup, I am going to take some artistic license. Since I was somewhat
evasive to Steve about what I was exactly going to talk about, I'm going to slightly alter what
I was supposed to talk about.
As the Foundation staff prepared for this program, it became almost like a human
psychological experiment. About three weeks ago, Steve started saying, "We've got to get
ready for this presentation," to which I told Steve, "Steve, I always get ready for my
Page 276
-------
presentations when I'm in the car going to the place that I'm going to actually make a
presentation." That was certainly not good enough for Dr. Gorin. But in the next three
weeks, we had several other meetings. It hit me this morning when I was actually figuring
out what I was going to say today, that in some ways what we went through, the process, I
think, is a lot about what we're here talking about and that is successes. That is what I am
really going to focus on.
I'm going to give you my view of what it takes to have successes in this line of work. You
need communication. I think Carlton Dufrechou is one of the best communicators that I've
ever been around. I think it's important that we all have whatever group we're associated
with, somebody who can communicate to a wide range of people. It's very important. You
need organizational skills. We have Dr. Gorin, who is one of the most highly organized
individuals I have ever been around and certainly it has rubbed of on me somewhat.
But you need that. You need that technical organization. You need people to believe that
when your group or your agency says something that it is based in good facts. Anne Rheams
is driven by her heart and you need heart. Anne's programs come from here, and I think you
need that and now that brings me to my part. I think one of my greatest skills, as I told Steve,
is I like to wing it. In this process, you must be pragmatic. You must have a management
plan. You must have objectives. You must have goals. But that in itself is not going to get
you to the end of the trail. You have to, in my opinion, be able to wing it. You have to be
opportunistic. You have to be there and open to ideas that you may not have even thought
about. If you're open for that, then those ideas will come along. That's what I want to talk
to you briefly about today is how an idea or how a dream—actually a dream can become a
reality. I think in some way that is what we're selling to our constituents, to the public, to the
people we're working with. A dream. A goal that their watershed, their body of water can
be cleaned up and it can be returned to what it was.
We are bound by our imagination and what we can think that it will take to clean up Lake
Pontchartrain. And so what I'm going to tell you briefly about today is an example of how
I think being opportunistic, having a plan in place that you can follow, and also just winging
it can actually lead to success.
About three years ago, on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain there was a Police Juryman,
which is like our County Commissioner. His name was Kevin Davis. He had a dream.
Kevin's dream was the establishment of a Rails to Trails Project. For those of you who are
not familiar with these programs, there's an opportunity to buy abandoned rail lines and
convert them into biking, hiking trails, horseback riding trails. Kevin had that dream. He
was literally the only man, I think, in St. Tammany Parish that even knew what a Rails to
Trails line was. Luckily for the Foundation, our paths crossed. Kevin called and asked us
to come over and speak with him to educate us about his dream establishing a Rails to Trails
Page 277
-------
line in St. Tammany Parish. It just so happened that the Rails to Trails that he envisioned
passed close to a piece of property that was up for development, and a citizens group was in
litigation trying to stop the developer from turning the land into a housing track. It is a
beautiful piece of property, and I'll show you a slide in a minute, called Cane Bayou. Well,
Kevin, one of our Board of Directors, Connie Glockner, and a friend of mine, Terry Bewig,
an environmental attorney, met with Kevin. In the room there was a map. All of a sudden
we were looking at the Rails to Trails and we realized, wow, Cane Bayou is next to the Rails
to Trails. Then we also noticed that just to the east of Cane Bayou was a 12,000 acre
undeveloped tract on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain. At that time, basically, we were
very naive. We had a dream and we decided, we're going to make this a National Wildlife
Refuge. We're not only going to have the Rails to Trails, we're going to have a premier
outdoor recreation facility for the people of southeast Louisiana.
I needed a way to sell Carlton and my Board of Directors on the idea so that I could spend
time on the project. I was able to go to our Management Plan and say the citizens wanted us
to protect and restore land base and aquatic essential habitat in the Pontchartrain Basin. Also,
the public wanted us, the staff of the Foundation, to design, develop, and oversee a system
of parks and wildlife preserves that protect the basin's essential habitat. So, I actually had
justification and we began. Literally, it was a dream. But, how could we protect this land?
We called several federal agencies and all of them told us it would take eight to 10 years. If
you would like to have a National Estuary Research Reserve Tract, that's probably about a
five to eight year process. The Fish & Wildlife Service told us, "Nobody is putting up money
to buy land. We're keeping our head down. It's not a good time to try to establish a new
refuge." And so the people, themselves, refused to believe we could not do this, we would
not accept that. We established a Wildlife Refuge Committee that included home builders,
people that we had in the past been at odds with over development, sportsmen, all the
Chambers of Commerce, businessmen, and set about and designed a campaign to acquire this
land as a Wildlife Refuge.
Because of the diversity of the group, the Congressional Delegation listened to us. Honestly,
when an environmental group, a Chamber of Commerce representative, and the president of
the Home Builder's Association can sit down in the same room, trust me, the Congressional
Delegation will listen. Because that is the type of partnership that they are interested in.
So three years later, the dream that began in that room actually is a reality. The Rails to Trails
was dedicated on October of last year. The Conservation Fund, which is a nonprofit group
in Washington, D.C., purchased outright through a grant from the Melon Foundation 3,700
acres of the 12,000 and donated it to the citizens of this country as a wildlife refuge. They
recently purchased 1,100 more acres. So I think the point in all this—and I'll get to the slides
-is, again, I think it's important that we all have the management plans. I think it's important
that we follow the steps that we believe are right. But I think we have to be open to the ideas
Page 278
-------
that come from citizens. Folks who work in the agencies, I recognize that, you don't have
those liberties. But I would urge you that as a citizen organization we are much more able
sometimes to jump through gates that are not open for you all. And I would ask, there are
times that we can help you, and certainly I think in these kind of forums that's what we need
to be talking about. How citizen groups like the Foundation can help the agencies, vice versa,
to really reach our goals.
So now I'm going to show you what I believe is some of the most beautiful land on this
planet. This is the Rails to Trails line. It starts in Abita Springs and it will eventually go
from Abita Springs to Lacombe, through the National Wildlife Refuge, across Cane Bayou,
through Mandeville, and to the town of Covington. For those of you who have not seen the
north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, it's a beautiful area, and each of those towns has their own
distinct personalities. The Rails to Trails has become a focal point in these communities.
Abita Springs, which is a very small town, has just received a grant to develop a linear park.
So the town is now developing an eco-tourism business based upon this dream, and that is how
we sold it to the business community. It's very important, as somebody said yesterday, you
need economics. We are working now to get a grant to show in real dollars what a Rails to
Trails and a Wildlife Refuge equates to in actual dollars, because that is what business people
want to hear. Yes, they like saving land. Some of them feel good. But their bottom line is,
"Is it taking land out of commerce? Are we going to recover the lost tax base?"
This is the Rails to Trails as it crosses the Abita River and a couple of folks roller skating.
That's another small creek near Abita. That gentleman is biking. This is the headquarters.
This is an old caboose and that's about mid-way between the line. I was out there last week
and there were tremendous crowds on a Friday and it was a holiday. But the great news is
that Rails to Trails has far exceeded any estimate and it's really only in the first phase of
development.
That's Cane Bayou. Cane Bayou is actually one of the last undeveloped bayous in Lake
Pontchartrain. Literally, you can go from the Highway 190 bridge out to Lake Pontchartrain
and that's where we're going now, and there is no development. There's one house up at the
upper end. But the 24 acres that we originally started out, ironically, we were able to acquire
the 4,800 acres before we were actually able to acquire the 24 acres. Peter Uddo, who was
the developer, finally reached an agreement about a month ago, and now the original 24 acres
that we set out to save has been saved.
There are other things that spun off from this dream. These are the sea grass beds in Lake
Pontchartrain. The last remaining large acreage of these grasses is found in the lake front
found within the Wildlife Refuge boundary. What John Burns, who works with Cliff on the
monitoring program, believes is that having that undeveloped land and naturally filtering
pollutants, as we all know wetlands do, has saved these grasses. Citizen volunteers, Cliff
Page 279
-------
Kenwood, and the University of New Orleans are using to replant the lake's grass beds. The
other real positive that has come out of this whole wildlife refuge is we were able to sit down
with the Congressional Delegation and explain to them why that land was the most valuable
property in the Lake Pontchartrain Basin. When you hear someone like Senator Johnston
stand up at the dedication ceremony and say, "The reason we need to save this land is because
it is protecting the last sea grass beds we have in the lake." That is a very powerful statement
and is the type statement that we all need to get out of our Congressional delegation.
This is one of my artistic shots. This is actually just the headline from the Times Picayune.
It says it all. Again, the thing that I want people to understand is this Wildlife Refuge was the
quickest established wildlife refuge in the history of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. All
the congressional people and all the business people said it was basically because people were
working together.
I'm going to end on this slide. This is Cliff Glockner who a lot of you saw yesterday. This
is actually at a site we're going to go to tomorrow. But I get back to my point about when
people tell you that you can't do something. This is the Bonnet Carre flood structure that
we're going to tour tomorrow. It was a proposed site of a freshwater diversion that had
Congressional authorization. But people like Cliff and other people have been fighting the
project for over 20 years. The Foundation has been working on that project for over five
years. This is from an earlier press tour where Cliff addressed the media about why he
thought the project was bad. The reason I included this is one person can make a difference.
What I would ask all of you to do is, again, have your plans open to people's visions, like
Cliff, the people of the Wildlife Refuge Committee, Kevin Davis. There is a place for those
people's dreams and visions to fit into your plan. Because really that, is the power of a
Management Plan. I know we all hear about Management Plans that sit on the shelf. Well,
I think those management plans sit on the shelf because maybe there's no way to integrate the
dreams and visions of the people in the watershed. I think that is the critical element. These
reports, these Management Plans have got to equate to what people view is their future.
This is what it's all about. This is a slide from a press tour, and this basically just shows the
diversity of the groups we're working with. There are some folks: Ken Kirkpatrick,
Congressional Staff, commercial fishermen, Board of Directors, sportsmen. Those are the
people that are really making the successes possible that we're experiencing. That's what it's
going to take to make these plans work.
Thank you.
Question:
What's your annual budget?
Page 280
-------
Answer: Carlton Dufrechou
Totally in 1994, we had about $600,000 of expenditures. That is programs, projects, and the
office.
Question:
And most of your funding comes from EPA?
Answer: Carlton Dufrechou
The projects are almost exclusively from EPA. We do have a good number of corporate
sponsors that do some of our monitoring programs and some of the others. The major projects
are EPA funded.
Dr. Steve Gorin:
Tell them about the two offices.
Carlton Dufrechou:
Dr. Gorin is mentioning that we actually have two offices: the program office and the main
office. The program office handles specifically all federal grants, which would be the major
projects that you saw some of this afternoon.
Question:
What kind of decisions do you ask your Board to make? Do you typically present your budget
and your plans for the next year or how do you do that?
Answer: Carlton Dufrechou
The Board sets a policy. Yes, we do present budgets and plans. The Board actually sets the
policy for the Foundation. The staff implements that policy.
Question:
You meet every quarter?
Page 281
-------
Answer: Carlton Dufrechou
The Board meetings are bimonthly, every two months.
Question:
Is the Board selected or appointed?
Answer: Carlton Dufrechou
The Board is actually 14 members. Ten of the members are from the parishes around the
basin. They are elected. They're nominated and elected by our membership. The other four
members that I forgot to mention earlier, they are representatives of the state agencies, the
Department of Environmental Quality, Natural Resources, Health & Hospitals, and Wildlife
& Fish.
Question:
They're elected by the membership?
Answer: Carlton Dufrechou
Yes. They're nominated. Something that is really special about this organization to me is it's
a people organization, the people of the basin. They pick the Board members. The Board
members actually answer ultimately to the folks of the basin, all the residents.
Question:
So what do you have to do to be a member?
Answer: Carlton Dufrechou
You can join. In fact, we will give you an application before you leave this afternoon. That's
it. We do have out of state members. Unfortunately, out of state members cannot vote for
any of the particular parishes. You have to be a resident of that parish to vote for a Board
member in that parish.
Question:
I guess what I'm trying to get at is how small or select a group your membership is.
Page 282
-------
Answer: Carlton Dufrechou
The voting membership is right at 1,000. The majority of those would be in three parishes:
Orleans, Jefferson, and St. Tammany Parish. Those parishes have larger numbers of board
members. They have actually two board members each. The others all have one.
Question:
One of you commented that you felt that your program started off a little differently than an
estuary program in that you went to the public first to help you identify priorities.
Answer: Carlton Dufrechou
Yes.
Question:
That's really, in an estuary, that's one of the first tasks. Also, you said, "We did this," as if
your nonprofit foundation was already established. So what was it?
Answer: Carlton Dufrechou
The organization was established before we went out. The organization is a private nonprofit.
We're a bit of a hybrid. We were established by an Act of the state legislature in 1989, close
of '89, and we had a one shot in the arm of funding from the state of Louisiana that got us
underway. That was actually the catalyst to get all of this going.
Question:
You did say that you went to the public first as if estuary programs don't.
Answer: Carlton Dufrechou
You are correct, I mis-spoke on that. The thing that I meant to focus on is that this
organization was not heavy with scientists, with environmental professionals when it got
started. In fact, we are still only a handful of really technical people on staff. We depend
very heavily—initially we did-on the public for our direction. We still do for that. Our
technical input now comes from folks like Dr. Hastings, if he's still around there, from the
universities in the area. They provide the background or actually the backbone of our technical
expertise.
Page 283
-------
Question:
Do you do much research?
Answer: Carlton Dufrechou
No, ma'am. We tend to do research when it's necessary to determine the magnitude of a
problem, but our emphasis is particularly focused on implementation, specific projects, and
find a solution, let's get the solution underway, and a heck of a lot of coordination trying to
get whomever, whether it's a state agency, local program, federal program, everybody
working together, and the user groups too, which are certainly critical.
The first phase of the CMP was completed in '91 and the second phase in summer of '93.
The last phase, which is winding up right now, will actually be the second phase when we
started implementing programs with projects. The ones that were more readily implementable
right from the second phase.
Response:
The first part being the second phase.
Carlton Dufrechou:
May of'91.
Dr. Steve Gorin:
One of the things I think would be of interest to you is the structure of the public meetings.
We've worked with people. We had looked at the National Estuarian Program. It took a long
time to get into it. We felt like we needed to get started a lot sooner. But our public meetings
were not heavily structured. They were just open meetings. We didn't have the structure like
you had to invite so many from this group, like you have to in a National Estuarian Program,
where they give you some guidelines on what you've got to do and how you've got to put it
together. We just went out and met with people-period. The difference we have found—we
talk a lot with the people in Barataria-Terrebonne-that we just didn't have the need. We were
looking more grassroots, and the people that were involved were the people that wanted to be
involved. It was a little different from that aspect.
There's another thing that I'd like to mention. When you talked about funding and how we
were funded. We have different functions as well. Sheila, behind you, can tell you about
Page 284
-------
something going on right now with Back to the Beach, one of our major fund raising functions
that we have during the year. That's where we get the monies to operate the main office.
Dr. Steve Gorin:
The funds don't come strictly from membership. We'd starve. So we have other ways of
getting funds. But that's the distinction between the two offices. The main office is supported
by outside funds, while the program office strictly handles EPA funds. There's no line
between it.
Carlton Dufrechou:
Mr. Knudson.
Question: Myron Knudson
There's also a little difference in the funding of a National Estuary Program and that's for
development of plans. Funding to foundations includes that, plus they can use money to
construct whatever is the bona fide type plan.
Carlton Dufrechou:
To implement, I believe, we have much more latitude, don't we?
Dr. Steve Gorin:
Yes, there's one line in our appropriation. It says appropriations for water quality.
Everybody knows our plan and know that that's what it's going to be used for. So we
implement those items using that one line. We have flexibility. We've heard a lot of talk.
Neil has talked about flexibility and accepting ideas. We go out and look for projects working
with people and a lot of the projects that we get depend upon the dynamics of the group that
we're working with. Sometimes opportunities come up because certain people are in office
or certain funding is available, you know. And we try to take advantage of those opportunities
to meet the water quality needs of our appropriation and our Comprehensive Management
Plan. Sometimes I think our successes in partnership is due to the flexibility we have, because
of the type of organization, and our appropriation.
Moderator: Carlton Dufrechou
Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you didn't mind our kind of laid back atmosphere this afternoon.
We had a good time. I enjoyed visiting with all of you throughout the conference. I hope that
Page 285
-------
many of you get to make the tour tomorrow and possibly I might be on that. I don't know if
I will or won't, depending on schedule. If any of you have any questions about Pontchartrain
or anything about our restoration or the city, please grab any of us, and thank you all for your
advice and assistance. We appreciate it.
Page 286
-------
Compliance as a Watershed Protection Tool (3:00-4:30PM)
Moderator: Jerry Saunders, Chief, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma Compliance
Section, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 6; Dallas, TX
There are several folks that have managed to take time out of their busy schedules and I
appreciate them. At the far end over there we have Mr. Tim Brewster, and he's the
Enforcement Program Administrator for Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality.
Then I have Mr. Rusty Ray who has been kind enough to come over from Texas. He's the
Environmental Coordinator with the Rural Environmental Outreach Program for the Lower
Colorado River Authority. Then the young lady sitting here beside me is Pam Phillips. Pam
is the Regional Enforcement Coordinating Officer for Region 6 in Dallas and all the media
report information back to her and she reports information back to us. So she's the funnel
through which information comes and goes.
With that, I think what we plan on doing today is having four brief presentations and then try
to open it up to some issues of discussion. We've identified several issues that I think we have
an interest in talking in. But if there are issues that you would like to talk about as well, we
will try to do that. I think we're going to begin with Rusty Ray who is going to be talking to
you about some of the things that they have done in the Lower Colorado River Authority and
some of the successes they've had with their enforcement efforts.
Speaker: Rusty Ray, Environmental Coordinator, Rural Environmental Outreach
Program, Lower Colorado River Authority; Austin, Texas
As Jerry said, my name is Rusty Ray. I work with the Lower Colorado River Authority.
Currently, I'm the team leader for the Rural Environmental Outreach Programs. These
programs include our Household Hazardous Waste Collection & Education Program, along
with our Ag Collection Programs, which we kind of piggyback or cheat. We work with the
TNRCC, the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission, on their Texas Country
Cleanups, a program for rural communities, mainly for farmers and ranchers. It offers the
opportunity to recycle properly rinsed pesticide containers and also tires, batteries, motor oil,
and oil filters.
