A REPORT TO THE DEPUTY ADMINISTRATOR
POLLUTION CONTROL IN THE U.S.
SOME EXAMPLES OF RECENT ACCOMPLISHMENTS
November 24, 1976
c ompiled by:
The Program Evaluation Division
US ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
401 M Street, SW
Washington DC 20460
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
TOWARD A REACHABLE GOAL 1
HOW TO TELL IF IT'S PROGRESS 3
CLEANING THE NATION'S WATERS 5
What the Law Says
Two Spoilers of Water Quality
A GALLERY OF NORTHERN RIVERS 7
S_t_a.te
Seven from New England
Naugatuck CT 7
Housatonic CT 7
Willimantic CT 8
Pemigewasset NH 8
Contoocook NH 8
Stevens Branch of the
Winooski River VT 9
Androscoggin ME, NH 10
A Trio of New York Rivers
Mohawk NY 11
Hudson NY 12
Susquehanna NY 14
The Urban Rivers of New Jersey
Hackensack NJ 15
Navesink NJ 15
Shrewsbury NJ 15
RIVERS OF THE SOUTH 17
Pearl LA 17
Sope Creek GA 19
Arkansas OK, AR 20
A Mountain River NC 22
Lower Escatawpa AL, MS 23
Lower Savannah GA, SC 24
A ROLL CALL OF RIVERS 25
Ohio WV, PA, OH
IN, KY, IL 25
Kanawha WV 26
Neche s TX 26
Tar Creek OK 26
Little Deep Fork OK 26
Maunesha WI 26
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TABLE OF CONTENTS (Cont'd)
State Pagi
A ROLL CALL OF RIVERS (Cont'd)
Dry Auglaize Creek MO 27
Mobile-Tombigbee AL 27
Chester & Campbell Creeks AK 27
Calumet IL 27
THE GREAT LAKES 28
Lake Erie -- The Beginnings OH, NY
of a Comeback MI, PA 29
Lakes Michigan and Ontario
Lake Ontario NY 31
Lake Michigan IL, WI
IN, MI 31
The Tributaries
Cuyahoga River OH 32
Detroit River MI 32
River Rouge MI 33
The .Grand MI 34
Kalamazoo River MI 35
Fox River WI 36
The Indiana Tributaries
Train &, Salt Creeks IN 37
Grand Calumet River IN 37
A New Threat 38
BAYS, HARBORS, OCEANS, AND LAKES 40
Escarabia River Basin FL, AL 40
Gulf of Mexico FL, AL, MS,
LA, TX 42
Delaware Coast NJ, PA 44
Kodiak Harbor AK 45
Pearl Harbor HI 46
Charleston Harbor SC 47
Two Western Harbors
Port Angeles Harbor WA 48
Gray's Harbor WA 49
Two Northern Lakes
Annabessacook Lake ME 50
Minnetonka Lake MN 51
WATERS MADE BY MAN 53
Houston Ship Channel TX 53
Las Vegas Wash NV 55
Two Reservoirs
Stockton Lake MO 56
Dillon Reservoir CO 57
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TABLE OF CONTENTS (Cont'd)
State Page
INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGY --
FIND.ING SOMETHING BETTER 59
Muskegon County's Better Idea MI 59
Lake Shagawa MN 60
Jasper AR 61
St. Petersburg FL 62
Largo FL 63
Military Innovations
Tyndall Air Force Base FL 64
Eglin Air Force Base FL 64
Dobbins Air Force Base GA 65
Hobbs -- Selling a City's
Wastewater NM 65
NONPOINT SOURCES 67
The Monogahela -- Pollution
from the Mines
Monogahela River WV, PA 67
Dents Run WV 69
The Colorado -- A Salt Problem CA, AZ, NM,
NV, UT, CO 70
A Metropolitan Lake
Lake Quinsigamond MA 71
DRINKING WATER 72
Cambridge and the Lead Problem MA 72
Huron and the Chloroform Problem SD 73
Two Villages in Alaska
Emmonak and Wainwright AK 73
AIR POLLUTION SEEN AND UNSEEN 75
The Mandate 75
The National Accomplishment 75
S02 and Particulates --
Twin Problems 78
The Big Three 78
Places Where the Air is Cleaner 79
New England States S02 CT, RI, MA,
VT, NH, ME 80
Massachusetts Incinerators MA 80
New England Paper Mills NH, ME 80
Portland OR 80
Springfield MO 80
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TABLE OF CONTENTS (Cont'd)
S ta t e Pagt
Places Where the Air is Cleaner (Cont'd)
New York Partlculates NY 81
Detroit MI 81