We also work with the TNRCC when they have their Ag Amnesty Days within our watershed.
Most of our farmers and ranchers really enjoy these programs. It allows them proper disposal
of their unusable quantities of pesticides. The LCRA program also encompasses some
agricultural nonpoint source research projects, looking at runoff in a cornfield to see if we can
work with farmers to come up with BMP's (Best Management Practices) to keep the inputs
on their property.
Page 287
-------
We also have a Market Development Grant from the TNRCC. We are trying to put together
what we're calling the Central Texas Recycling Association. This program is to help rural
communities with their recycling efforts. Mainly bringing markets to the small communities,
so the people that would like to recycle can "do the right thing." Finally, we work in illegal
dump cleanups. That's what I'd like to talk to you today—how LCRA focused its efforts
toward cleaning up illegal dumps in the lower end of the Colorado River Watershed.
First off, I'd like to give you a little bit of insight into what LCRA is. We're actually an
agency of the state. This is our mission statement. The mission of the LCRA is to provide
reliable low cost utility and public services in partnerships with our customers and
communities, and to use our leadership role in environmental authority to ensure the protection
and constructive use of the area's natural resources. The LCRA is a conservation and
reclamation district which operates without any taxing authority. We get our direction from
a board. We have 15 members on our board, all of which are appointed by the Governor.
I guess we have a unique feature at the LCRA, being a river authority, we're one of the few
that can actually come up with ordinances, make rules, and be able to enforce them within our
portion of the watershed. Our enabling act allows us to adopt ordinances that will control the
pollution of the ground and surface waters of the Colorado River, and to enforce these
ordinances within the boundaries of our district. We have a ten-county district that's laid out
in our enabling act, and these are the areas where we can enforce our ordinances.
This is really a pretty poor map, but I'll try to go over and try to give you an idea of where
we are. This is the state of Texas. The Colorado River Watershed will follow right along
these lines. That's about 60 counties in the state of Texas and three counties in New Mexico
and about 865 river miles. In the LCRA 10-county district, we're right in this area here,
which is the lower end of the watershed. There are 10 counties in there and we have
approximately 600 river miles of the river that falls within what we call our district.
What I want to do now is try to focus on what the illegal dump efforts are. Most of you folks,
I'm sure, are familiar with RECRA Subtitle D. Our rural community has been informed of
what RECRA would do. This put the pinch on the rural communities because of these stricter
regulations and the cost factor. It put a lot of the landfills out of business. The LCRA Board
was thinking because we're going to have less permitted landfills, we're going to have more
illegal dumping or littering throughout the watershed. So what do we do? We had a lot of
our local communities within our district come and say, "What can you do to help us out,
LCRA?" We have anti-littering or anti-dumping ordinances on the books now, but we don't
have the folks to help us control that. There's only one county in our 10-county, statutory
district that has a person on staff that his sole job is to go out there and inspect and enforce
their anti-dumping ordinances. Generally, in the rural communities you'll find folks that wear
Page 288
-------
six or seven different hats, from dog catcher all the way to the anti-dumping ordinance.
Generally, the anti-dumping gets low billing on the totem pole.
With all this input from our local governments, our Board directed us to go out and do a
survey. They wanted us to get in the district and see how many landfills we had. So we got
in a plane and helicopter and did an aerial survey. We also did some river and lake
recognizance, where we floated the river and tried to identify and locate where the illegal
dumps were. We identified over 400 dumps within our ten county district. With that
information, the Board directed us to see if we couldn't make an ordinance to assist TNRCC.
I think at this point it's really important to note that the illegal dump ordinance and lot of this
work were funded through a grant from TNRCC. Without this type of funding, a lot of our
programs would not exist.
This ordinance isn't new. The TNRCC had an illegal dump ordinance on their books in the
Texas Water Code. As I stated, they're a statewide agency and what we were trying to do
was bring control down to a local level and work with the counties. "Before the LCRA adopted
the ordinance, they wanted to get with folks in the community, so we had town meetings. We
would go over our final draft of the ordinance and discuss it with the folks in the communities
and try to get input and feedback. I think, in general, most of the people we talked with were
happy. Now, you've heard a lot about private property rights today, and we had our counties
that thought we were trespassing; they thought we were getting on their private property when
we didn't need to be. And we're hoping that through the years we'll be able to work through
that situation.
The backbone of the ordinance is what we call the water quality protection zone. We actually
have water quality protection zones for the rivers and for the lakes. The rivers that we're
looking at are the Colorado River, the San Saba River, Pedernales River, and the Llano River.
This is actually our water quality protection zone. It's about 150 feet from the high water
mark on these rivers. So that's where our jurisdiction would fall in. On the lakes, it's pretty
similar. It's 150 feet from the mean pool level for Lake Buchanan, Lake Inks, Lake LBJ,
Lake Marble Falls, and Lake Travis. So this is the big definition we need to know for the
ordinance.
Moving through the ordinance, Section 3 says, littering and illegal dumping are prohibited.
Mainly, it says illegal dumps are prohibited both within and outside of the water quality
protection zone, and it defines that the LCRA will take care of the things that are within the
water quality protection zone, and the illegal dumps that are outside, we will forward to
TNRCC and assist them in their endeavors.
For enforcement, this just allows LCRA to go out there and inspect the lands. Now we want
to do this based on a credible complaint or reliable information. We don't want to go out
Page 289
-------
there and harass these land owners if we don't think there's anything out there. We also want
to be able to reinspect, to make sure that folks clean up an illegal landfill. We go back out
and do an inspection to make sure everything was cleaned up. We can take these folks to
court if they don't want to work with us. We can take them to a district court. We also have
the ability to fine.
Well, now that we've got our badge and our gun, what we thought was, let's try a voluntary
approach. So we identified the land owners along the river in our counties, and we held
county collections. These are free collections. We would send letters of notification to these
land owners along the river that we would have a collection on a certain date, and that they
were more than welcome to load up their trailers and bring in what they have. After the
collection, we would go and do a recon again to see if the illegal dumps were cleaned up. If
they were not, we would send out a letter of violation, saying, "you were given a chance to
clean this up and now you're going to have to come in and work with us." I'll go over the
enforcement action a little bit later on.
I think it's really important to note we've been talking about partnerships throughout this
symposium. Well, we made partnerships with disposal companies, metal recyclers and tire
recyclers. They donated their services for the folks in these counties at our collections. It's
really big PR for them. You know, if you've got the citizenry out there that are having a free
— in the cities folks call them clean sweeps. Well, it might be a river sweep. That's what we
actually did. Folks would bring in their stuff and drop it off.
With our voluntary cleanups, we've cleaned up 95 illegal dumps within the lower end of the
watershed in six counties. We still have four counties to go for cleanups. We've collected
approximately 160 tons of garbage, 40 tons of metal that has been recycled, and 3,000 tires
that have been recycled. It's region by region and some regions you get a good response and
some regions you don't get any response at all.
For regulatory action, we've been really lucky. Once we send our letters of violation, we get
the land owner to give us a call and say, "Hey, what can I do to clean it up?" So we work up
a cleanup plan with them and have a time line that's associated with it to get this site cleaned
up. So far, we haven't had to take anybody to court or put any fines on anybody. We feel
really good about that.
This could have been a typical site in some stretches of the river, where you'll see, I guess,
way back when it was an accepted practice to use appliances and cars and whatnot as bank f
stabilization. Well, we've learned a lot since then, and so now our bank stabilization is j
actually in the middle of the river. Through some of these cleanups, we're hoping to bring J
the river back to its beautiful levels again. It's really a pretty, pretty river. This is just a . j
photo of the sun setting on the Highland Lakes.
Page 290
-------
I guess that will do it for my talk. Are there any questions? Thank you.
Moderator: Jerry Saunders
Thanks, Rusty. We really appreciate that. It looks like it was a good success story and it's
good to see that happen. The next person on our agenda is going to be Tim Brewster. Tim
is filling in for Bruce Hammatt. I mislabeled his title earlier. It's Enforcement Program
Manager, and he's in charge of the Enforcement Program in Louisiana Department of
Environmental Quality.
Speaker: Tim Brewster, Enforcement Program Manager, Office of Water Resources,
Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality; Baton Rouge, LA
Hi. I'm Tim Brewster. As Jerry said, I'm in charge of the Enforcement Program for the state
of Louisiana's Office of Water Resources. I would have had a" really nice presentation.
Unfortunately, I just found out that I was going to give this talk yesterday afternoon. So I'm
going to have to wing it. No visual aids.
This may have come up earlier this morning. But according to our files, there are
approximately 1,600 facilities in the Lake Pontchartrain Basin, again, that we have on file.
About half of those are permitted facilities. Twenty-seven of them are major facilities, which
means that they discharge over one million gallons a day. In 1994, about 10% of our
enforcement effort went into the northern parishes of Lake Pontchartrain. So I'm not counting
the sections of East Baton Rouge or East Feliciana that actually got compliance orders.
The Enforcement Section is dealing with the enforcement activities on a statewide basis. We
have eight regional offices throughout the state. The Southeast Regional Office in the City
of New Orleans has probably the largest amount of people assigned to it, so that they can
respond to any environmental complaints. When they get the environmental complaints, they
try to work with the people to bring them into compliance through an informal process. If that
doesn't work or if the environmental violation is aggrievious enough, it's referred to Baton
Rouge, where we take formal enforcement actions. That ranges from compliance orders,
which is the state of Louisiana's version of an A.O., and penalty notices. As I said, 10% of
our enforcement activities for the calendar 1994 did go into the parishes north of Lake
Pontchartrain.
Thank you for your time. Are there any questions?
Page 291
-------
Moderator: Jerry Saunders
Thanks, Tim. I appreciate you filling in. Pam Phillips is the Regional Enforcement
Coordinator. She's going to be giving you some perspective in terms of where the agency is
headed from a geographic or place-based emphasis. Then after she's done, I'll follow-up with
what EPA's doing.
Speaker: Pam Phillips, Regional Enforcement Coordinator, U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency, Region 6; Dallas, TX
If I had been here three years ago and I came to talk to about compliance as a tool for
watershed protection, I'd have been talking about compliance meeting our traditional
enforcement approaches, which basically meant administrative orders and civil litigation. It
was kind of like we came in to break eggs with a sledge hammer. We came after you with
big penalties. We came out basically saying, "You've got to do this or else. You don't have
any choice." And we really weren't very open minded when it came to listening to people.
Today, when I talk to you about compliance, while our traditional enforcement tools are still
a very important part of compliance, we also consider outreach and assistance to be just as
important as the traditional enforcement tools. I'm here to tell you a little bit about how we
got here, because a lot of people keep saying, "Oh, this is just a passing phase with EPA.
You really don't mean it. This assistance and this compliance and all that you're talking to
me about is really just a way to get me in, talk to you, and give you a lot of information.
Then you're going to turn around and just beat me up with it." And I'm here to tell you that
I don't think that that's true. While, it's always certainly a remote possibility, that's really
not our intent because many of our definitions of compliance have changed because of
activities that we've been undertaking for about the last six years.
Back in 1988, Administrator Riley came in and said, "EPA has been around 25 years. We
need to start thinking about what have we accomplished? Where are we going? What do we
need to do next? And how are we going to do it?" So we started basically looking at what
we had been doing and we started experimenting with different ways to handle the problems
that we had been facing. With the evaluation and the pilot projects, we started consolidating
the data that we had collected over the 25 years. What kind of emissions are out there?
What's been the effect of our enforcement programs? What's been the effect of our permitting
programs? What has been the most effective work that we've done?
We had also started back in the mid-80's with some assistance projects. We started with the
CFC or chloroflorocarbon approach, where basically we had people who did a lot of meeting
with different members in the community. We met with a lot of different air-conditioning
Page 292
-------
industries: whether it was car, house, or business air conditioning. We had what was called
a Green Lights Program where we actually went out and helped people figure out ways to use
more energy efficient lighting systems and other more energy efficient type systems. We went
out and we helped people with waste miriimization. Are there ways where you never produce
your waste to begin with? We also started what is now called pollution prevention.
We had all these different activities going on and were going in about 100 different directions
all at the same time. There wasn't a whole lot of coordination on what we were doing. Each
office was evaluating their data. In about 1991, we started saying, "Hey, wait a minute.
We're serious. We've really got to evaluate where we're going." And in 1992, with the
election changes and stuff, it was not just the political appointees, but also the career people
that said, "Hey, we've been evaluating this long enough. Let's come up with some
conclusions and ideas. Where should we go next?"
So we really started looking at what we had found out through the years. And we found out
we have a pretty good compliance rate overall across the country. Depending on which
industrial sector you're talking about, we have anywhere from an 80% to a 95% compliance
rate. That's the large industrial sectors. So we've gotten the word out with the big guys on
just what they need to do.
When you start looking at the quality of our rivers and the quality of our air, things have
improved a lot. You guys that are as old as I am around here-Jerry was nice enough to call
me a young lady, but I'm actually a middle-aged woman—but if you remember back that long
ago, you'll remember we used to have rivers spontaneously ignite—even the Houston Ship
Channel. We used to have a lot of problems with the Houston Ship Channel catching on fire.
Here in the Louisiana area, between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, you had massive spills
going out into the river. You had massive air releases that were causing a lot of health
problems and you had to evacuate areas on a consistent basis. When I first started working
with the agency back in '79, I was constantly running down to Louisiana because of one spill
after another. Whether it was water or whether it was air, we had a lot of emergency
situations that came up. We had a lot of plants that were catching on fire because of sloppy
operating practices.
When you look at what is happening today, you don't see that. Sure, we still have some
spills. Sure, we still have some fires. But overall, the quality of air and the quality of water
have improved greatly due to improved operating practices that are going on at the plants.
You're finding mostly minor problems. You still have an occasional accident and a release.
But for the most part, big industry, big cities, medium size cities, they've gotten the word that
"Hey, environmental protection is something that we have to worry about and we have to
comply with." It's important. But it's not just industry. It's all of us in this room.
Page 293
-------
If you go to the different elementary schools, elementary schools now have programs for
teaching the kids. For example, it's important to put your trash where it belongs. It's
important to conserve water, so many different things that we never heard in school. So the
whole idea of environmental protection is really something that's gotten into our culture. Now
is every single person in this country aware? No. Is every single company aware and
complying? No. But that's not what we're talking about. You're never going to get 100%
of anything, except maybe paying taxes. But what we're looking at is that we've made great
improvements in this area. You've basically got people that are complying and people that
are trying really hard to do the right thing.
But we still have tremendous problems. So we started saying, "Okay. How's the best way
to address these problems?" We have traditionally for the most part gone the rather heavy
handed enforcement route. When we really started looking at what other agencies had done
at the state and local level, at some of our own programs~the CFC Program, the Green Lights
Program, and some of the other assistance programs, we said, "You know, we're making
much more of an impact in areas where we don't just use traditional enforcement. If we
actually go out there with an educational and outreach program, work very closely with the
state and local agencies and the different governmental groups, talk to some of the industrial
groups, and talk to community groups, we can have a much greater impact in an area."
We also went back and looked at how the problems are concentrated or focused in areas. We
decided that we really need to start focusing in geographic areas. What we used to do
traditionally is—since a lot of this is water associated, I'll pick on water right now—we would
say, "Okay, Jerry, you go to Southern Louisiana and I want you to do a whole lot of
enforcement. We want to have this enforcement initiative and you make sure that all the
people that are discharging in the Mississippi are now complying with their permits or that
they get permits." We started looking around and we said, "You know, Jerry's doing a really
good job. The surface water is getting a lot better." "DEQ is doing a really good job. The
surface water is getting much better." But you know, it really doesn't do as good a job for
the environment and public health if all we worry about is the surface water discharges. What
about all those leaking underground storage tanks, what about leaking landfills, what about
air deposition, we're still polluting the surface water with those other three methods, and
we're not doing anything about that.
So we came around and we said, "Okay, we've got to have a much more focused approach.
We're not going to go out and do brand new things. What we're going to do is refocus what
we're already doing and we're going to focus on areas." Sometimes it's called a geographic
initiative. Sometimes it's called a community initiative. Sometimes it's called place based.
But basically it all comes down to and means the same thing. That we're focusing in on a
particular part of the country. It will be a watershed, an ecosystem, some type of urban or
rural community, but we're going to focus on a particular place. And we're not going to
Page 294
-------
focus solely with a single media. We're not going to, for instance, focus all our water efforts
in Louisiana, and then focus our RCRA efforts up in Oklahoma, and then focus our air efforts
down on the Houston Ship Channel. If we're really going to have a consolidated effort, what
we need to do is focus our air, our water, our waste, our EPCRA, our underground storage
tanks. We need to go into an area and do a multi-media approach.
Now when I say multi-media, there's two different ways that I'm looking at that term. I
mean, we're going to focus our single media approaches so that we have water going and
looking at the water areas, and we have the underground storage tanks, and we have the
RCRA areas, and they're doing all of what we call the single media enforcement and
compliance assistance. But in addition to that, we're also going out to a lot of the big facilities
and we're looking at all of the different activities that they do. We're going to go to a
different facility, and I'll say right now, ABC Company, and we're going to look at their
water, their air, their RCRA. We're going to look at their overall compliance rate so that we
can see the real impact that facility is having on the community or on that particular area.
We're also going to consolidate all of the data that we've collected through the years. What
we're finding is that a lot of the stuff that's having a big impact now on the quality of life is
basically unregulated substances. So when we go out and we do our single media and our
multi-media approaches, we need to be creative and figure out ways that we can get people
to reduce their emissions — their unregulated emissions. That is, those emissions where there
are no regulations for what you're discharging into the river or what you're releasing into the
air, or what you happen to be disposing of somewhere.
So how do we use all of this multi-media and single media approach? And how do we get you
to come in and basically reduce the unregulated emissions? We started coming in with all of
these different things all at the same time. Each program was trying to address it differently.
We had water working in one area. We had RCRA working in an area. We had air working
in an area. We even created a group called multi-media that was basically doing their thing,
and addressing multi-media programs. But we were still basically going this way and that way
and that way and all over, and we weren't coordinating our actions or responses. When it
came down to it, we had Jerry working with DEQ, and we had the RCRA people working
with the RECRA DEQ people, and we had these people, and what we found is in a lot of areas
some of the state agencies were just as uncoordinated as we were when it came to RCRA and
air and water all talking to each other. EPA was a big contributor to that, because of the way
we did grants and because of the way we delegate programs. There were a lot of reasons that
basically people were going off and not making a consolidated or coordinated effort.