Gary IN 81
Chicago IL 81
Cincinnati OH 82
Birmingham AL 82
Las Vegas NY 82
Chattanooga TN 82
Philadelphia PA 82
Power Plants - Region III VA., WVt MD,
DE, PA 82
Pollution from the Exhaust Pipe
Los Angeles Oxidant CA 83
California CO CA 83
The Campaign against Auto Pollutants
Vapor Recovery DC, CO,
CA, TX 84
Controlling Auto Emissions
Inspection & Maintenance A£, IL, OH,
NJ, OR, CA 86
Curbing Vehicle Use NJ 86
Spreading out the Traffic
Lincoln CO NE 86
SOLID WASTE STEMMING THE TIDE 88
The Campaign Against Open Dumps
St. Thomas Dump VI 88
Wisconsin Sanitary Landfills WI 89
Iowa Dump Closures and
Landfills IA 90
Missouri Landfills MO 90
Kansas Landfills KS 90
Sludge A New Worry
Lake County Sludge IL 91
Another Way to Do It
Energy from Wood Waste
American Walnut Company KS 92
Recycled Paper
Federal Recycling CO, DC 92
Salvaging Abandoned Cars
Montana Junk Cars MT 93
The Bottle Bills
Oregon OR 93
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TABLE OF CONTENTS (Cont'd)
S_t_a_t_e Page
RISKS, SPILLS, AND DIASTERS 96
Rush Spill KY 96
Dealing with Crises
Region IV SPCC 96
Oil Spill Co-op WY 97
A Santa Barbara Sized Spill
in Kansas KS 98
A Chemical Spill in Kentucky
Lowe Spill KY 99
DNBP Spill NJ 99
Toxaphene Spill VA 100
Toxics in the Duwaraish
Seattle PCB Spill WA 100
The PCB Search
Los Angeles County CA 101
Irrepairable Harm
Kingston Spill TN 102
Philadelphia BCEE PA 103
Baltimore MD 103
Belle DMN WV 103
Detective Story
Harrodsburg Creek KY 103
Repairing the Damage
Ogden Bay Lagoon UT 104
INDUSTRY -- MAJOR ACTORS IN THE
ANTIPOLLUTION DRAMA 107
Paper Mills 107
New York State NY 107
Gulf States AL 108
Copper Smelters 108
Inspiration Copper AZ 109
Power Plants 109
Dairyland Power WI 109
Kansas City Power and Light KS 109
Nashville Thermal Transfer TN 110
Diablo Canyon CA 110
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TABLE OF C ONTENTS (Cont'd)
State Page
Food Processing
Sugar Mills HI m
Cattle Feedlots ID 112
Potato Processing --
J.R. Simplot ID 113
Citrus Industry FL 114
SAVING THE RARE AND THREATENED 115
Four Vanishing Birds
0sPrey NY, CN 115
Peregrine Falcon 115
Bald Eagle wi ue
Brown Pelican CA H6
Mangroves -- Father to
an Ecosystem PR 11^
Yellowstone WY 118
Two Citizen Triumphs 120
The Willamette OR 120
The Buffallo NY 122
CONCLUSION 126
The Future 127
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FIGURES
FlRure
I Fecal Coliform Status 14
2 Fecal Coliform Trends 14
3 Dissolved Oxygen Status 19
4 Dissolved Oxygen Trends 19
5 Turbidity Status 20
6 Construction Grants Awards 25
7 Construction Grants Completions 25
8 Phosphorus Status 30
9 Phosphorus Trends 31
10 Nitrate Status 52
11 Nitrate Trends 52
12 pH Status 68
13 Phenol Status 72
14 Particulate Levels and Trends Nationwide 76
15 Particulate Trends for Selected Cities 77
16S02Trends 77
17 N02 Trends 77
18 Oxidant Trends 77
19 Lead Trends 77
20 Air Emissions Trends for Three Industries 79
21 New York Metropolitan Area Population
Exposure to Particulates 81
22 Los Angeles Metropolitan Area Population
Exposure to Oxidants 83
23 Average Automobile Emissions after
1 ye ar of use 85
24 Air Pollution Compliance by major
Point Sources 126
25 Water Pollution Compliance by major
Point Sources 126
26 Enforcement Actions 126
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Acknowledgments
Many individuals have played raajo'- roles in the eight
month period during which this report has been assembled.