So what we came up with back in early '95-it's a new program for us~is we basically started
requiring all of the enforcement programs, through what we now call Enforcement &
Compliance Assistance Programs, to basically consolidate and/or coordinate one way or
Page 295
-------
another. Many of the regions, such as Region 6, are reorganizing and putting all of the
enforcement and compliance assistance into one division, because we feel that we cannot only
better deal with the problems that we address, but we can better deal with our different state
and local agencies by having all enforcement consolidated in one area.
Last year, at headquarters they reorganized into an Office of Enforcements & Compliance
Assistance. Not all the regions are going into enforcement divisions. Many of them are
basically consolidating their enforcement into different branches and using their existing
structure. But each region had to go through and evaluate and say, "How can I better
coordinate my responses so that I don't have three different people going off in three different
directions and basically telling the state agencies three different stories and telling industry
three different stories and the community three different stories." We had to consolidate,
organize, and coordinate.
So we're in the process now of planning for '96 and '97, and we're really emphasizing our
community-based approaches, and we're going to be spending a substantial portion of all of
our resources in community based, many of which will be a watershed approach. What we'll
be doing is not just coming and talking to you about the water protection that we're going to
be doing with our Clean Water Act enforcement, whether it's drinking water or NPDES
programs. We're going to come in and we'll be talking to you at different conferences, and
with the enforcement actions that we take, and with the Compliance Assistance actions, where
we come out to areas and help teach people what they need to do. We'll be coming out with
a coordinated approach, where we'll be talking to you about air and water and RCRA all at
one time. What we'll have is we'll have Jerry here, and we'll have Mark Potts here, who
does the RCRA program, and we'll have John Hepola here, who basically works with our air
program, and we'll have people from all the different programs all start coming to different
conferences like this, and we'll talk about the multi-media and community-based approach
where we coordinate both the single enforcement and multimedia actions that we're doing, and
also, where all the programs are going to be coordinating and often going to a facility or all
going to a municipality at the same time. And we will be talking to you or the company about
all the EPA problems that you might have at a particular facility or at a municipality.
But in addition to that, I've said a couple of different times, that we're going to be having
compliance assistance. We're going to be going out and having educational seminars. We're
going to be going out and talking to people. We're going to be setting up different seminars.
We're going to have people that you can call within the region, and if you need help trying
to figure out what you need to do, we'll start helping you with that. Because what we found,
is while we have 80 to 95% compliance with the big guys, when we start getting to the small
guys, we don't get those good compliance rates. When we started looking at why our first
reaction was they're bad guys. But I had to go out and talk to a lot of different people, and
when we really started talking to the small guys we discovered that, they didn't understand
Page 296
-------
what they needed to do and they were often afraid to ask us what they needed to do. They
would go and read the different regs, and all of you all know if you've looked at the regs, it's
probably a stack as tall as I am or maybe up to here. But if you look at all your C.F.R. 's and
try to figure out what you're going to do, if you don't have the resources to devote somebody
to do full-time compliance work, full-time regulatory work with the different environmental
regulations that you get at the state, local, and federal level, then you don't have the ability
to understand what all you need to do. You don't even know, "Who do I need to call? Do
I call my County Health Department? Do I call the City Health Department? Do I call EPA?
Do I call the state?" And you often will get bounced around from one person to another trying
to get the different information.
The small guys really do need a lot of help trying to figure out just what do they need to do,
and we can't just refer them to regs or say, "Okay, go look at 40-CFR Part 260, 261, 262,
263, 264, 265, and that will tell you all you need to do with RCRA." What you basically
need to do is say, "Okay, what kind of company do you have? Okay, this is what you're
doing. These are the particular regs. Go look at 261.13, 14 and 1-5." Things like that. So
that we can try to give compliance assistance.
Now the state and local agencies have been doing this compliance assistance a lot longer than
we have and they have very good programs, where they go out and help people. So we're
basically going to piggyback along with the state and local agencies and try to learn a lot from
them, and also try to make sure that we are giving them more benefit, that we're not getting
in their way or that we're not tripping over them. And it will be a new role for us working
with the state and local agencies to provide compliance assistance so that we can all build
together.
Right now in Region 6, we're working in each of the different states with one program or
another working on our compliance assistance programs. With the small businesses, some of
what we'll be doing with the compliance assistance is that we'll actually be offering a period
of time to give people an opportunity to come into compliance before we take a traditional
enforcement route. We're looking at all types of different opportunities and different ways
to basically work with people to get them into compliance before we go to the traditional route
and start looking at administrative orders and civil referrals.
If anybody has ideas on ways you think that we can improve what we're doing, or if you want
more information, please give me a call at the regional office. I'll be glad to talk to you. I
travel a lot, so you might have to leave a voice mail message, but I will get back to you. We
really would appreciate your input on different ideas that you think we might be able to
improve our enforcement program.
Thank you. Do you have a question?
Page 297
-------
Question:
Yes, I have some questions about some of the new education programs. I work with the Lake
Foundation. Are any of the programs that you guys are talking about, are they actually going
to be designed? Sounds like most of the programs you're talking about would be designed
programs, like the waste facilities in industry. What about programs involving the general
public? The reason I bring that up is because the citizenry is becoming much better educated.
They know how to get records. They know how to look at the records. They know how to
tell if a facility is in or out of compliance. My question, I guess, is we have a lot of questions.
You know, we will instruct people to go look at the records and pull the records, and they
recognize that the facility is out of compliance, and then their next question is, "Okay, what's
next or why?" I guess what I'm saying is, are any of these new programs you're talking about
going to be directed to the general public without their monitoring the facility, discharging to
a bayou or river that they love very much like Lake Pontchartrain or Lake Maurepas?
Pam Phillips:
I can tell you generally that there's two answers to what we need to do. We are not as far
along in designing different programs for the general community. We are more organized and
more oriented toward talking to different sectors and different groups like that. As part of our
environmental justice outreach, we are developing different programs where we can go to the
general community and we're also looking at the general community. But partly we need to
know what you want as a member of the general community. We've started talking to
different groups. Some of them are through different universities or junior colleges. We've
talked to some different community grass roots groups and we're getting different ideas on
what people are looking for, but we don't have anything that we've developed yet. We're still
at the information gathering stage. What would be helpful for you? We've had a few general
outreach programs, especially under the Superfund Program, where we have these technical
assistance grants that we can award, and we've gone out to the general communities with a
very specific program for the technical assistance grants. But other than in the Super Fund
area with those technical assistance grant programs, we haven't gone out yet, and we don't
feel like we're quite ready for the general public education. But please, give us a call. Give
me a call or give Jerry a call and help us figure out what would be helpful.
Response:
Well, again, off the top of my head. You, for example, are working with a facility that let's
just say is out of compliance for whatever reasons. I think it would be helpful as part of that
communication between the facility to also communicate to the public what that particular
facility is doing, you know, working with in our case the DEQ and the EPA. I say that cause
I think it would help you guys. Yes, there is an education problem within the industry, but
Page 298
-------
again, I think if you would try to share with the public the entire process, "Yes, the plant is
out of compliance, but here's the plan."
Pain Phillips:
That's one of the things that we've been talking about doing. How do we better get out our
information? If we're taking some type of action on a particular facility, how do we get the
information out as to what this company is doing to correct the problems? And we are looking
at ways. We have basically issued press releases and very few newspapers pick them up. So
we're really looking at what is the best way. We're looking at possibly using different trade
journals to try and get that information out, and by trade journals, I use that as a generic term.
Some communities have publications. A lot of industrial groups have publications that they
put out. So we're looking at how do we find out where those publications are? How do we
find out the person that we need to send the information to? So we're going through some of
that process. If you have any information, please give it to us, because that would help us a
lot. Any other questions? Yes.
Question:
I've heard the term environmental justice more and more lately. Could you say a few words
about it?
Pam Phillips:
Environmental justice. The technical term is there's a concern that some communities bear
a disproportionate share of pollution. We don't have a good definition yet. In February of
1994, I believe it was, President Clinton signed an Executive Order that required different
federal agencies to get together and come up with a definition of what they think an
environmental justice community is and we're still basically working on that. We don't have
total agreement yet. But what we look at is minority and low income communities, and we
start looking at are they bearing a disproportionate share? Do they have too many pollution
sources in that community? If so, then what we're looking at is trying to make sure that all
the facilities in that particular area are in compliance with the regulatory requirements. We
do look at ways that we can reduce penalties so that they would be willing to reduce emissions
that we can't regulate. We look at different ways that we can basically try to get more
cleanups in that particular area. We start concentrating some of our enforcement first in the
areas where you have a high percentage of low income or minority populations. Most often,
they turn out to be urban areas in many of our states. But they also include the rural areas
where you have unincorporated communities. That especially affects Louisiana where we look
very closely. Does that kind of answer your question?
Page 299
-------
Response:
Yes, it does. Does an environmental justice alert start out from the citizens complaining?
Does it bottom up?
Pam Phillips:
It has two different ways. One way is the traditional way. We get citizens complaints.
Someone will call in and say, "We think there is a problem there," and we look at it. We're
also, through the geographic information system, we are putting the 1990 Census Data into
the program by zip code and by putting a facility's latitude and longitude, we can get
information on the surrounding area. And when we start trying to decide, okay, where do we
start with our inspections this year? We start pulling up that information and say, "Okay,
we'll start in this particular community." So it's both bottom up and also traditional targeting
and trying to decide where do we start with our inspections this year. Does that answer your
question?
Response:
Yes, thank you.
Moderator: Jerry Saunders
Thanks, Pam. What I intend to do is give you a brief overview of what we in the Water
Program have been doing from a watershed perspective. I guess, sort of as a follow-up from
what Pam was indicating in terms of how the agency is now looking at things from a
geographic or place-based type enforcement effort. We have two watershed enforcement
efforts going on from an enforcement standpoint within our region. One of those is in
Louisiana. It's in the Lake Pontchartrain Basin. The other one is in the state of Texas
involving Galveston Bay Basin. In just a minute, I'll go down and we'll look at some of the
overheads that I have, because there are some things I want to go over with you briefly.
As some of you are obviously aware of, Lake Pontchartrain, we chose that one after some
discussion with the state and also because we knew the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation
had some activities ongoing, and we recognized that it was being recognized at both local,
state, and national level, as a sensitive watershed that was being impacted by salt water
intrusion, municipal runoff, fresh water diversion, agricultural runoff, and sewage discharges,
along with a variety of other things. We also knew the Comprehensive Basin Plan was in the
process of being developed to identify specific problems and that actions were being taken to
address some of those problems. But while such a plan was being developed, we thought, j
"Hey, wait a minute. We have some tools right here and now that we can try to do something
Page 300
-------
to try to help out. Why don't we do that? And let's try to figure out what those things might
be." Well, we haven't figured out what all those things are yet, but we have done some
things. That's what I'm going to tell you about today.
Basically, we're trying to work with the state to improve water quality. Let me first get down
here and give you some overheads. As a matter of fact, this is an excerpt from one of the
documents that the Pontchartrain Basin Foundation put out, cause I thought it was kind of
handy, so I borrowed from you folks. What you can see is the Lake Pontchartrain Basin
within the state of Louisiana. You can see the outline of the Basin boundary. It doesn't go
all the way over to the Mississippi River and Feliciana Parishes, And it really, if you just
look at the Pontchartrain Basin itself running into the lake only, it would not quite go over to
include the Pearl River, but if you want to look at it covering the whole system, then
obviously that would be included. But the major river systems you see there are the Amite,
the Tickfaw, the Tangipahoa, the Chefuncte, Bogue Chitto, and then of course, Pearl River
coming across there and some of the arrows you can see. It's a very little document put out
for summary purposes, by the way, from the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation. The color
didn't come through here. I'd encourage you to pick up one of those documents out there.
They indicate, in general, where major problems. Whether it is from municipal runoff*
sewage and municipal runoff~a lot of that is coming from the north shore—municipal runoff
concerns from the New Orleans/Jefferson Parish area, fresh water diversion, of course, some
possibilities of coming through the Bonnet Carre Diversion, and then of course, salt water
diversion gradient coming up from the Gulf. There's a number of generic problems described
in some of those documents. I encourage you to take a look at that and also just talk with
LDEQ.
So as I said, we picked the Lake Pontchartrain Basin in Louisiana because everyone felt it was
of concern and there was a lot of evidence out there indicating there were problems. We
picked Galveston Bay for the same reason. But at the same time, we felt two things. It wasn't
just enough to improve water quality in the basin through enforcement of existing NPDES
permits, which is something we could do right away. But the other thing is, we wanted to
work in partnership with LDEQ. The reason we did that was as Tim has already mentioned.
They've been pretty active doing enforcement activities in the basin. I started looking at what
they had done. They had issued over 70 orders or 70 enforcement actions during the last year
just to facilities within the basin. We started looking at what we had done and said, "Hey,
wait a minute. Maybe if we start diverting what limited resources we have for minor
enforcement over to these areas, maybe we could help out and have a little more targeted
enforcement. Try to get a little more return for our enforcement buck." That's what we're
trying to do. Work in partnership with the state and at the same time improving water quality
in the basin by doing what we can right now. That is enforcing existing NPDES permits. All
right?
Page 301
-------
Specifically, what we decided to do was, as you can see here, what we're doing within that
effort, if you will, is to monitor compliance of all the major facilities in the basin, because
we're still a non-delegated program, meaning EPA still has primacy. As Tim had mentioned,
we've got 27 of those in the basin, and we're initiating enforcement as needed to bring about
compliance. We've been doing that all along. We're going to continue to do that. The
second thing EPA is going to be doing is initiating enforcement actions as needed to bring all
noncompliant minor facilities, which have received an NPDES permit, into compliance.
Now we looked at an initial list of about 180. Unfortunately, not all of those NPDES permits
are effective. We're trying to glean from that actions that we can take. Now we haven't
taken 180 enforcement actions yet. You'll see that in just a minute. But we've started down
the path of looking at those files and seeing which ones are in fact noncompliant, which ones
can EPA take action on, and attempting to do that. At the same time, DEQ is committed to
continuing to initiate enforcement actions. Really take a fairly high level of enforcement
action in that area and respond to all the citizens complaints and then address violations
relating to state requirements. Because in some cases the area state requirements that are
being violated aren't federal requirements. We recognize that neither one of us really have
all the resources in the world, so again, working together maybe we can accomplish a little
bit more than if we worked separately. So again, it goes back to those two primary goals in
trying to make improvements as we can right now and, at the same time, working together.
So what have we done? Well, this is just EPA's list. We got some heavy hitting on here.
There isn't any question about that. We have filed suit over the past five to seven years, if
you will, against the big municipalities in the basin.
Involving the City of Kenner, we just filed a Consent Decree a year ago last October. The
Consent Decree is finalized. Part of that action was initiated for a couple of reasons. One
was for pre-treatment program problems. But another major aspect of that case involved
unauthorized discharges of a big name that was releasing partially or untreated sewage into
Lake Pontchartrain. Well, that has since ceased. That action was very successful. We're
pleased with the City of Kenner. They are also under order right now to do over $11 million
of investment to eliminate some of their overflow and bypass problems related to sewage that
could possibly end up in Lake Pontchartrain if it wasn't taken care. But those problems are
being addressed.
;
The City of Baton Rouge, and many of you may already know and Greg Crawford, here, |
handles that particular case, we have had under a Consent Decree for a number of years,
involving initially eliminating discharges from 140 package plants back in that Amite River
system we were talking about and trying to get all those package plants eliminated and tied
into major force mains and then pumped to three major plants. It would be upgraded to j
secondary treatment and then discharged in the Mississippi River. In other words, get it out
Page 302
-------
of the sensitive low flow receiving stream back water areas that are going into the Lake
Pontchartrain Basin, and put it into a high flowing river that can readily assimilate the waste
and start receiving adequate secondary treatment.
As some of you already know, we have a case pending right now with the City of New
Orleans. Believe me, that case is right now. If you look at the complaint that was filed, it
was really for two reasons. One was for solids handling, solids and sludges being discharged
into the river with proper treatment. The other one was for overflows and bypasses on their
collection systems. That is still ongoing so I can't talk too much about that one right now.
But we're still trying to address some of those problems of improperly treated sewage getting
back into the back water areas that currently drain into Lake Pontchartrain.
So we have those three big referrals. Right now we just have one administrative penalty
pending in the basin, of those 27 major facilities that we talked about earlier. This one wasn't
even major. It happened to be a minor. It was brought to our attention by a citizen complaint
and we started looking at the records. We ended up imposing 'a fine. That one is still
pending. It hasn't been resolved yet. It involves some sampling problems. It involves some
reporting problems and some discharge problems as well. So that one is still pending. And
then (c), these are the ones that we just recently did as a result of our desire, if you will, to
try to help out Lake Pontchartrain. There's about 65 or 70 orders we just recently issued to
scrap metal dealers in the Basin. The reason for that was the storm water data has come in
and indicated that junk yard, scrap metal dealers tend to have heavy metal discharges, and
from a storm water standpoint, they're probably one of the worst sources of that kind of
pollutant. So what we've done is we've sent out the orders and we've asked them to get back
to us and let us know: (1) are you covered by our Industrial General Storm Water Permit, and
(2) if you are, then have you developed your Pollution Prevention Plan, because we want to
know this. Then of course, we're in the process of following up on those right now. We're
still waiting for some of the responses to come in and our basic intent there is to try to make
sure everyone gets covered and to get that Pollution Prevention Plan in place so we can try
to cut back on some of that heavy metal discharge.
The second one you see listed there, Public Effluent Treatment Works, 25 orders. Now I
mentioned that 180 we started out with initially. Well, a lot of those old files, when you start
looking at them, you'll see they either have expired or continued permits. So we're down to
about really 60 or 70 that we're looking at seriously to see whether or not some enforcement
action can be taken. We've issued about 25 to 30 of them so far. They're basically two small
towns in the basin on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain and the Tangipahoa, Chefuncte
Indian Basins, therefore, failure to adequately report, failure to adequately sample, and for
those that aren't reporting, failure to meet effluence. What we're trying to do is work with
those people to make them understand what it is their requirements are, and try to come up
with compliant schedules. That's what we're trying to do.