The most important part was played by the ten Deputy Regional
Administrators who directed the assembling of the Regional
submissions. These constituted the bulk of the material going
into this report. Countless Regional staff members responded
to the DRAs' call and performed admirably under very tight
dead lines.
Also playing major roles were the Monitoring and Data
Analysis Division in the Office of Air Quality Planning and
Standards, and the Monitoring and Data Support Division of the
Office of Water Planning and Standards. Phil Taylor, Bob
Greenspun and Owen Mitz of MDSD were especially responsive and
untiring in their efforts to develop and generate the water
quality maps featured in the first part of this report.
Thanks go as well to Jack Waugh, who bore the brunt of
the responsibility for weaving the materials received into a
fluent, cohesive whole.
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TOWARD A REACHABLE GOAL
The Environmental Protection Agency came in with the
Seventies on the wave of environmental concern already sweeping
t he country.
Its mission was to carry out the complex, precedent-
setting air and water legislation then beginning to issue from
the Congress. Those first six years have been years of
sometimes slow, sometimes rapid progress against the worst
forms of pollution that stress the water, land, and air.
And the years have proved one major fact: that workable
pollution controls do exist and that where they are used,
they improve the environment.
The struggle for a cleaner, healthier environment did not
begin with the birth of the EPA in December, 1970. It was
being waged long before that by the states and by the EPA's
predecessor agencies in the Federal Government. And most of
the improvement since the advent of the EPA has been a triumph
not of the EPA alone, but of a close Federal, State and local
partnership.
In many cases the Agency's role has simply been to set a
tone, create a presence, devise a strategy, or simply establish
a climate in which others State and local agencies, private
corporations, the courts, citizen groups and individual
citizens could continue to do the work already underway.
This report is an attempt to show with individual case
histories how this partnership has made the environment
better, qualitatively and quantitatively. It is a brief
look at some of the specific victories of the last half
decade and before. It is an effort to record the good
news, to show where there have been successes, signs of hope
for a stressed and threatened environment.
It is not 'intended to be a catalog of every pollution
control accomplishment, nor is it intended to be a comprehen-
sive survey of progress nationwide. It does not go into much
detail on problems remaining that are yet to be addressed
fully, and it does not indicate even in the cases described
whether improvements have occurred as rapidly as the public
had hoped or as our statutes have required. It attempts
simply to present a glimpse, a picture, of some of the accomp-
li s hme n t s.
Our picture is by no means complete nor is the job
finished. There are few unqualified successes and hard-won
gains are always subject to unexpected setbacks. Progress is
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still ahead are large. The unresolved problems are legion,
and new ones are being discovered almost monthly.
As the examples in this report show, some gains are
impressive -- even dramatic. Others are modest. Hopes have
not always been realized. Execution has sometimes failed to
match expectation. Nor has the effort been without friction
between members of the partnership itself.
Cleaning up the environment is not only a slow,
difficult process demanding wide cooperation and involvement,
it is also expensive. The examples in this report,
however, show that both the money and the time spent are
paying off. The record is full of specific, day-by-day
victories, both large and small.
The campaign against the major point-sources of air
and water pollution is now well underway nationwide.
Standards have been promulgated. Key strategies have
been shaped and implemented. And needed shifts of
emphasis for the future are becoming apparent.
From the start the EPA, an amalgam of various executive
units and agencies brought together under a single umbrella
by Executive Reorganization Plan No. 3 in 1970, has faced
a often difficult, at times seemingly impossible, challenge.
It has had to strike a delicate balance between firm central
control and decentralized implementation -- often in the face
of ongoing changes in the enabling legislation itself
The challenge would have been a large one for any agency,
but it was especially so for one in its administrative
infancy.
In the EPA's first half decade, the overriding concern
was to eliminate the most obvious and damaging pollution as
rapidly as possible. That is where the attack has centered.