Page 303
-------
As Pam had indicated, we're trying to do some compliance assistance efforts. We had our first
meeting about three weeks ago over in Hammond. We met with about nine or 10 of these
facilities and basically explained to them what it is we're trying to do and why we're doing
it. At the same time, we had some of the financing agencies there. Because we recognized
that some of these small town, 1,500 to 2,000 people, just aren't going to have the ready cash
laying around to say, "Hey, I can go out and fix the treatment plant today." That isn't going
to happen. So what we have to try to do is work with them in conjunction with funding
agencies, whether it is state, federal or local, and then come up with a compliance schedule
that makes sense. So those are some of the things that we're doing.
Go on to the next one. Well, what do we know about watershed enforcement? Well,
watershed enforcement is really not that much different than what we've done before, except
there's a much greater emphasis placed upon enforcement against minor facilities and a much
greater emphasis placed upon enforcing general permits, and using all the enforcement tools
we have available to us. Plus a much greater effort placed upon communication and outreach.
We're just really starting down the road on all these areas. So we're not done yet. But that's
the path we're headed down, more outreach and more enforcement against minor facilities
and, quite honestly, working with them more. These are some of the things that we've
learned over the years through a number of minor enforcement efforts we've been involved
in, and through our efforts involved with the Pontchartrain, as well as Galveston Bay, so far.
So I've got some general statements here. Many of you will recognize these to just be simple
statements of truths. But I will go through them anyway.
1. Enforcement is only a portion of the overall picture to improve water quality in a basin.
Very simple, I know I spoke to Rusty Ray, here a week or so ago, in preparation for this, and
there really is a desperate need for integrated enforcement, being state, federal and local.
Because not only do you have shared resources and you can accomplish more, but you have
different authorities. Now at the current time, you know, we have the NPDES Program and
we have NPDES enforcement. The state also has a state program with state authorities that
are covering different facilities than we are covering. A lot of times there will be facilities
that have a state permit that don't have a federal permit. Even though they may have applied,
EPA just has not had the resources to issue them. So there's a place for state enforcement
enforcing the state permits, a place for EPA enforcing the federal permits, and then there's
very much a place for local authorities, particularly with septic tank systems. Neither the state
agencies, nor EPA, really have a good handle on that, in terms of making sure that they're
properly designed and maintained, because there are so many of them out there. Whereas,
local authorities, whether it is done at the parish level or some other level, River Authority j
level, or whatever the case may be, might very well be better suited to solving those kinds of j
problems rather than us. Particularly if we could get out there and explain to some of these *
people what a workable septic tank really looks like and why you shouldn't be putting one in
Page 304
-------
like this. So we need help all the way along the road. We think that it's going to take that
integrated effort. But anyway, enforcement is only a portion of that, as we indicate here.
2. Nonpoint source problems, salinity gradients, and habitat issues cannot be addressed by
the NPDES Enforcement Program. We've got to work together. We've got to work
together with the Basin Foundation. We've got to be working together with the state, federal
and local to accomplish the most that we can.
3. The most effective approach to solving water quality issues would involve state, federal,
and local private entities.
4. Due to the resource intensive nature of watershed enforcement activities, EPA should
generally not select a basin for an initiative unless there is state agency support. I firmly
believe that. The state, the local people know the problems better and know the people
involved better than we do. We're there as back up, but at the same time, we're there to do
implementation if we're called upon to do that. In a non-delegated state, that's what we do.
If the state's not there to support us, I don't think we're going to going in there alone.
Because we tend to be more remote from the problems, more remote from the issues, and
more remote from the people. We want to become involved. We want to help out where our
role calls for it. But we're not going to do it without the states.
5. Because minor facilities have not frequently dealt with EPA enforcement, there are
greater needs for compliance, outreach, and assistance efforts. I'm here to tell you. I've
been doing enforcement off and on for the past 12 to 15 years, and meeting with small towns
and small industries to get them to come into compliance is an experience. Furthermore, some
of the first places you'll visit~and a lot of you people have done enforcement or you've been
associated enough to know this-you go into the small treatment plant. You go, "Where's your
permit?" "Oh, it's hanging up there on the wall. Isn't that pretty." You go up and you look
at the permit. It's in a frame. It's never been looked at. They hang it on the wall and say,
"We got a permit to discharge." It's a very common occurrence. Very well-meaning people
thinking they have the authority to discharge, but not having a clue as to what it is they're
supposed to be doing. Another problem that used to surprise me but doesn't bother me
anymore and I see it all the time. I can remember one particular facility I visited and couldn't
find the operator. Well, where was he? Well, he was also the janitor down at City Hall. So
we went down the City Hall. "Oh, yeah, I'm the operator, but I can't go out there until this
afternoon. I got to finish cleaning City Hall." These are real world problems, folks, and we
got to work with them. Otherwise, we can't get it solved.
In any event, working with minors is a different experience. They need all the outreach you
can ever give them and at any level.
Page 305
-------
6. Enforcement actions are valuable because they focus immediate attention upon problem
facilities and require that action be done to take and fix the problem. The real power and
duty of enforcement, whether it is watershed related, which is what we're looking at right
now, or just an intermittent facility, is it's an action driving mechanism. It makes you look
at a problem. It says, "Here's a problem. And it isn't going to go away, because I got a legal
document in the mail that says, by gosh, I got to look at that problem. On top of that, I got
to figure out a way to solve it." That doesn't mean you have to be abusive. That doesn't
mean you have to be nasty. It just means you say, "Hey, listen. You have a problem. We
need to work together to solve this thing, and if you have any questions on how the process
works or what needs to be done to solve it, let's talk, because it's going to take a team effort
to pull it off." All right? But enforcement is a very valuable tool because it's the lightening
rod to bring attention to a problem.
7. The length of enforcement schedules to correct problems depends upon the financial
condition of the owner of the facility. For small facilities, they're dependent upon public
or private funds that can be attained. Like I mentioned earlier, for small towns, 1,500 to
2,000 people, little parish sewer districts, whatever they may be, they're not going to come
in and comply on their own. They're not going to have the technical know-how. They're not
going to have the financial capability. You've got to sit down and work with them. Point out
where some of these other agencies are. Where the Farmers Home Administration people are,
where the HUD Block Grant people are, where the state Revolving Fund Program people are,
and anything else you can come up with. And sit down with the team and most of the other
state and federal agencies are more than willing to work with these people. This is just what
we did in Hammond here a couple of weeks ago. We brought the Farmers Home in. We
brought the SRF people in. Matter of fact, SRF people set up the meeting for us, which I
think is great, another example of state and federal cooperation. We sat down and went over
with those people, "This is how enforcement works and this is what this order requires of
you." All right. Then everyone is wondering, "Well, how am I going to pay for it?" "Ah,
that's what these people are here to talk to you about. Now we need to jointly come up with
schedules of compliance." That's what this is all about, and it really applies to minors. Major
facilities. No. They should be able to come up with the funding. They're going to have more
financial resources available to them. But this is a reality, #seven, when you're dealing with
minor facilities.
What is next? What do we plan on doing next in the basin or for that matter, in any of our
watershed efforts? As I mentioned, those 25 orders. There are some other things that are
going on.
1. The difficult task of getting entities to properly report and develop compliance schedules.
Just what I talked about. That's what we're going to be trying to do with these 25 to 30
facilities.
Page 306
-------
2. Continue to identify NPDES permit holders which are having problems. Or continuing
to look at that list of people that we have to see who else needs that initial order to start
focusing on that problem they have. They need to begin reporting properly or to sit down and
come up with a compliance schedule.
3. Continue to build a relationship with LDEQ. Again, working with the state to find out
what is it they can do better to help out and what is it we can do better to help out?
4. Expand our outreach efforts. Just like I mentioned before. Like the meeting we had in
Hammond. We need to have some more of those. Make sure that all the people that are
getting these orders understand what is required of them. If they have any questions, try to
address those. Not necessarily do the engineering for themselves but help them through the
process.
5. Seek ways to facilitate compliance through other federal agencies and local agencies.
We can't do it alone. Part of the reason for that is EPA doesn't have a lot of the funding
programs that are out there. That's why I mentioned HUD Block Grant. That's why I
mentioned Farmers Home Administration. And any other state programs that come up. I
know Oklahoma has a separate state program that operates for funding purposes as well or
even local programs and sometimes even private funds, so anything you can do to try to point
to the direction in which they need to be looking. As long as these people are demonstrating
good faith and actually working hard to come into compliance, we're going to be working
hard with them to bring them into compliance. It's when they start dragging their feet over
and over and over again, that they end up in trouble with enforcement and have to face that
specter of penalties. Sometimes you have to do that. Sometimes people need that woodshed
experience to kind of get them off the dime.
Well, that's sort of where we are and where we're headed. First of all, are there any
questions in terms of what we've done so far in Pontchartrain Basin? Or any questions on my
thoughts or remarks for that matter, before we go on to the next one? Okay.
The next thing I wanted to mention briefly was some issues, I guess. I know Rusty had
mentioned this to me when I talked to him last week. But I think it's an interesting issue. I
just don't know how much interest there is out there, but I'll bring it up, because I think it
merits discussion. That is how can the private sector be encouraged to assist governments in
solving water quality problems within a basin? He had mentioned to me last week, and I think
if you listened carefully today you heard him say it. He had mentioned that some of the scrap
metal dealers and people were willing to come in and take this material for free and haul it off
in an effort to cleanup water bodies. Now, does anybody have any thoughts on that or
suggestions as to how we might be doing that better, either here or out there? We're more
than willing to hear it.
Page 307
-------
Question:
I've got a question. Did that include appliances?
Answer: Rusty Ray
It did if they were recyclable items. That was what the metal recycler would take.
Suggestion:
I just have a suggestion then. Sounds like a great program. Having that information for other
groups to go to scrap dealers and say, "Here's an example of what happened in Texas and it
worked." If scrap dealers look at the kind of volume that you're talking about, they would
equate that with money. Yes, there are a lot of good community relations, but there's also
profit. That kind of information is very important to help other areas set up programs.
Question:
Did you approach them or did they come to you or how did that work?
Answer: Rusty Ray
We approached them. We work with paint recyclers when we do household hazardous waste
collections. We go to community groups. Instead of disposing of the paint, we'll talk to
community groups and see if they'll take the usable quantities of paint. When we're having
a household hazardous waste collection, we'll also approach the tire folks. They donate their
services. We approach the solid waste folks that are in the area for a dumpster to take —
generally, when people bring in, they have some type of garbage or refuse they need to get
rid of when they bring their disposable or recyclables in. We've had really good luck with
that and the recyclers as well. Some of the small communities don't have recycling programs
and if there's a disposal company in the area that provides recycling, we ask them to have
dumpsters on site so that the folks can bring in their recyclables. Like you say, it's all tied
to a dollar bill and PR.
Question:
Did you offer them some kind of PR or how did that work?
Page 308
-------
Answer: Rusty Ray
Well, their PR is that they can have a sign up at the collection event. We'll generally run
some newspaper articles before saying, "This is where our collection is, and we want to thank,
in advance, these folks for helping us out." Whoever helped us with the site and whoever
helped us with whatever donations for the collection.
The state collections that TNRCC does, the Texas Country Cleanups, those are all free. They
work with battery recyclers to come out on site and pick those batteries up. Oil recyclers that
will come out there with a pump truck. Farmers will bring hi 55-gallon containers of used oil
and they'll pump their containers out on site and they can take them back with them. Same
thing for the oil filters and tires, as well.
Moderator: Jerry Saunders
Any other questions on that? Okay. Thanks, Rusty. Appreciate it.
The only other issue I have and it's really just from the standpoint of looking for more
information myself, to be quite honest with you, is what other funding mechanisms exist out
there to assist smaller facilities in correcting water quality problems? We know of Farmers
Home. We know of HUD Block Grant. We know of an SRF Program for municipalities.
We also know that Farmers Home — which is something new to me that I just learned —. can
also guarantee a loan for a privately owned utility company that provides public service, which
I thought was very interesting. I spoke to a Farmers Home person to find that out. I guess
they don't call themselves Farmers Home now. They have another name now. The
agriculture people here could tell me what that is. But I know the local agent up in
Hammond. He's the guy I spoke with. He handles Southeast Louisiana.
If there are any other kinds of facilities like that. I think local, state, and federal governments
need to keep an eye on that, particularly when you're looking at public facilities, and even for
that matter, for private small facilities. Who is it these people can turn to, if in fact, there is
really an aggrievious problem? Is there some kind of a low interest loan they can get? Long
term low interest loan or some other mechanism that may be out there. Now I don't know if
the Small Business Administration is involved in that or not. But these are things that we all
need to be working together on and trying to find ways, so that when we sit down to talk to
these people, we can actually come up with a meaningful compliance schedule. We know
rates can be raised. But there's a point with some of the mom and pop operations, family run
businesses, that there may be a problem and there's just no solution in sight because the
money isn't there. We all need to bear that in mind. Anybody got any thoughts on that?
Yes, Karen.
Page 309
-------
Question:
My question is not related to the money. When you mentioned that a lot of these folks are in
smaller communities need help with the process as much as they also need engineering help.
Do you think it would be possible for a team of state and federal folks to train some local
citizens that would be willing to volunteer to go out and help people with the process? Could
the state and federal people have trained these people to be available and be a local resource
within a community, because you all can't get out there since state and federal resources are
kind of limited.
Answer: Jerry Saunders
I think some of it could be. See, part of the problem is that when you're explaining regulatory
process, you do not want a go between in the middle that may be misinterpreting things, when
they have questions on "well, what does this regulation really mean? How does this order
really work?" That's the problem. One thing, though, there's another advantage of
enforcement which I didn't mention earlier, although I did say it was a lightening rod. It's
all of a sudden people have an interest to listen and you'll have a guaranteed audience. So
there's another advantage of an order.
Comment:
I have something to say about the small community issue. There really is active review of
what is available at the state level to provide outreach for the smaller facilities in the small
communities of fewer than 2,500. So it is being looked out in terms of outreach. At this
point, I haven't heard too much about the financial aspects. I've heard a lot of discussions
about penalties and moving away from penalties toward more compliance assistance.
Answer: Jerry Saunders
Let me point out one other thing related to that. Enforcement orders are good. Take that
message back. The reason is not only does it guarantee an audience, it also guarantees their
attention. It guarantees action. And it also moves them higher up on the priority list for
funding on these programs. It jumps them up on both the SRF list and the Farmers Home
Administration list.
Question:
I have a couple of questions. One thing that Pam mentioned was that perhaps a lot of the
problems now are from the things that aren't regulated. I know that the GAO Report came
out very recently in 1994 looking at discharges from three sectors in pulp and paper,
Page 310
-------
Pharmaceuticals, and manufacturing facilities, and it looked at toxic contaminants that were
being discharged legally. That they weren't in any violation of their permits. I wonder if the
enforcement people in your region are beginning to talk with permit writers to decide whether
there should be more chemicals in their permits that they should regulate?
Answer: Pam Phillips
Yes, we have had discussions and what we found with most of the permits is that most of the
permits are state permits. We've talked to state permit writers, the RCRA and air permits are
state permits for the most part, except for small portions, and hi talking to state permit writers,
basically, there's no regulatory authority to start regulating many of these different discharges.
Their regs are written specifically enough that they don't feel like they have the authority to
include more controls.
Answer:
I have a twofold answer to that question, from a water standpoint and from the NPDES
standpoint and that is: (1) if we identify an unauthorized waste stream, the first thing we want
to know is what is in it, because if it is a toxic substance, we're going to be concerned
immediately. We're going to be talking to our water quality people either at the state or at
the federal level to find out what, if anything, needs to be done. But in all honesty, that's not
my greatest concern. Because when it does come up, that's the way we approach it. My
greatest concerns tend to be focused by both the state and the federal water quality people.
I rely upon them to tell me is this a real problem or isn't it. Because they are the ones that
are looking at those data bases and have the greatest knowledge of the resources. The young
lady right there in front of you, I trust very much in Louisiana, and the other one in the back,
I do as well because Emelise gives me very reliable data. And I think you handle the 305(b)
Report for Louisiana, don't you? You generate it? Yes.
Comment:
While there may be a whole laundry list of toxic pollutants out there, one of the other
programs that we're implementing, NPDES program, is the whole Effluent Toxicity Testing
Program. So while we've identified a lot of the pollutants that aren't on our priority pollutant
list or state water quality standard, there's some pesticides that show up, so we're putting
some type of controls on that, whether it be Best Management Practice for a specific cleaning.
Additionally, pollutants like ammonia show up to be a problem in effluent. So the whole
Effluent Toxicity Program will allow us to address some pollutants that we have not in the
past.
Page 311
-------
Question:
How far along is that from being implemented?
Answer:
We started doing testing in 1988 for our major facilities as those permits come up for renewal.
We put in Whole Effluent Toxicity Testing requirements. The basis of that is the critical low-
flow conditions of the stream with either the design capacity for municipal or the average
volume discharge for industrial facilities. As those facilities failed, we required that they go
back and identify either how they could either eliminate the problem or identify the specific
pollutant. So they could either look at treatability or they could identify the pollutant and try
to figure out how to resolve that issue. After they've had an opportunity to fix the problem,
then we would go back and put a limit in there saying you cannot have a greater level of
toxicity than some threshold that the state would usually tell us, "This represents the critical
conditions for that facility's discharge."
Question:
So what kind of facilities are currently using whole effluent toxicity testing?
Answer:
All the majors in the region are being issued permits with whole effluent toxicity testing
requirements. Whether they have a limit or they're doing a toxicity reduction evaluation or
they're just simply doing monitoring. Two species. A vertebrate and invertebrate species.
Moderator: Jerry Saunders
Let me add to what Steve was saying. If they see a problem, they come over and they talk
to our enforcement staff and we try to help them out any way that we can.
Question:
I have another sort of related question. What's the status of your using the total maximum
daily pollutants?
Answer:
Where we have a total maximum daily load analysis, then we'll implement it. That's exactly
the way the NPDES program is supposed to work. Part of our problem is we don't typically
Page 312
-------
have the whole picture. We don't know what the ambient levels are. We don't know what
the background would be from a nonpoint source. So we have to get all those items identified.
You have to run through the TMDL process and then you would establish what those would
be. For dissolved oxygen, we have TMDL's for all the major river segments in the region.
But when you talk about copper or something like that, it's very site specific. TMDL's are
only done or the information is being collected where we have a problem. As an example,
the Houston Ship Channel is one I think we have some TMDL's that are about to be approved
for nickel and I'm not sure what the other pollutant is. But until those TMDL's are completed
and all the facilities identified and those loads determined for each of those facilities, we can't
arbitrarily implement that. What we can do is we can assume that there isn't any background
and we can do a mini-TMDL on each discharge. What's typically called a wasteload
allocation. We look at how much can the receiving stream assimilate and not exceed water
quality standards but the TMDL sort of ties all the dischargers together and all the other
avenues hi which a pollutant may be discharged or contributed into that water body.
Question:
I have a follow-up TMDL question. Do you have many watersheds which have nutrient
problems?
Answer:
Yes. You really need to talk with Troy Hill, with our Water Quality Management Branch,
about the TMDL's. He is the person who deals with that on a regular basis. I understand
that, as an example, in the Wister Lake Watershed in Oklahoma, they are looking at doing a
TMDL on phosphorous. It's a place that they know they have a problem. It's a problem
that's been there for many, many years. But right now, they're trying to look at it. There's
a bunch of conflicting information, so you really have to get a good accurate picture to be able
to make an effective TMDL. I've seen the estimates for point source contributions anywhere
from 50% to 10%. So obviously, you have to get that narrowed down or else it won't be
effective.
Moderator: Jerry Saunders
Let me add something to that. If you want to know more about that, there's a man by the
name of Mr. Smolen, who is the O.S.U., Oklahoma State University. He's working on that
report. I saw him out in the hall earlier today. I know you want an answer, but he isn't
giving it out yet because his report isn't final.
Page 313
-------
Comment:
Troy's here, too. He's down the hall. ;
Jerry Saunders:
As a matter of fact that was the watershed that I was referencing earlier when I responded to
your question earlier today on has that been done. I said in some states it has, and that was
the watershed. j
i
All right. If that's all the questions, we want to thank all of you for coming. I also want to }
thank Tim Brewster and Rusty Ray and Pam Phillips for coming today. Thank you for your j
time and I hope you enjoy your stay in New Orleans. I
Page 314
-------
Nonpoint Source Watershed Activities - Part 2 (3:00-4:30PM)
Moderator: Mike Bira, Clean Lakes Coordinator, U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency, Region 6; Dallas, TX
Our first speaker is Carl Hutcherson. He's currently with the NRCS. He received his first
B.S. in Agricultural Education, a second B.S. and M.S. in agronomy from Texas A&M. He's
been working with the USD A Soil Conservation Service since 1976, as soon as he graduated
from high school. He's worked from the Panhandle in Texas, to East Texas. He's also
served bn SCS National Headquarters staff on detail to the EPA Region 1 office in Boston.
We heard some great things about him and we had the opportunity to get him down to the
Region 6 office in Dallas, and he's been a tremendous help for us. We have a lot of projects
in rural areas, and if you've got an EPA hat on, you might as well have a target on it. The
NRCS, which used to be SCS has been a really big help to us in getting in and talking to local
people. They've opened a lot of doors for us. I really hope that the relationship between the
two agencies can continue, because it's been a benefit for both of us. So without any further
ado, I'll leave it to Carl.
Speaker: Carl Hutcherson, Natural Resource Conservation Service Liaison, U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency, Region 6, Dallas, TX
Thank you, Mike. I would like to begin by thanking this group for being here, number one,
especially on a beautiful day like today. I would like to thank Mike for the introduction.
For those of you that are not familiar with the Natural Resources Conservation Service, we
were formerly known as the Soil Conservation Service. We have been around for about 60
years. We're going through some reorganization efforts right now. I want to take just a few
minutes to discuss the reorganization of our agency and show you some of the tie ins. I know
the objective here in this session is to talk about NRCS's watershed activities, and I want to
tie that into some of our reorganization efforts. The Natural Resources Conservation Service,
as that entity, was created on October 20, 1994, was part of a larger USDA total
reorganization. Mike Espy carried through with the former Secretary of Agriculture's
initiation of reorganizing the entire department, and this is kind of the end product.
The Natural Resource Conservation Service, the name more accurately reflects some of the
activities that the agency does, basically, over the years being known as the Soil Conservation
Service has never hurt us as far as we were concerned. But sometimes we did not receive
recognition for a lot of the activities that we were involved in, including watershed activities
that impacted water quality issues. So again, this name change is something that we're
Page 315
-------
looking forward to. The name change accurately reflects what we do, and we also help people
conserve all natural resources on private land. We do want to stress that it's on private land
that we draw the line. Our basic interest is on private property. All of our activities are built
on 60 years of experience. Our agency has a very strong reputation for its technical
background and the technical training of our people, our employees, out there on the ground.
You've heard earlier in some of the other presentations about the delivery system that the
NRCS has, working through Soil & Water Conservation Districts, and we feel like that is the j
strength of our agency. It provides us with a delivery mechanism that gets us down to the
lowest level of grassroots organization, and we think that's where the impact is most
important.
The change also gave us some leadership for some programs that weren't previously under our
jurisdiction in the past. Those include Wetlands Reserve Programs, Water Bank Program,
Colorado River Basin Salinity Control Program, F.I.P., and Farms for the Future. But these
are all currently in question right now for funding. If you've seen the recent House Bill,
NRCS is taking a big slash on not only these activities, but a lot of other activities, including
RC&D, that we feel are very important parts of our programs. The Senate has not yet met
to review the budget for '96 on these. Also, I must emphasize that the House budget was just
a budget resolution. That is not the actual appropriation language that will end up. But the
House Budget Committee is the one that formed it, and they're the ones that will end up
making the decisions. So hopefully, the Senate will temper, somewhat, the budget and come
out with something a little more realistic, instead of just slashing all these programs and just
zeroing them out. Because we feel very strongly that they are extremely important programs.
We did retain the Great Plains Program and some of the other agricultural programs that SCS
has historically administered as well as the Small Watershed Program. The Small Watershed
Program is the thing that I really wanted to stress the most this afternoon. Hopefully, I've
explained the reorganization enough to where I've given you an idea of where we're going
with a lot of this stuff.
The Small Watershed Program, otherwise known as Public Law 566, is a program that's been
around quite a while. Historically, people have known this Small Watershed Program, or 566
Program, as most people know it, to be a flood water retarding program, a flood water
structure type program. Recently, with the emphasis on water quality issues and with some
of the changes that our new Chief has made in Washington, more of the program is being
opened up for water quality issues and land treatment type programs. EPA feels very
strongly, as so the NRCS, that the land treatment type programs can be leveraged in with a
lot of state and local programs to do a lot of good out there on the ground. That's one of the
Page 316
-------
things that I wanted to emphasize with this presentation is the need to be creative. Leveraging
of these programs is very important.
I'll give you an example of one of the activities that this Small Watershed Program has been
successful at. In the state of Vermont, they had a PL-566 Program that was not very
successful. They had limited the cost share systems to only 50% to install animal waste
management systems on a lot of dairies that they had in the watershed. People were not
signing up. Farmers were not participating because they did not consider the 50% cost
sharing to be enough of an incentive to participate in the program. It goes back to the speaker
yesterday talking about the $50,000. Especially when the ASCS, now the CFSA, was cost
sharing through their ACP Program at a 75% rate. Well, even if the ASCS didn't have
enough money in the program, the farmers would still hold out to try to get that 75 %.
Whether they got the money or not, they were going to hold out.
We came in with 319 monies there within that watershed and leveraged those 319 funds with
the PL-566 funds to come up to a 75% cost share level. The 319 Program, by statutory
requirements, says that no more than 75 % of the total project cost can be federal funds. So
that was where the cap was. We brought it up to 75% cost share rate, and within four months,
they had a million and a half dollars worth of contracts signed by producers within that area.
So that can show you very dramatically how successful the programs can be merged and
leveraged.
Watershed protection or land treatment projects are planned and implemented to reduce
sediment damage. Again, this ties back to land treatment type activities not only for animal
waste management systems, but for just about any type of Best Management Practice that both
PL-566 uses and 319 agrees with. I'm not talking just about those two federal programs. PL-
566 can be merged with a lot of state and local programs to do the same thing.
One of the main requirements for eligibility in the program is you have to have local sponsors.
Sponsors can be entities legally organized under state law or any Indian tribe or tribal
organization having authority to carry out, operate, and maintain works of improvement. The
sponsors have to have Power of Eminent Domain if there is any type of a measure to be put
on public land, obviously. If all of the measures are to be applied on private land, that's not
necessarily an eligibility requirement. It's nice to have just in case you do require something
in your final management plan.
Project sponsors are typically Soil and Water Conservation Districts, counties, municipalities,
state agencies, or watershed, flood control, conservancy, drainage, irrigation, and other
special purpose districts. All of those are typical sponsors of 566 or small watershed type
programs and are eligible to participate.
Page 317
-------
On this last overhead here, I want to emphasize the watershed protection. If you look under
construction costs, the maximum that the program allows for is 65 %. This is the current cost
share rate that cannot be exceeded. The agriculture water management, which includes
irrigation type practices, can go up to 50%, but cannot exceed that. If you come in and
leverage local, state or other federal programs, including EPA program funds, these can be
expanded up to whatever cap that you think is necessary to get the participation of the
audience that you're seeking there within your watershed. It's a good program. It's a good
tool.
Basically, what I want to try to emphasize is creativity. There's a world of activities that our
agency, the NRCS, is involved in. We have water quality specialists in just about every state
office now. We have people out in the field that are trained to help you and guide you in
participating in this type of a program. I must emphasize that you need to work with your
local and state offices. If you have questions about these programs, contact your local NRCS
field office. We're very happy that part of the reorganization effort is to strengthen those field
offices now. We're very excited about that. When I came to work'for the Soil Conservation I
Service in 1976, we had approximately 60% of all of our employees across the nation in a j
field office somewhere. Today, that's less than 50%. Part of this reorganization effort is to
try to reach a goal of 70% of all of our employees being in a field office. Most of us in our
agency believe that the strength of our agency is the field office and the delivery system that
we offer. That's something that I want to stress also.
Again, creativity is extremely important. To quote one of our country's greatest philosophers,
Garth Brooks, he had a record out one time that stated that Noah took a lot of ridicule when
he was building his great ark, but after 40 days and 40 nights, he was looking pretty smart.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Sometimes you have to go against the grain. That's one
thing I want to stress to you is to remember that you have to shoot for that creativity. If you
have any question about the applicability of your programs with the NRCS, be sure and
contact your local office. They're more than willing to work with you. They have a lot of
knowledge, a lot of technical expertise that can assist you. So with that, I'll leave you. I
would like to thank you for your kind attention.
Moderator: Mike Bira
Our next speaker is Tom Curran with LCRA. He's currently Senior Environmental
Coordinator with LCRA. He's been in that position since 1991. He primarily focuses his
work on LCRA's nonpoint source pollution control efforts. They include managing Lake
Travis Nonpoint Source Pollution Control Ordinance, and also he's worked on developing and
implementing similar regs to protect other portions of the Highland Lakes and the Lower
Colorado River. His work involves a lot of nonpoint source pollutants from agricultural and
urban areas. He also has worked on issues such as designing management practices for LCRA
Page 318
-------
Operations, establishing improved inspections of existing on-site wastewater systems,
evaluating the effectiveness of certain management practices, and identifying nonpoint source
impacts from agricultural land uses. Prior to joining LCRA, Tom was a Civil Engineer with
consulting firms in Austin and Boston. He designed Site Development Projects and utility
infrastructure improvements. He's a registered P.E. in Texas and New Hampshire. He
received is B.S. in Civil Engineering from the University of Texas. So with that, I'll leave
it to Tom.
Speaker: Tom Curran, P.E., Senior Environmental Coordinator, NFS Pollution
Control Program, Lower Colorado River Authority; Austin, TX
I'd like to talk about managing development and controlling nonpoint source pollution from
the urbanization process. There are many different ways in which nonpoint source pollution
can be controlled from urbanization and this is just one approach I want to share with you, just
to give you a little bit of background. The Lower Colorado River Authority is kind of an
interesting company. It's actually a public utility company, but it's also an agency of the
state. It was created by the legislature. It was also given the responsibilities of being a
steward of the Lower Colorado River. It also has responsibilities in flood control, providing
recreation, park maintenance for the public of central Texas. This is the Lower Colorado
River Authority's mission statement.
The LCRA, while being an agency of the state has received no funds from the state. It has
no taxing authority. It also has no land use or zoning authority, which limits the approach in
which we can tackle the issue of pollution from urbanization. Part of the LCRA's mission
statement within the environmental division is LCRA says it will use its assets to improve the
water quality of the Colorado River and the quality of life in Central Texas. Our challenge
is to implement innovative cost effective environmental solutions, while remaining a
competitive business entity, which is obviously paramount. Therefore, in order to accomplish
some of our environmental goals, we have to rely on an acquisition of grants and also
partnerships with different entities to accomplish our goals.
This is a part of our watershed. The LCRA has statutory authority, as it's referred to, within
a 10-county area. Some of these counties are our electrical utility customers. Down the
center, comes through the Colorado River. The City of Austin would be right about here, and
then the upper Highland Lakes, which is the area I'm going to talk about, is upstream and
west of the City of Austin.
I'm not going to get into a lot on the impacts of urbanization, because I feel comfortable that
most of you know what the primary impacts are, being the change in the hydrologic process
and also the introduction and increase in various pollutants. Trash is an easy visible one for
Page 319
-------
most of the public to associate with. Some of the items that they can't see are actually more
of a threat to water quality are more difficult to sometimes convey to them. So trash is
sometimes a nice one to use, I guess, a nice pollutant to use to gather people's attention.
Here's a river or a creek segment that obviously has excess nutrients in it causing the algae
blooms. Here you'll see a sediment plume coming from a construction site within the City
of Austin. Town Lake with some of the various activities taking place within the City of
Austin, actually had to put up signs to stop eating the fish in Town Lake due to chlordane
accumulating within the fish. Recent efforts by the City of Austin and LCRA are showing an
actual improvement in the reduction of the chlordane levels within the fish. So hopefully the
health advisory not to eat the fish may be removed soon.
What I'd like to show here is the other impact associated with urbanization and that is the
increase in rainfall runoff, surface runoff from the urbanization process. This bar over here
would represent for a unit area a certain amount of rainfall that is actually hitting the ground,
dependent upon the land use that it's coming upon, you can see where this is undeveloped
land, only a very small portion of the rainfall is actually coming off of the land as surface
runoff. As you develop your land, the proportionate increase in surface runoff increases
greatly as you get to more impervious cover. The increase in runoff causes much more
erosive capabilities of your downstream conveyance systems, which ultimately ends up causing
problems such as stream bank erosion.
One of the interesting things I thought about in the discussion that we've been having today
is watershed protection and property rights. I think there's actually probably two sides to the
coin to property rights. This house is actually less than 25 years old, and I'm sure when it
was built, he probably had a very nice backyard overlooking a creek. Because of upstream
development that took place without appropriate controls to maintain the pre-develop flow
rates, it accelerated the erosion of the channel and this is what this individual is left with.
The Highland Lakes are a series of lakes that have been created by the construction of dams
in the 1930's and 1940's. As I mentioned, LCRA, being a power generation company, gets
some hydroelectric generation out of the dams. It also controls floods with the dams. It is
a water supply for approximately one million people in Central Texas. The lakes are obviously
an attractive area and they've been feeling development pressure. I have little question that
over time almost the entire area around the Highland Lakes will ultimately become developed.
Very little of the land is in public ownership.
Most of the development that we're seeing around the Highland Lakes are resort type vacation
homes scattering about. There are also several communities that are in existence around the
Highland Lakes, where we see the expansion of commercial activity to support the increase
in the residential development that's taking place around the Highland Lakes.
Page 320
-------
As the LCRA saw the increase in development taking place around the lakes, we began to be
concerned about the long-term health of the lakes, and in 1990, the LCRA adopted the first
Nonpoint Source Pollution Control Ordinance to help protect the Highland Lakes. In doing
so, we looked at some of the issues that we're concerned about in protecting the lakes. We
looked at and were concerned about sedimentation and accelerated sedimentation due to stream
bank erosion or erosion from construction sites, reducing the capacity of the lakes and filling
them in. We were concerned about increased nutrients, accelerating the eutrophication process
of the lakes, and lastly, any toxins that may accumulate in the sediment and the fish. This
area shows the area of coverage of our Highland Lakes Nonpoint Source Pollution Control
Ordinance, which encompasses the better part of three counties.
The approach that we've taken is a technology-based approach in which we require the
removal of a majority of the pollutants being generated from a development. Again, without
land use control, we can't dictate density or location of development. So we've taken an
approach in which we use some equations, which I'll get into in just a second, and calculate
the expected increase in pollutant loads. The three primary areas in which we've established
technology-based standards for a development to meet are: reducing stream bank erosion by
maintaining pre-develop flow rates; reducing the pollution in the storm water runoff through
management practices, Best Management Practices; and reducing sediment transport from
construction sites using erosion controls during construction.
I showed you a minute ago the concerns we had regarding the lake sedimentation,
eutrophication, and toxins. We selected three pollutants to serve as our indicator pollutants
for each of those concerned categories, and these are the pollutants that were selected. (Total
suspended solids, total phosphorus, oil and grease.) Based on some available literature on
storm water runoff, we provided, within a technical manual, the background and developed
concentrations of those pollutants, and we applied what's referred to as a simple formula that
I believe was first generated from Tom Schueler, in Metropolitan Washington Council of
Governments, in which you can calculate your existing pollutant load and developed pollutant
load. The only two variables are the concentration that I spoke about just a minute ago.
There's a change in the concentration of the runoff. Then also, this is a rainfall runoff
relationship, and as you increase the impervious cover, you're going to have a higher amount
of runoff per unit of rainfall, which is going to subsequently increase the annual pollutant
load.
We have an accompanying technical manual for developers to use that provides a menu of
various management practices that can be employed. And again, the efficiency of the
management practice is based on available research and literature that has been performed and
its overall net removal efficiency of that management practice is the individual BMP's
efficiency multiplied by the percent of the annual runoff that BMP is going to capture from
Page 321
-------
the site. Obviously, the larger the facility is, the more it can capture, the higher amount of
pollutants that it's going to be able to treat.