The challenge now is to chart the preventive strategies for
the future and to deal with the more subtle aspects of pollution
The Agency has but one goal: cleaner air, cleaner water,
and a more healthful and wholesome environment for all of us.
This catalog of individual accomplishments of the past several
years shows it is a reachable goal.
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HOW TO TELL IF IT'S PROGRESS
It is not always easy to tell if pollution control is
wo rking.
The EPA deals in a half-dozen major areas of pollution
-- air, water, solid waste, pesticides, radiation, and noise.
And often change for the better cannot be seen until long
ater the pollution control effort has beg-in. Sometimes,
in the case of persistent pollutants, it cannot be seen
until long after the pollution itself has been stopped.
Pollution that has been decades in the making is not
cleaned up overnight.
However, there are three ways to know when the environ-
ment is better or likely to become better:
First , the evidence can be seen or felt first hand:
There are fewer human deaths and illnesses linked to pollution.
Fish and animals return to once polluted rivers or regions.
The economic losses decline -- fewer farm crops are
damaged and fewer businesses hurt. Or the air is sinply
clearer, the water visibly cleaner, or there is no longer
an unpleasant odor or an irritating, unnecessary noise.
Second, the concentrations of pollutants actually in the
air or water or on the land are diminished.
Third. the volume of pollutants being released into the
air or dumped into the water is less.
The most certain sign that the environment is better is
the first when improvement can actually be seen and felt.
That is conclusive evidence. But we must often be satisfied
with other indications that the environment is better --
without actually being able to "see" that it is. When the
levels of pollutants in the air and the water or the amounts
being dumped into them are diminished, we assume and
reasonably so -- that conditions are improving.
Whenever possible, have tried to document the cases in
this report with conclusive, first hand, visible evidence of
improvement. Where that has not been possible, then with
carefully documented evidence that fewer pollutants are in the
environment or fewer are entering it.
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These case histories show, above all, that the environ-
ment can be made better and that in large and small ways,
throughout the country, people are working to make it
better. And not only that: they are succeeding.
The report that follows includes examples from nearly
every area of pollution control effort. It tells of how
water has been made cleaner and air clearer and where solid
waste management has been improved. It talks of the steps
taken in response to major spills that sometimes threaten
entire communities. It tells of industries that have pioneered
in pollution control. It describes some of the many triumphs
of the States and cities as well as presenting outstanding
examples of individual and collective citizen action. It
recounts cases where innovative technology has worked and in
which some of the most rare and threatened of our. wildlife and
natural wonders have been preserved. And it talks of the
enormous challenges still ahead.
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CLEANING THE NATION'S WATERS
Water pollution became a problem with the tremendous
industrial and population booms of the last one hundred
years.
The pollution quickened and the problem worsened in the
years following World War II, when man-made chemicals began
to assume a role of new, massive importance in our lives.
Industries and cities used rivers as dumping grounds for
their wastes and many of the Nation's streams began to run
heavy with pollution.
By the mid-Seventies, however, a nationwide attack on the
problem was beginning to turn the tide. Many rivers,
lakes, bays, and estuaries are still heavily polluted. But
where the States and cities have acted and where EPA
strategies and standards have been applied, less waste is
being dumped and the waters are cleaner. In some cases the
changes are dramatic water bodies thought to be dying
are seeing new life.
What the Law Says
Congress in 1972 passed the Federal Water Pollution
Control Act Amendments (Public Law 92-500). That Act now
governs the EPA's water quality strategies and programs.
It was tough legislation that gave the Agency broad responsi-
bility and authority to oversee the clean-up of the Nation's
wa ters.
Under the Act the Agency issues effluent guidelines
which are used in setting discharge limitations on industrial
and municipal polluters. There are two stages to this
process: the first stage is to be implemented by July 1,
1977; the second by July 1, 1983.
The Act gives as its interim goal that the Nation's
waters be "fishable" and "swimmable" by 1983. The Law also
calls for an ultimate goal of no discharge of pollutants into
these waters. However, unlike all other provisions of the
Act, these "goals" do not carry the force of law.
Every industrial or municipal pollution source must have
a permit limiting its discharge. The permits are issued
either by the Federal Government under a program called
the National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES)
or by the States that have assumed this responsibility.