I heard yesterday in the opening session at least a dozen times in which the word flexibility
was mentioned. I think if there's a real positive to the approach that we've taken here and
particularly in regards to some of the issues that are going through various legislative
calendars currently, it is our approach is very flexible. It allows the land owner and/or their
engineer to make the decisions as to what management practices they want to employ to meet
the performance standards of the ordinance and make their development work. It allows them
to consider their site characteristics, consider their individual development needs. We've seen
quite a variety of management practices being proposed, which indicates to me anyway that
the flexibility that is there is actually being utilized. We have not seen one type of system that
is consistently reoccurring. So people are utilizing these various management practices based
on their development needs and the site characteristics.
This is an example. This is, I guess, a prison, for an easier way to describe it. It's a
Rehabilitation Center for alcohol and drug abusers recently constructed within the County of
Burnet. The approach that they took was they had some natural terraces that were
immediately downstream to their site, and it's kind of difficult to see in this picture, but there
are some berms and terraces that have been built up, a series of them. There's a pipe
discharge over there. As it fills up the first terrace, it would overflow into the second
depressed area, the second terrace, and so forth, and so on. So really using shallow retention
until you gain infiltration as their management practice.
This is a gas station that was recently constructed. Research has shown that gas stations are
a hydrocarbon hot spot and you have quite a bit of hydrocarbons and metals within the storm
water runoff from a gas station. The approach they took, they wanted the convenience of
having their customers be able to drive over the site at their convenience and be able to serve
a lot of customers, so they paved about 90% of the site. The approach that they took in
meeting the ordinance was to have the storm water drain into this facility here. There's a pit
underneath that grate, and then after the rain storm dissipates, they then spray irrigate their
landscape medians around the site.
This is a Walmart Store that is under construction in Marble Falls, Texas. They are meeting
the ordinance by providing a series of extended detention ponds and sand filters and wet ponds
through their site to meet our ordinance.
This just shows the quality of water within one of your management practices. An extended
detention pond. The water quality in there may not be so great, but that just kind of shows
that it's doing its job, and you would rather the water quality within one of these management
Page 322
-------
practices to be poor than for it to actually be within your stream or resource that you're trying
to protect.
This is a sand filter actually. What you can see is after the surface has been scraped away,
you see the sand is actually absorbing some of the pollutants, hydrocarbons, etc., that are
coming from the developed site. So you get an indication there, at least I do, from visually
looking at it that the systems are working and actually reducing the amount of pollution
coming off of a site.
A lot of our development is low density residential development, and the practice that's being
utilized most often in low density residential development is just a vegetated filter strip area
around the resource that's reserved and undeveloped.
This is one of the things that I'm most pleased with. This is LCRA's office complex which
was completed about three years ago. While we were not within the area of purview of our
ordinance, we went ahead and built the site to comply with our' own ordinance, which I
thought was really good. Because a lot of times regulators are very good at telling other
people what they have to do, but when it comes time to them having to do something
themselves, there's always a good reason why they should be able to get some variance from
some regulation.
We utilized the proposed BMP's, sedimentation basins, during the construction process to
reduce sediment transport from construction. This diagram shows some of the various
permanent BMP's that are incorporated into the site. We purposely went with a diversity of
management practices. One, so we can gain first hand experience on them. Secondly, so we
can show to various people some of the various practices that are available.
This is our front entryway. This is an extended detention pond on the front of the site. This
is a sand filter that actually got constructed underneath one of the parking areas on the site.
You can see these chambers being constructed on top of the sand. This is looking down the
barrel of one of the chambers. These chambers fill up with storm water after a rain event and
then filter through that sand media. That discharge then goes down to one of the other BMP's
that we have on the site.
This shows another extended detention pond on the site. One of the systems that I've been
most pleased with, I guess, in looking at the site is the discharge from that extended detention
pond. What an extended detention pond does is it actually holds the water for about—well,
it drains the water slowly such that it drains over about a 48-hour period of time, and you'll
see these little PVC pipe outlets in a landscape sidewalk that we have. There's that sidewalk
there. The discharge goes over a grassy front landscaped area that we have. From what
we've seen, for probably 90% of the storm events, since it's releasing it over that 2-day period
Page 323
-------
of time, is that the downstream vegetative filter strip has been able to absorb virtually 100%
of the runoff. So we have a parking lot about one acre in size that's draining into an extended
detention pond getting primary treatment there, and then being slowly released over this grassy
area, which is then infiltrating and absorbing the rest of that runoff and the pollution within
it. We basically end up with sort of a zero discharge system.
The Nonpoint Source Ordinance is not the only effort, obviously, that we have to protect the
Highland Lakes. There are several other complimentary programs that we have, and I
wouldn't even consider this list, I guess, to be comprehensive. But it just gives you an idea
that there are other efforts that are out there addressing various issues.
Lastly, a lot of the programs that we've seen around here, there has been a problem. There
has been a problem identified and everybody kind of rallies around to go try and fix that
problem. We're kind of dealing with a little more difficult situation here in which our
Highland Lakes are relatively clean and people enjoy it. There's no real identified problem
with it. We're trying to protect the lakes for the long-term, which sometimes I wish there was
a problem, because it would be easier to convince people why they need to develop smartly.
But I suppose, if these children or their children are able to come up at some point in the
future and brag about the quality of the Highland Lakes, then at that point in time, I would
say that we actually do have a success story.
I was running through some slides preparing for this and I just happened to come across this
slide. I had to use it because it's just a beautiful picture. I think there's actually a lot
symbolism in the picture; particularly with the things we've been talking about. The eagle
represents a lot of the things that America represents. You know, freedom, no taxes, all
powerful. Yet, but when you look at it, the eagle is still dependent upon catching clean fish
and having clean water, and so to me, it shows a connection between the watershed
management and some of the issues that we're all dealing with.
Thank you very much.
Moderator: Mike Bira
Thank you, Tom. Our last presentation will be by Frank Shipley. Frank is currently the
Director of the Galveston Bay National Estuary Program. He's charged with drafting a
Comprehensive Management Plan for the Galveston Bay System. No small task. Frank is
trained as a scientist with an M.S., B.S., and Ph.D. in Biology. Since he graduated in 1980,
Frank has taught at three universities and has conducted and directed environmental programs
in Kansas and Texas. He's got more than 40 publications on scientific and environmental
topics, and he's editor and author of a recent book on Galveston Bay.
Page 324
-------
Speaker: Frank Shipley, Program Director, Galveston Bay National Estuary
Program; Webster, TX
Now we're finally downstream far enough to talk about really interesting systems. We've
heard about rivers and lakes and now we're going to talk about the Coast. I see there are a
couple of friendly people in the audience from the Coast. The National Estuary Program is
actually ~ to give EPA a compliment -- an EPA federal program. It was one of the first
programs to really take the stakeholder-driven kind of approach to ecosystem and watershed
scale problems. We started the Galveston Bay Program in 1989 by convening (as we've heard
some of these other programs) essentially all of the agencies that do business in the bay, many
of the environmental groups, citizens, industries, and other stake holders right across the
board. That is the process that produced The Galveston Bay Plan. One other side note: our
plan was signed two weeks ago by Carol Browner and was announced today in the media. So
that's why I haven't been at these meetings the last couple of days. We've been wrapping up
media activities for release of The Galveston Bay Plan.
The nonpoint source issue is only one small part of what we addressed in Galveston Bay. But
it was a significant part. It was in fact identified, out of 17 different issues that the Galveston
Bay Plan addresses, as number two in rank order. (The first priority was loss of wetland
habitats). So we did take the nonpoint source issue quite seriously. The part I want to tell you
about is what we did from the beginning to identify, from an information gathering standpoint,
what we needed to do in scoping the problem to establish management solutions in The
Galveston Bay Plan.
Let me start with the human population issue. This map depicts the Gulf of Mexico. If you
get right down to it, half of the population of the country lives on only about 10% of the land
and this land is mostly along the Coast. Actually, one-sixth of the U.S. population lives on
the Gulf Coast and the human density in the coastal counties is five times greater than in
inland counties. So right away we've got an issue.
The red areas on the map are those areas which have especially high population densities. Of
course, one of them is ours, Galveston Bay in Texas, and the other is Tampa Bay. Both of
these areas have National Estuary Programs, in addition to Barataria-Terrebonne in Louisiana
and Corpus Christi in South Texas. Richard Volk is here and he is the Director of the Corpus
Christi Bay Program.
Galveston Bay issues are largely hinged on the development of industry and on urbanization.
We have about three and a half million people in this local watershed, over roughly a five-
county area. You may have heard some mind-boggling statistics about our bay system.
Thirty percent of the nation's refining comes from the shoreline of this bay. Half the nation's
chemical manufacturing comes from this region. And we have the third largest port in the
Page 325
-------
Nation in the upper Houston Ship Channel. This region is highly industrialized and,
traditionally, has highly impacted these waters.
The view from space looks like this. One of the advantages of living in Houston is that we
are the home of the Johnson Space Center. The astronauts like to snap hand-held pictures out
of the shuttle window when they go over Houston. So we've got a whole bunch of pretty
good aerial photographs of the area.
The upper left there, the white, is all the urbanized impervious cover that you've heard about
in many of these talks, where the water washes off readily after a rainfall and brings with it
loadings of different contaminants to the bay system. The City of Houston is a little over 600
square miles in size, and the bay is just 600 square miles. So we have a huge impervious
urbanized and industrialized area feeding the bay and affecting its water quality.
Besides the nonpoint sources, we are world-class in terms of our tradition of point sources.
To give you the context for nonpoint sources, let me tell you -what else influences this
receiving water. About 1.3 trillion gallons of wastewater from 747 different point sources are
discharged in the watershed, actually, about half the permitted discharges in Texas end up in
this bay system. And in the spirit of Texas independence, we have about 600 different utility
districts in the five county area. That yields statistics like: 45% of all sewer treatment plants
that discharge to the Gulf are in the Galveston Bay System. They're numerous and small
because they're not regionalized. In terms of numbers and logistical nightmares, we have to
address them in this bay system.
Twenty-five years ago, point sources dominated environmental issues. This photo shows the
upper Houston Ship Channel during that time. It caught on fire. No joke. People talked
about the octane rating of the water. It had no dissolved oxygen. It had a slick surface all the
time. Every time a ship went by, you had anaerobic sediment stirred up. In fact, there wasn't
anything living there, except perhaps some blue-green algae. Along came the Water Quality
Act. We did make some tremendous strides in terms of point source loadings.
Now, of course, like almost every other system that we've heard about at this meeting, we're
left with nonpoint source issues—like this photo of a gentleman dumping used motor oil down
a storm sewer. Maybe you think this looks staged. Well, it is. His license number is
readable, but he's one of us~he's pouring into a bucket hanging from a coat hanger. But I've
seen this actually happen, and probably so have you. When storm water runs off of an
impervious surface, or even something like a yard that's been over-fertilized, the wastewater
that ends up in the receiving water has 450 times more total suspended solids than secondary
effluent. It has nine times higher B.O.D. than secondary effluent. The "first flush" of storm
water has dead animals, report cards with D's and F's~you know, all the things that wash
down a sewer; in New York and New Jersey Harbors, crack vials were one of the number one
Page 326
-------
floatables found in nonpoint source wash-off. Of course, we're most concerned about the
receiving water impacts of contaminants.
The hydrology of this area is such that the most urbanized area drains into one of the most
enclosed portions of the bay system. Several of our studies showed us that contaminants in
the water include poly cyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, oftentimes combustion-source
hydrocarbons. That we think there may be a connection between the urban transportation
system, aerial deposition, nonpoint source runoff, and seafood tissue contamination by PAH's
and PCB's. Now that's a little less traditional than the usual nonpoint source effects. A little
more traditionally, nonpoint source fecal coliform loadings produce closure of about half of
Galveston Bay for shell fishing, which is in our case oysters. There are a lot of reefs in the
bay that could be economically productive if they were opened to harvest as a result of
reductions in bacterial loadings.
NO A A conducted a study in Galveston Bay, along with other estuaries in the nation
concerning fish kills. During the decade of the 1980s, Galveston Bay had four of the top ten
fish kills in the country. Our water temperatures are higher than east or west coasts, but we
have a lot of enclosed areas that receive runoff which depletes the oxygen and causes fish
kills. Fewer fish kills result from toxic contaminant problems, although, we have that kind
of fish kill too.
So we had a couple of nonpoint source scoping needs when we started the Galveston Bay
Program five years ago. First, we wanted to target NPS loadings geographically. We then
wanted to take the step further in The Galveston Bay Plan and try to integrate the governance
of this Bay System, so that the stakeholders and the agencies and those that were contributing
to the problem could agree on how to actually begin to solve it. We carried out the scoping
work early in the program. We set up a project that was carried out by a consortium of Rice
University and Ground Water Services. The principal investigator was Chuck Newell.
This map shows the entire Galveston Bay watershed. The watershed includes only about 13%
of Texas, but 60% of the state's wastewater. Dallas and Ft. Worth are in the upper region
there, and then of course, the greater Houston area on the coast. That's the Trinity River
Basin in yellow, which contributes a little over 50% of the water coming to Galveston Bay.
Our approach was to single out only a portion of this larger watershed. We discovered in
some of our preliminary data perusal that big reservoirs on both the Trinity and the San
Jacinto had a major effect on what pollutants get to the bay. In fact, these reservoirs turned
out to be major sinks for nutrients. Lake Livingston is a reservoir on the Trinity that has
approximately the same water volume as all of Galveston Bay. It's a tremendous nutrient
sink, especially for phosphorous, which ties to sediment particles. The reservoir is a
biological processing system involving algae and the higher food chain process. The lower
river receives fewer nutrients over the spillway than came in at the upper end of the reservoir.
Page 327
-------
So we concentrated our work in the lower portion of the system, which is the highly urbanized
portion that we really know is having an effect on the bay.
Step one in this process was to delineate the subwatersheds. This was not as easy as it sounds.
We ran into a new technical term we hadn't come across before on the Texas Coast. It's
called topography. We now understand that in some places you can figure out where the
water goes when it rains. That's not true in Houston and the best indicators we had were
drainage ditches and flood control maps. We delineated exactly 100 sub-watersheds in this
major watershed. That was overlay number one on our GIS System.
Second, we wanted to characterize land use. As a screening study, we designated our own
key land use categories, shown on this slide. They're fairly generic in most cases, but they
work very well at the scale of resolution we were looking for. Then our investigators
delineated those land uses through an automated digitizing process that gave us a 30-meter
resolution throughout the entire lower watershed. Ground truthing this step showed
comparable accuracy to the wetlands inventory work that had been done previously, more or
less manually. So the process was automated yet fairly accurate. We ended up with the kind
of overlay shown in this slide, which is a land use map. The red and the yellow are urban and
residential, respectively. And again, you can see the dominating influence of all the developed
areas and impervious cover. Thus, land use was the next layer in the GIS system.
Third we chose the parameters we were interested in tracking. We used, an indicator
approach, as have many similar studies. We chose some nutrients, some toxicants, metals,
organics, and bacteria~a pretty standard list of contaminants for a study like this. The beauty
of this kind of analysis is we had the land uses and soils from The Natural Resource
Conservation Service. We had some rainfall scenarios, which range from a typical year, to
a five-year frequency, to a single large event. We had actual data from previous studies in
the Houston region on concentrations. In cases where we couldn't get actual data from our
region, we did rely on some of the NRP data and some other more generic estimates. Then,
with the math model that was running in the background of this GIS System, the computer did
the work to generate the loads. Of course, the goal here was to rank these sub-watersheds by
their contributions to the water body for each parameter, with this result, we would
geographically target where the biggest containment sources were.
To give you an example of the output, this is a map for oil and grease. The darker areas
indicate a higher loading and the lighter areas less. The study indicated that oil and grease
equivalent of about 40% of the Exxon Valdese spill washes off this region each year. That's
not atypical for a large city. Some of the work in Washington D.C. showed roughly
equivalent values. But we could also measure some of the effects in the bay, because we had
some other studies going at the same time to identify tissue concentrations and various other
things. This was not a fate and effects study, so we couldn't attribute tissue contaminants to
Page 328
-------
a particular point or nonpoint source. Scientifically, we're a long way yet from that kind of
information. We take more or less a technology-based approach to controlling contamination
because we don't have that kind of information.
With this study, we compiled the data and information we needed to actually do the
management planning. There are a number of different programs in Texas, as there are across
the country, and these programs are still evolving. This makes our job challenging. We could
have become the tail wagging the dog, in terms of setting nonpoint source policy that would
guide these major federal programs, or we could take the attitude: "well, we'll try to fit into
these wherever we can." We took the middle ground and said partnership is going to be our
key word. We're going to get local governments involved as much as we can. We're going
to get these programs working toward the problems that we know exist from our scientific
studies, rather than just using a generic shotgun kind of approach. We worked with the
existing NPDES Storm Water Programs, for example, to help target permit requirements.
I know EPA Region 6 used our results to help steer some of their NPDES storm water
permitting.
The Galveston Bay Plan has more than a dozen different initiatives on nonpoint sources. We
used a few key principles in creating our management strategies. First of all, we're interested
in source reductions rather than engineering retrofits. There will be some retrofitting going
on, but addressing sources like the guy dumping oil down the storm drain is an education
issue, not an engineering issue. We, too, have the storm drain stencils used to paint on the
streets. When we ordered our stencils, they came back with a picture of a salmon—so we felt
like we had to make a change there. We sent them back to the factory and got a crab. That
education program has gone forward and has been effective in teaching people about
household waste disposal.
Our management plans are technology driven, rather than performance driven, in recognition
of the fact that we really don't know the fate and effects of these contaminants in comparison
with point source contaminants, what's going on with the air shed and the atmospheric
depositional linkage. We are a very different bay from some of the East Coast systems which
have nutrient problems, so nutrients were not our primary emphasis. In fact, some oyster
models say we won't have enough nutrients for oyster food to grow in 20 years. Nutrient load
reductions were a historical "accident" resulting from damming the rivers and putting in
secondary treatment all about the same time in the early 1970's. Our problems are related
more to toxic issues than they are to nutrient issues.
We're developing BMPs that are not in the literature because of our flat topography and our
heavy clay soils. In looking at things like the 6217 Guidance and a lot of the other BMP
literature, methods don't always apply to our situation because they were not researched and
developed in heavy clay on flat lands. So we're working with the consortium of the City of
Page 329
-------
Houston and Harris County Flood Control-trie NPDES Permit partnership—to try to get the
manuals to reflect our local conditions. And we're going to partnership continually with that
consortium and with the state agencies and federal agencies as the process goes forward.