The Agency has developed effluent guidelines for most
major industries. The States, in turn, have set water
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quality standards that must be met -- even if that means
treatment requirements more stringent than those called for
in the EPA effluent guidelines.
The EPA administers a multi-billion dollar Federal grants
program to cities and States for construction of the municipal
treatment plants necessary to meet the discharge requirements.
And the Agency oversees the regionwide and statewide planning
called for in the Act.
Two Spoilers of Water Quality
After the century or more of quickening municipal and
industrial water pollution, two problems in particular
needed immediate attention: pathogens -- disease causing
organisms and dissolved oxygen.
Pathogens enter the Nation's waters largely through
municipal sewage, but also from feedlot and pasture runoff.
Fecal coliform bacteria, though benign themselves, are
a widely used indicator of the number of pathogens present in
sewage. They are present in the intestines of warm-bodied
animals and are also invariably present in their excrement.
High levels of fecal coliform are a sign of contamination
by sewage and indicate an unacceptably high likeihood
that disease-causing organisms from sewage ar._ also
pr ese nt.
Dissolved oxygen (DO) is a*problem when its levels drop
so low that fish are unable to breathe. Low dissolved
oxygen can cause extensive fish kills. DO levels decline
in the face of oxygen-demanding pollutants carried in municipal
sewage or industrial wastewater with high BOD (biological
oxygen demand) and in discharges from industry with high COD
(chemical oxygen demand).
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A GALLERY OF NORTHERN RIVERS
A region that has struggled with the problems of path-
ogens and low DO longer perhaps than any other is the heavily
industrial, densely populated Northeast.
For more than two centuries people have built their
cities and industries on the banks of the rivers of the
Nation's northeastern tier. From New England to New York to
the Delaware Valley people have brought industry and pollution.
And in their wake in the 1960's and the 1970's have followed
the efforts largely by the States in the region to
repair the environmental damage done.
Seven from New England
For decades industrial wastes flowed untreated into the
rivers of New England. The towns and cities, many of them
but villages to begin with, contributed to the load. And
pollution, bringing with it high fecal coliform and low DO
readings, steadily but surely grew.
The stories of pollution reduction on many of those
New England rivers are now cause for satisfaction. Among
them, seven are particularly notable.
«
Two Connecticut rivers, the Naugatuck and the Housatonic
into which it empties, shared polluted lives for decades. Now
they are sharing the benefits of a major cleanup.
For years the Naugatuck was one of the most severely
polluted rivers in New England. Historically it has had
poor quality throughout most of its length. It was long a
dumping ground for untreated municipal sewage and industrial
wa ste s .
Connecticut residents can remember when no fish
could survive on certain reaches of the river. It was a
losing struggle there even for most insect larvae.
Along the 28 miles before the Naugatuck emptied into the
Housatonic, seven cities and 57 industries, among them
metal forming and electroplating firms, were poisoning
the water with raw sewage and heavy metals. Much of this
legacy flowed on to the Housatonic, which already had
pollution problems of its own.
In 1967, the State of Connecticut initiated a major
industrial pollution abatement program. Now approximately
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95 percent of the Naugatuck's heaviest polluting industries
have some kind of pollution control. Among the towns on
the river, there are seven new wastewater treatment plants,
paid for in part by EPA construction grant funds. More
than 95 percent of Lhe industries on the Housatonic also
have controls.
Bluefish now swim from Long Island Sound as far as 15
miles up the Housatonic. Menhaden and blue shell crabs are
back. The oyster industry in the Housatonic, wiped out in
a 1951 storm and kept out for years thereafter by pervasive
pollution, is now back to its former strength.
On the Naugatuck, the water that would support little
life five years ago, now has smallmouth bass, bluegills,
bullheads, and whitesuckers. Damsel fly larvae, fish fly
larvae, worms, and sowbugs, which are indicators of good
water quality and which were gone for so long, are back.
There are still high levels- of lead, zinc, and manganese in
the bottom sand. Rut the river is no longer sterile, and
it is on a course toward the day when its waters will once
again be swimmable and fishable throughout its length.
Three New England rivers with reputations as fine trout
streams in years gone by, also became casualties of the
massive pollution of the 20th century. One, the Willimantic,
is in Connecticut. The other two, the Pemigewa ss e t and the
Contoocook, are in New Hampshire.