One element affecting our strategy is the Coastal Management Program, is in limbo still at this
time in Texas. Texas did apply to become the last coastal state to get into the CZM Program,
but our new governor revoked the application and is reviewing it and will probably revise it
and resubmit it in some other form. At that time there will be another part of the equation
we'll deal with for The Galveston Bay Plan.
The Galveston Bay Plan is almost ready to be implemented. We're waiting for our legislature
to tell us how much money we'll have to work with, and then we'll seriously begin
implementation next September. We're doing some work now on a demonstration scale using
some of these things we learned from this project.
Thank you.
Moderator: Mike Bira
Any questions? All right. Just in closing, I'd like to thank everybody for coming to this
conference and I really hope you got something out of it. I want you to remember this is the
first time we've ever tried this watershed approach conference format in Region 6, and we
hope to learn from it and also to learn from some of the other things that are going on around
the country. If you're thinking water quality, like most of the people here have been for many
years, you can't separate that from watersheds. We need to have one of these again, and
hopefully, we'll be able to get funding from Headquarters. So if you feel the desire, I
encourage you to go ahead and write EPA, care of Susan Branning. You've all seen her here.
Send us encouragement so this kind of thing can happen again, because you all are a part of
this. Like they said at the opening session, this is not an EPA program, this is a philosophy,
and for it to work, everybody has to be part of it.
Thank you all for coming and staying inside through this long, beautiful afternoon.
Page 330
-------
Programmatic/Grant Flexibilities in Support of The Watershec
Working Session (3:00-4:30PM)
Moderator: Richard Hoppers, Chief, Water Quality Management Branch, U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency, Region 6; Dallas, TX
I would like to give you an update on some things that are going on in partnership between
the regions and the states. We've got several activities, pilot projects, and other activities that
we've been jointly working on, and we needed to give you an update on that, and even get any
input if you've got any input to them. But all of these activities are aimed at streamlining our
process or better integrating how we do programs. Trying to either make better use of our
resources or do it more efficiently. Streamlining grants or better integrating programs across
program boundaries.
At the same time that we've been doing this, the federal government, at least, has been
reinventing itself. Al Gore has been put in charge of trying to reinvent the government, and
so they're actually taking advantage of some of the things that we're already doing. We're
hearing terms like block grants. But there are things that are being thrown out and terms that
we're hearing; performance partnerships, customer service plans, grant streamlining,
community-based grants. All these terms are being used by different groups that are looking
at streamlining or reinventing government.
So I think what we're trying to do here today is to just give you an update on what we're
doing in the region and in the state, and on the partnership process in these activities, and then
if we can, try to confuse you even further on how some of these terms relate to what we're
doing.
We've got four speakers and these are experts in their respective fields. I'm going to
introduce them and then they are going to introduce their topic. I'm going to start off with
Russ Bowen, because Russ is going to summarize all of the activities that we're doing and then
we'll get into a little more detail on those activities as we go along. At the end of our
presentation, we solicit any questions or complaints or anything else you want to throw at us,
and we'll be glad to tell you what we know about it.
Russell Bowen is the Chief of the State Programs Section in Region 6. Russell has been in
the region for quite a few years. I think since the mid-70's. He's got a Master's Degree from
O.U. in Environmental Science.
Page 331
-------
Speaker: Russell Bowen, Chief, State Programs Section, U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency, Region 6; Dallas, TX
Thank you, Richard. What I want to do is just go over the different things that are going on
with regard to streamlining grants. What I think I'll do is go in chronological order in which
they happened, and you'll see that some of the things that we've started in the region were in
advance of some of the things that are now coming down from our Headquarters office.
One of the first things that we did was take a look at one of our basic grants, the Section 106
Water Pollution Control Grant, which has been in existence since 1972. It basically pays for
states to implement their water quality control programs. It's an annual grant. We looked at
how much resources could we save and that type of thing if we make it a multi-year grant.
So we initiated a multi-year work plan for that 106 Grant. John is going to talk about it and
about the pros and cons and what we're trying to accomplish.
We started this effort in Spring '94. Shortly after that, the regional administrator met with
the state directors at Love Field Airport. It's been called the Love Field Meeting ever since
then. One of the things that came out of that meeting is we've got so many grants and all this
paper work. There's got to be a way we could streamline this and get this done with less
resources. We need to get the money out to the states and get them working and not spending
so much time filling out applications, doing reports, and negotiating work plans. So we
formed a work group called The State/EPA Grant Streamlining Committee and John deMond's
going to bring us up to date on some of the things that we tried to accomplish with that work
group.
Another regional initiative that we've been trying to do supports the watershed approach. For
20 years, at least as long as I've been there. We've been awarding categorical grants. We've
been focusing by programs. We take a program and we focus it on what we want to do. Then
we go to the next program and focus it. There's got to be a better way to do that. We're
making the states and the other applicants come in and shop, for grant funds.
So based on that, we came up with an idea. Let's develop a process or tool to integrate all
these programs' grants by basins. Funds have been awarded to TNRCC to look at how we
might do that and how that's possible. This is sort of a prelude to either consolidated grants
or the so-called block grant. Kerry McCollough, from TNRCC, can talk about that.
That's three regional initiatives. Along with the grant streamlining committee, we got
involved in Vice President Gore's National Performance Review. One of the things he wanted
to address under the National Performance Review was to set certain customer service
standards. So we've become a mini-pilot for the 106 Program, the Water Pollution Control
Grant, on setting some customer service standards. The whole focus is to get the federal
Page 332
-------
government to be more like businesses. In other words, we have a customer. The primary
customer is the general public. But there's an intermediary customer and that is the state
agencies that we work with. So we're trying to set some kind of standards in which we
operate. I'll go into that in a little bit.
Then the next thing we get into is the so-called block grants. The official name for these are
performance partnerships. We're not calling it block grants. That's a key issue, because what
some people wanted was, "Just give us the money and go away." Until they change the law,
we can't do that. What Vice President Gore said, and this was echoed by the President and
Carol Browner later on, is "We want increased flexibility, but we can't sacrifice
accountability, because it is taxpayer's money. We do have a fiduciary responsibility to protect
those funds. To make sure they are used the way they're intended." So we're looking at that.
Point of clarification. Anytime when we talk about the state, it also applies to the tribes. We
have to recognize that we're in a different stage with regards to our relationship with tribes
than we are with states. So we'll have to approach it from a little different point of view.
Those are the five activities that are going on. There is some overlap. There's probably some
duplication in there. Some of the things that we're doing were Region 6 initiatives that we
wanted to take care of our own problems. At the same time, there's this national push to
increase flexibility and to streamline what we're doing.
Moderator: Richard Hoppers
Our next speaker is John Janak, who is with the Texas Natural Resource Conservation
Commission. He's the one that handles all the grants for the agency. John has been with the
Office of the Governor, and then he's been in city management.
Speaker: John Janak, Manager of Federal Funds Coordination Section, Texas
Natural Resource Conservation Commission; Austin, Texas
Thank you, Richard. They always save the best for the last. I'm going to give you a status
report on what Russell just described a little bit about -- the Section 106 multi-year grant
process. Let me give you some background first. My exposure to streamlining started
whenever John Sharp, our Texas State Comptroller, got into looking at doing a better job of
running state government. He developed what was called the Texas Performance Review
Process. John Sharp took some auditors and they went through the programs of every major
state agency. They turned the agencies inside and out to find out what was working and what
was not working. From that, he came up with a report called Breaking the Mold, and we've
been living with that report ever since.
Page 333
-------
It was a good report. The State Legislature picked up on it, and ever since then they've been
cutting programs. Whether that's good or bad, I'm not commenting. But what happened was,
the Clinton Administration came on board and Al Gore got interested in that process. He
asked John Sharp to act as a consultant to work with him in setting up the National
Performance Review process, which he did. Out of that came the National Performance
Review Report. From that report, Al Gore set up a small staff to implement that report and
to look into better ways for the federal government to do business.
In looking at the grants process, Vice President Gore looked at all the government's processes.
But in looking at the federal grants process, there was a primary focus on: (1) cutting out
unnecessary reporting requirements; (2) grant application simplification; (3) looking at and
examining the advantages of multi-year work plans versus annual work plans; (4) looking at
the cost of those work plans and then trying to track the cost benefit of going to a multi-year
process; and (5) examining duplication of applications and certifications in place at that time.
Also, they were interested in reducing the time to negotiate grants. So that was major.
Essentially, the call went out from the Clinton Administration and also from EPA
Headquarters. I don't know why, but EPA Region 6 picked up on that. They decided this
was something they wanted to look into also. So consequently, they did do it, and their
charge was to go back to EPA Headquarters and report how a grant streamlining process
would work and was it relevant. Myron Knudson, Water Management Division Director at
that time, asked Russell Bowen to take on that responsibility. Russell called a joint meeting
of state and EPA officials and that first joint meeting was in the spring of 1994. The IG's
office was there and the Office of Grant Administration was there. We had the General
Council from Region 6 at that meeting. We had a number of EPA program staff, as well as
grant staff, participating. Then the five states in our Region 6 were also called in, which
consisted of programs as well as grant people, to sit in on this joint session.
From that meeting, it was determined there were a number of findings that could be
streamlined—some immediately-which surprised me. We isolated those grant activities
required by regulation. We isolated those that were just strictly policy. Then we looked at
those that were in the legislation, like section 319, that we couldn't do anything about. What
we found out, with the IG's office and General Council's office there, was that when we got
into regulations we could ask for a deviation. I was surprised about that. Why had that never
come up? If we wanted to deviate from a regulation, all we had to do was ask. Now it's a
much more lengthy process than that, but nevertheless, that was available to the states.
The other part was policies. There were a number of policies in place, such as the
certification process. If you were filling out a grant application, you could appreciate the
number of certification papers you have to fill out. We found out there was only one that
needed to be filled out or that was really required. The others were strictly policy. This was
Page 334
-------
something that the Office of Grants & Administration wanted. So we found out that all we
had to do was just go back and have the Regional Administrator change the policy. And that
did happen.
So those are the things we looked at just from that joint meeting. After what I guess was a
brainstorming meeting, Region 6 then requested and got approval from EPA Headquarters to
set up a pilot. That was a multi-year pilot process and they selected the Section 106 Water
Quality Management Program. Russell, you may want to expand on why the Section 106
Water Quality Management Program was selected. I guess it was selected because it was one
of the larger water programs that affected primarily the permitting and enforcement process,
which definitely has an impact on your watershed process.
There were two states selected for the pilot process ~ New Mexico and Texas. My
understanding is it's just because we had a wide variance of one large state and one smaller
state. Jim Piatt, from New Mexico, was called in and I was called in. We sat down with
Russell and staff and were asked to map out a game plan on how we were going to implement
this multi-year pilot. The multi-year was going to cover fiscal year 1996 and 1997. So we
had to start immediately developing a process.
The two states agreed to negotiate a two-year work plan based on the annual national and
regional guidance. As you know, national and regional guidance generally doesn't change that
much. So we felt that was a fairly simple process. I'm not sure if that required a deviation
or not.
Russell Bowen:
No, it just required EPA Headquarters to make a commitment.
John Janak:
A commitment was made to do that, so that worked out very nicely. Headquarters did agree
that since this was a pilot they would agree to whatever we settled on out of the annual
guidance for the FY '96 annual guidance and that would also apply to the FY '97 fiscal year.
So we got a lot of help from Headquarters on that.
The second thing we did was agree to draft a two-year work plan, and adhere to a time line
for negotiating the draft work plan. That was an interesting process because neither one of
us knew how to draft a two-year work plan for which we were only going to get one year of
funding. So I asked Karen Young, Texas Project Officer from EPA, "What is that work plan
supposed to look like? Could we separate the Texas' Project work plan and just make it two
separate fiscal years? Do we take a '96 work plan and stack it on top of the '97 work plan,
Page 335
-------
and then put a table of contents to it, and that's it? Or do we just consolidate and really make
a consolidated work plan for two years?" Karen's answer was, "Yes." So that's important
because we're talking about flexibility here. I think that's something that we're going to be
confronted with in the future when we get into the Performance Partnership Grant process.
So they were just saying, "Yes, okay. Just put something together and get it in and we'll f
negotiate it." Which was great. That's something that we hadn't heard in a long time. !
I
Another thing was ~ and I think this is really important — that if there were any unresolved 1
issues, after we had gone through this time line negotiating that grant, then that would go to j
what Russell called a face-to-face meeting. I found out later that was just a buzz word that
he had picked up. I really thought it was a smart thing for him to do to come up with that
cliche. That's important, because the State of Texas invariably, when we begin of our fiscal
year, is still negotiating with Jack Ferguson (Water Permits Branch Chief) on permits. We
would not get our work plan approved until October or November. (Texas' fiscal year starts
September 1.) It was decided that if the permit issue or any other issue that came up that
could not be resolved during the review or negotiation of that draft work plan that it would
come to this face-to-face meeting in early summer. We would get in the room with all the
decision makers. We would get the branch chiefs from EPA and we would get the state
directors or deputy directors from both states, and we would sit down and negotiate. In the
past if it was determined that we couldn't resolve the permits or we sat down and tried to
resolve it and it didn't work, you would just walk away from the meeting. You'd say, "Well,
we'll go back and we'll try to work it out and get back with EPA on what we can do." Not
this time, it was decided that door was closed in the face-to-face meeting. If anybody walked
out with an unnegotiated activity, then the remaining group would decide and that would be
it. The Regional Administrator apparently agreed to that. Believe me that got a lot of
people's attention: And it happened.
So for the first time, we were able to go in with an approvable work plan at the beginning of
the fiscal year. That was unheard of but we did it. And the same thing happened to New
Mexico and it worked just fine. So that's an important part of this process that we felt really
did work for us.
The last thing is that both states agreed to keep track of our transactional cost of determining
the cost benefit of a multi-year process. We're keeping time sheets on how much time we
have spent in the development process and negotiation process. Hopefully, when the second
year comes up, we won't have to do that. We don't have to go through that process because
we already have a two-year approved work plan. So there's no more negotiations unless
there's some major national guidance that comes out that we're required to do, or if there was
some major cost cutting as far as our budget was concerned. So we have a two-year work
plan that has been agreed on, and "it's a done deal."
Page 336
-------
The way it works now is the second year the only thing we have to do is go back and amend
the application, once we determine what the second year of our annual funding is going to be
for the program. Now that sounds simple, but that's the way it works. That's sort of what
we agreed to and that's sort of where we stand right now. We've already gone through the
negotiation process and the development process of negotiation. We're now in the
implementation process of the first year of that two-year program. It's working fine as far as
I can tell. We haven't experienced the second year. So we're really not sure what we're
going to be faced with, other than the fact that we don't have to sit down and develop another
work plan. That's the key point.
So we feel there's going to be some cost benefits from this program. I've seen a third quarter
report from Russell that shows some results so far. As far as cost savings is concerned, I'm
not really sure how that's going to shape up once the program is over with. But it looks
encouraging. The thing I can tell you as far as having an annual program that goes to a multi-
year program is that number one there's a lot of "partnership" that goes on. That's important.
I know New Mexico felt that was very important to have that kind of partnership relationship
with EPA. We certainly feel that way. Second thing is that there is a lot of flexibility. That's
something that states are not accustomed to. I think that's something we're going to have to
get prepared for, especially if the Performance Partnership Grant concept proceeds. Cost
benefits? The jury is still out. Hopefully, there's going to be enough cost benefit—dollars
saved—that it's going to be advantageous for us to go to multi-year.
Russell Bo wen:
I might just clarify a couple of points. The reason we picked the Section 106 Program Grant
is because it is known as a continuing grant. It's an annual grant. I won't go into the
difference between a continuing grant and a project grant, but there's some advantages and
disadvantages of both. But the program had determined that the 106 grant would be a
continuing grant. As a result, each year we would have to kind of shut down and renegotiate
next year's award. What we thought, just from experience, was that there's time lost in there.
It's a 20-year-old program. Why do we have to change directions every year? We really
don't have to. So that's the reason we picked the 106 grant.
The reason we picked Texas and New Mexico is just like John said. Texas, our largest state,
gets the most money in the 106 program and New Mexico gets the least. Let's pilot both
states to see what the differences might be. We have shown some cost savings. I think those
cost savings we've shown are low. The reason I say they are low is because we implemented
two things. We implemented a two-year work plan, but we also implemented an improved
negotiation process. This face-to-face meeting, we lock the door and we don't come out until
somebody bites the bullet and compromises or whatever. There's no more kicking letters back
and forth for two or three months. So I think we've saved a lot of resources just on that.
Page 337
-------
This also gives the states the flexibility that if they don't get things done this year, they can
pick them up in the next year.
John Janak:
That's a good point.
Russell Bowen:
They can shift things back and forth, and we didn't have that before. We had to shut the grant
down, de-obligate the money, carry it forward, and renegotiate the work plan. We've cut all
that out.
Moderator: Richard Hoppers
Next, we're going to have John deMond talk to us. John coordinates the grants and contract
matters for the Planning & Assessment Section of the Louisiana Department of Environmental
Quality. John has a Master's Degree in Marine Biology. John, it's all yours.
Speaker: John deMond, Environmental Quality Coordinator, Louisiana Department
of Environmental Quality; Baton Rouge, LA
As Russell was saying, the beginning of this streamlining effort was with the Love Field
group. In a meeting approximately a year ago, this matter came up about why is it so difficult
to obtain grants? Why is it so painful or everyone to go through this process? As a result of
that discussion, it was decided that there should be a regional work group to look at
streamlining the process. To give you an example of what sort of problems people were
facing getting their grants, for the 1994 106 Grant, we had a six-month delay in receiving that
grant. It was six months into the fiscal year before we received our grant.
In mid-June we had our first meeting. There were 30 or so people there. These people were
folks who were involved with the grants process, both with the state and the region. A
concept was developed there (I think it probably came from John Janak; it could be from
Russell Bowen) that there are transactional costs as a result of an inefficient process that
reduces resources would normally go to programmatic needs.
Perhaps about a year or so before that, there was a National QAT Team that looked into grants
and work plans and difficulties. One outcome from that was a statement that 90 to 95% of
work plans were the same from year to year, and only five to 10% of those work plans are
Page 338
-------
ever changed. It's that five to 10% change that complicates matters and is increasing the
transactional cost.
In our first meeting, we spent a lot of our time looking at the barriers to the process, and this
was kind of a bureaucratic catharsis. We had some controlled venting. Lots of stuff was put
on the table. I think it developed an atmosphere of candor that helped us to proceed. We all
had to get this out and we all had to let people know what our concerns were and why we
were troubled by the process. Some of those barriers that came out, that I thought was
significant, were the matters of poor communication and poor trust. We saw that there was
a problem of turnover with state personnel, as well as federal personnel. That turnover could
be people resigning their jobs or people needlessly moved around from position to position and
other reassignments.
There seemed to be confusion as to what was really mandated as a requirement of work plans
and what things were just discretionary. There seemed to be a problem about comment
inflation. John Janak spoke about that before. There seemed to be endless rounds of revisions
to work plans and then comments coming back from the Region. These comments had the
appearance of having very little screening. Many of the comments were just really not
pertinent to the matter. There was concern that we get into this kind of loop of draft and
comment, draft and comment. We could not get out of them. There also seemed to be
something of an approval paralysis. There was fear of going ahead and approving a work
plan. There was a kind of undo concern or requirement for success. We felt like we as states
had to prove success before we even initiated work.
On the other hand, there was a problem in the eyes of the regional people in that there was
inconsistency in work plan format. That there was inconsistency in the level of detail in the
work plans. This was within state and also among the states. There also was a problem with
excessive conditions on grants that we had several pages of grant conditions. A lot of those
grant conditions were boiler plate, but it was difficult to pick out those things that were a
potential concern for the agency. So a lot of times, we didn't discover until after we had
signed the assistance agreement, that we had a condition that gave us a little difficulty.
Not really discussed, but I think playing into this, was the year before all the states underwent
an Administrative Oversight Review, in which the Grants & Audit Section of Region 6 went
out to the various states to take a look at how they did things. Although many of the states
faired well in this review, it kind of upped the ante. It upped the stakes on people. With that
sort of increased importance on things, I think people were even more inclined to procrastinate
on approval on the federal level. On the state level, they are being careful not to commit to
things they felt would be difficult to modify at some later date, once they got into the work
plan.
Page 339
-------
So we decided that we needed some direction. So we elected co-chairs. Steve Thompson of
Oklahoma and Richard Hoppers were elected, conscripted, as the co-chairmen. As we worked
through these things and put all the information up on the bulletin boards, there was some
order that started to emerge from chaos. It appeared that there were three prime areas in
which we needed to direct our attention and form subcommittees. We formed a guidance
subcommittee, which would look at the annual headquarter guidance and also look at regional
guidance. That was headed up by Russell. There was a work plan subcommittee that John
Janak chaired, which looked at transforming guidance into work plans, and the negotiation
part of work plan development. The third subcommittee was the grant application
subcommittee, which looked at grants and certifications, the approval process, and the
assistance award and conditions.
We had several meetings through that summer developing our strategy. The idea was to put
this all together as a pilot project in which we would select one of the federal grants and apply
some of these strategies for streamlining. We adopted a methodology as we worked through
this: first of all, we defined the existing problems; we developed pilot solutions to apply to
those problems; we considered the legal requirements or legal constraints for doing those
things; and we looked at the anticipated results and tried to come up with measures of success.
Finally, we put this before another "love-in" on September 7, 1994, and since I'm fortunate
enough to be a peon, I did not have to suffer through that. But, from what I understand, that
meeting went very well, and as a result, we were rewarded with additional work to do. We
continued our work plan committee and our applications committee and also our guidance
committees. We added a couple of additional committees; one is on electronic transfer data
and also revision—a performance based assistance policy. The specific recommendations made
to the committee were for coordinated review and response to national guidance, meaning,
coordinated between the states and Region 6. That way there would be a more unified and
stronger voice going back to Washington. I think what had happened before is when this
guidance was put out for review and comment, the comment that was sent back was largely
ignored. I think because no one group had a strong enough voice. By coordinating our
comments we may be able to keep Headquarters a little bit within reality. After that, there
would be joint development of a regional guidance.
Now the work plan group decided that it would be best to put its efforts into training and
education. The idea behind that is that no matter what other things you do to change the
process to make it streamlined, people should know what they're doing and know what can
reasonably be expected from work plans and reasonably be expected from the process. That,
in effect, would streamline the process by just getting people competent.
Now the recommendations for application would be to come up with a schedule of approval
that we would adhere to a bit closer and probably more importantly would be the elimination
Page 340
-------
of needless conditions on assistance agreements. Those conditions that were to remain would
be grouped according to like condition, those that are somewhat unique. You don't want to
call them special conditions. I've been corrected on that a time or two. There's no such thing
as a special condition, apparently. But those that may be more likely to alert the concern of
the recipient agency would be put together. Many of the conditions that could be referenced
by statute would be put together, and thereby, make it a more compact package. Also, there
was an overall desire to go to an electronic data transfer system that would cut down on the
amount of paper that we would generate and the delays in transmittal and handling.
A couple of the ideas that the committee had that were implemented immediately was the face
to face meeting. Although that wasn't an original idea, it was one that the committee favored.
Another idea that I think Washington stole from us, I'm sure, was to put together all the
certifications into one package and have that submitted annually, thereby, cut out all that
additional paper with each grant application.
Most of what I'm going to speak about from this point on is the training course. Because that
was the committee that I was on. The idea was to accomplish two things. One, provide basic
training for preparation of work plans and secondly, to be able to transmit information
concerning guidance to the states and to those people who are going to actually be putting
together the work plans and those people who are going to be reviewing them.
The course was attended by approximately 40 people or so from the states and from the
region. By and large, I think we've got a favorable response, particularly the basic training
aspect of it. We really didn't have a lot of new information to pass on since we were in the
second year of two-year guidance. That really didn't play into our training all that much.
One side line of this training, it was impressed upon the people there that because of the trend
toward standardization prompted by the electronic transfer of data, there is a greater need for
standardization of structure of work plans. So the trick is going to be, while as we're
standardizing these things, to come up with something that will fit with the national database,
but still allow the states flexibility to account for differing priorities and differing structure
within their governments.
Russell Bowen:
I might add for those out that there that haven't caught on yet. We sort of dug this hole for
ourselves. What I see was happening over the last 15 years at least, was that we kept getting
more mandates and more requirements, but no more money. So we kept negotiating harder
and harder as to "we need this, plus this" and each year we keep adding things. The other
fact is through inflation the money that we were getting wasn't buying as much and EPA just
did not recognize that. We would take these national needs and goals and take it to the state,
who does most of the work through these grants, and continually increase the amount of work
Page 341
-------
we wanted them to do. Another thing I think we did was we didn't really recognize that in }
order to get the federal grant, they had to put up so much state money. We just lumped that
in and said, "We're negotiating the whole pot." I think we reached sort of a breaking point
and after a while we said, "We need to step back and take a look at this. Is there a better way I
we can do business?" So I'll be the first to admit that we sort of dug ourselves into a hole and
now we're stepping back and taking a little better look at it. :
Several other things happened that made this possible. To a large degree, we got out of the
bean counting mentality—how many permits, how many enforcements, actions, how many
A.O's, all those kinds of things. This wasn't as important as the water resource. What's the -,
watershed that you're focusing on? What are your goals for that resource? That was the new |
direction coming out of our Headquarters Office. So we took that and ran with it. We said,
"All right. We've got a little more flexibility here." So several things kind of happened that
fell in place and set this up.
|
The other thing that I think really brought it to a head with regard to the Love Field meeting !
is many years ago, we had maybe four grant programs we dealt with. And each year, some 1
of those grants would close out and we would start new ones. So we were running about 30, j
40 grants a year that we had to manage. That wasn't too bad of a work load. What has j
happened is we've got a lot of new grant programs. In my section we've got 140 active j
grants, worth about $75 million, with more coming. The administrative burden just got to be j
overwhelming. So I think all of a sudden we said, "We've got to streamline this." That's j
what hit us and I think the states were reacting to it also. j
I really think the Streamlining Committee has done some really good work. I think once we
get this electronic transfer in place, we're going to save paper, time, mail service, all those
things. You know, we're ten years behind the industry in this regard. So I think with all
these four things that we're trying to focus on, we're going to make some real improvements,
and have people spend more time on working on the program.
Moderator: Richard Hoppers
Okay. Our next speaker is Kerry McCollough, from the Texas Natural Resources
Conservation Commission, and she's a Program Manager in the Nonpoint Source Program.
She has her Master's Degree in City and in Regional Planning from Rutgers.
Speaker: Kerry McCollough, Program Manager, Water Planning & Assessment,
Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission; Austin, TX
Thanks. What I'm going to talk about is a pilot study, a national pilot study, called the Work
Plan Integration Pilot Study. Essentially, it's a national pilot project and the purpose of it is
Page 342
-------
to organize projects, primarily EPA funded water grants, by watershed. So I'd like to start
out with giving you some background on how from the state's perspective we got to this point.
Then I'll go into some of the details about how this is going to look, and give you a little
update as to where we're at with it, and maybe, time permitting, talk a little bit about what
the future might look like with this.
On our side, we get questions, particularly being in the Nonpoint Source Program, about
what's going on in a watershed. We received interest from, not only from the outside, for
instance, regional authorities, like river authorities. "We heard about this project. Do you
know about it? What are they doing? Are they coordinating with activities that are already
ongoing?" Also, interest from the inside, within our own agency, different divisions not being
aware of work that they're both engaging in. So it seemed like some sort of mechanism for
coordination of activities was certainly in order.
For a brief period, I was going to try to ask different parts of the agency for information about
what they were doing, and try to put together some sort of database that was interior to the
agency, so that as a program, we could start to look at what was going on, and kind of build
on existing efforts, rather than duplicating things. That didn't last very long. I didn't have
enough time, of course. So it faded away.
Then at one of the end of year meetings that we have for the program, Nonpoint Source
Program, Region 6 and Texas got into a discussion about a pilot project that potentially would
be beneficial nationwide. So in the following spring, I guess April of 1994, we submitted a
proposal. We were pretty excited because at this point we had already started reporting using
the electronic tracking system that EPA has called GRTS. Barbara is our GRTS guru. She's
sitting in the last row. That was also an interesting kind of component to this, because there
is a field in there for latitude/longitude, and wouldn't it be great if we could map this stuff.
So that's what we were looking at, something easy, something that you could know, at least,
in a sort of list fashion, what was going on, but that you could show local citizens even what
was going on in watersheds. That it would be a user-friendly kind of way of communicating
activity.
So basically, that's what we're going to do. We're looking at certain details that we want to
know-what kind of activity is the program implementing, to address what kind of problem,
and over what kind of period of time? And how much money is going to that effort? By
seeing all of that, naturally, you will also see who is involved in implementation. It will
probably give rise to increased coordination between different agencies and stakeholders in an
area. Essentially, it boils down to information management.
The "customers" in all of this are our water resource managers, initially. I think as I
indicated before, the ideal ultimate customers are the people that live in the watershed. Part
Page 343
-------
of the state's interest also is how big is the watershed you're attaching this information to?
We could do this by river basin. That would be pretty large scale and maybe not quite so
meaningful. Or we could look at the smallest, maybe logical unit that data is collected at. We
call it a geographic unit for want of a better term at this point. That might include monitoring
data. That's part of what the grant is doing. It's looking at which unit would be most useful.
You know, this unit right now in our state is a segment. That may or may not be the best kind
of data management unit and it hasn't been delineated. So part of what we're looking at is
how to compare different options. Put them together into what we're calling so far a kind of
planning area, and then the information would be attached at that scale.
That's the function of this project is to look at these things and record the process that we go
through to arrive at this, because this is supposed to be flexible and responsive enough to be
transferrable nationwide. The issue of coordination is something that we're going to come up
against pretty shortly. We're putting together two sets of work groups. One on a national
scale for upper level management people that need this kind of information and look at the big
picture and are looking possibly at more than just water. I don't know. And then our regional
work group that's more of a technical advisory kind of work group. I imagine that likely
members will be other federal agencies that operate in Texas, neighboring states, river
authorities, perhaps municipalities. That's not been decided yet. But the idea being that as
we build this product, we need to continually see whether or not we are serving the needs of
the customer that we're trying to help.
I think that the results of this will be certainly greater access to information and increased
coordination. That you will see when you look at this information, who is doing what. If you
want to do a project, for instance, since my program depends on a management program to
do its activity, if I'm setting up priorities, I need to see what's already going on, and I also
need to see who my partners in a watershed might be. So that when I write a work plan for
the next grant cycle, I am addressing the priority problems, and that we are not duplicating
efforts, but we are maximizing our resources in that given watershed.
I think that the future might be something like having all information about all kinds of
programs and projects, not just at the national level, but the state level. What regional entities
are doing. A good example of that would be the National Estuary Programs in our state,
where one is in the implementation stage, but the other is just beginning. They have an
enormous job of getting the word out and also finding out what is already going on and
making sure that the local citizen is not being bombarded by multiple efforts. We have run
into that issue. I think that this would be one way of resolving that.
Since the tool that we would be using would be a relational database hooked into GIS,
hopefully accessible by a variety of ways. I mean, the idea is flexibility. We want people to
be able to have access to this information whether or not they have a full-power GIS
Page 344
-------
Department or if they just have an ARC view license or some sort of linkage that doesn't
require a lot of investment.
I think that's pretty well it. I think we view it as a practical tool. I think that my program,
in particular, will benefit from it right away as we begin to rewrite our management program.
So it's going to be interesting to see how these things really do hook together, once we start
seeing exactly what community outreach efforts are in a given watershed, or seeing, well,
what are the different kinds of BMP's actually being implemented in a watershed? And then
if you can hook that information together up with maybe water quality data, maybe you can
start seeing relationships that weren't evident before, as you see program activity through
time. And you have an unrelated perhaps data set originally, but you also might see water
quality trends over time and then you have a mechanism to join those two realities together.
So I think it could be a very powerful tool. But initially, the bottom line is to enable water
resource managers to see what's going in the watershed, when it's happening, what problems
are being addressed, and what the money is purchasing.
So thank you.
Russell Bowen:
I might add also, basically, I thought what we're up against is that you had to go to another
branch, another department, another group to find out what was going on, and there's just
absolutely no sense in that. Here again, the power of computers over the last 15 years have
just become incredible. We said that there's got to be a way we can archive this information
in some fashion, and we need to look at it. The movement now is to move toward
watersheds. That's the control unit. Some level of a watershed, sub-watershed, micro-
watershed, whatever you want to use. So basically, we're trying to create and archive
information where you don't have to go back and talk to people like me, who have forgotten
what they did yesterday, and say, "What did you do here 10 years ago." Particularly if we've
paid for it, it should be public information. It should be accessible to the public, so you know
what's going on. You don't have to reinvent the wheel. So that's what we hope to
accomplish. It's a simple tool, but it could have a lot of power.
Moderator: Richard Hoppers
Okay. What we'd like to do is open it up for the thousands of questions that I know you've
just been sitting there itching to ask.
Russell Bowen:
Well, I had a few other national projects that are going on.
Page 345
-------
Richard Hoppers:
Okay, well, hit them with it.
Russell Bowen:
I'll go fast. The customer service standards. I mentioned that earlier. This was an Executive
Order from the President. Basically, what they are saying is the government must be
customer driven. In EPA, our primary customer is the general public. The intermediate
customers are the state and tribal and local governments that we work with. The standard of
quality for service provided to the public shall be customer service equal to the best in
business. The best in business means the highest quality of service delivered to customers by
private organizations providing a comparable or analogous service. I'm not too sure there's
too many private organizations that are regulatory. So it's going to be kind of hard. But in
our field, where I work, we deliver funds. So I think there's some areas we can improve on.
As part of the customer service standards, they are dealing with hot lines, better responses,
and more adequate responses to the general public. Those are some other things that they're
doing.
In the Water Grants Improvement Pilot Project our goals were very simple. We're going to
reduce paperwork by 20%. We want to acknowledge receipt of applications for any grant
within 10 days and award grants within 90 days after the application. Now that's providing
we have the funds appropriated by Congress. We can't give the money out if we don't have
it. Then we're going to try to increase flexibility with regard to how the funds are used.
Some of the things that we talked about here are ways to increase flexibility.
There are also some national pilots going on in other Regions. One is in Region 8 and it's in
North Dakota. They are actually trying to do what they call a block grant. The official word
for block grant for EPA is a performance partnership. But in North Dakota, what they wanted
to do and they did, but they had to go back and get a Congressional waiver to do this. They
combined the 105 Air Grant and the 106 Water Grant and then the 604(b) Water Quality
Management Planning Grant into one big grant. Basically, the state of North Dakota wanted
to drop the ambient water monitoring program and buy several hundred thousand dollars
worth of air monitoring equipment. So allowing them to mix this money allowed them to do
that. Whether that's good or bad, really is up to the region and the state. But these are the
kinds of trades that you get into when you get into that type of thing.
In the state of Massachusetts in Region 1, they took some money from the 105 Air Grant,
some money from the 106 Water Quality Grant, and some RCRA Funds ($200,000 from each
one of those programs) combined it into a Multi-Media Enforcement Grant. They didn't
Page 346
-------
actually reduce the number of grants. They still have three grants, but they added another one
and it's a separate one. It's called a Multi-Media Enforcement Grant.
In New Hampshire, in Region 1, they also wanted to merge the 319, the 314 Grant and the
106 Grant into one big large grant. So they could move some of that 319 money into some
more planning activities. Well, they negotiated the work plan. They got the applications done
and they were getting ready to make the award and OMB said, "You can't do this. The reason
you can't do it is you can't mix types of money." Some of this money came from what we
call the Water Infrastructure Funds (WIF) and the other comes from what we call AC&C
funds, and these are the grant funds we traditionally use. But because they are from different
pots, different appropriations, you can't mix them. So they got all the way down the line and
said, "Stop, you can't do this." It wasn't real fun. But these are some of the things that
they're trying.
There's another effort going on, on how to redefine how we oversight state agencies that we
fund. It's called a Differential Oversight Policy. It's in its formative stages. Some drafts have
come out and I'm not sure anybody is really happy with it. But it's an attempt to kind of
lessen the reigns and the oversight responsibilities on those states that can perform well. If
they perform well, they don't need oversight. What we need to do is direct our efforts, not
money, but manpower to other areas. So they're looking at some options to do that.
Page 347
-------
Page 348
-------
April 18 - 20, 1995
le Meridien
New Orleans, Louisiana
SPONSORED BY
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency - Region 6
The Lower Colorado River Authority
Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation
Terrene Institute
------- |