In 1963 the Connecticut fish and game agency stopped
stocking the Willimantic with trout altogether because the
pollution was killing them. That powerful and graceful river,
which flows through the thinly populated northeastern side of
the State, had become a dumping ground for upstream textile
mills and for the toxic wastes of the metal-plating industry.
Soapsuds began to boil on the river downstream of its water-
fails, sludgy residues clogged the bottom, and odors fouled
the air. There were devastating fish and insect kills in the
river.
The Pernigewasset, by the mid-sixties, had declined to
the lowly status of a stream fit only to transport sewage and
industrial wastes. Recreation was all but eliminated and
the value of the river for water supply virtually ended. The
once beautiful stream, which ran through the heart of a prime
New Hampshire vacation area, was discolored and ugly.
To the south, the Contoocook River was faring little
better. It still had adequate dissolved oxygen levels,
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despite three paper mills on its banks, and it was reasonably
free of urban and agricultural runoff. But it had towering
bacteria counts and was virtually a condemned river.
Cleanup campaigns opened on all three of these once
highly fishable rivers at about the same time.
On the Willimantic in the early Seventies, 32 industries
were issued NPDES permits and started cleaning up their
wastewaters before discharging them. One municipal sewage
treatment plant was upgraded and another was replaced. In
1973, the State of Connecticut seeded the river with 1700
trout. The next year it was stocked with 4,000 more. No fish
kills have been reported.
One paper mill on the Pemigewasset closed down. Another
adopted a closed wastewater system. And newer industries with
sophisticated pollution controls replaced some of the older
ones. Five towns on the river have put in secondary wastewater
treatment. Today more than 55 miles of the Pemigewasset have
been reclaimed from nuisance status. Obnoxious fumes, odors,
and color are gone. The river, remarkably, has been lifted to
a condition fit for every kind of recreation.
Mftjor industrial dischargers on the Contoocook River
have either had to improve their existing pollution controls
or install treatment for the first time. Three paper mills
now have the treatment required by their NPDES permits.
Both the tannery and the fiber plant are tied into a
municipal treatment facility. Only four small communities
on the river are left without treatment and they have
municipal plants on the drawing boards. Local residents
now are using the river for swimming and boating. Some of
the most challenging stretches of white water in all of New
England can now be used without fear of pollution.
And all three of those rivers are once more living
up to past reputations -- they are prime trout streams.
The problem on the Stevens Branch of the Winooski
River in Vermont was different from the others. It was
degraded by fine granite powder that made it look like a
long milky way.
For years the granite and gravel industries had dumped
indiscriminately into the stream. The granite powder
caused gill scour in fish and smothered their spawning
beds. Abrasives, including silicon carbide, carborundum,
tin oxide, aluminum oxide, and steel shot from wire saws
and polishers, flowed untreated into the water.
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In 1971, the EPA awarded the State a $61,000 grant to
develop an economical method to treat the problem and the
sludge residue born of it. The State developed a lagoon
settling method using a ferric chloride solution. Then the
industry was given until August 1973 to install controls.
Today all industries on the Stevens Branch are recycling
their liquid wastes and have no wastewater discharge at
all .
The river, which at one time was classified over parts
of its length as fit only for industrial use, is now
suitable for swimming and other water contact sports.
The Androscoggin River begins in the heavily forested
chain of lakes high on the Maine-New Hampshire line and
flows 161 miles through Maine to Merrymeeting Bay, where it
joins the Kennebec and flows out to the sea. It was once
listed among the 10 most polluted rivers in America.
Today it is on its way to a dramatic cleanup.
As the Androscoggin flows toward the sea, it runs into
its first big load of pollution at Berlin, N.H., where this"
town of 18,000 people dumps raw sewage into its waters.
Brown Paper Company's huge plant at the edge of town adds
158,000 pounds of BOD daily.
But construction of a secondary treatment plant for
Berlin and its sister community, Gorham, is due to begin in
1977. The paper company's secondary treatment plant went
on line in late 1976, about six months ahead of schedule.
New Hampshire's total BOD discharge will be cut by 80 to 90
percent by that one plant alone.
The next major source of pollution in the Androscoggin
is across the stateline in Maine, at Rumford and Mexico,
with 14,000 more people and another mill that of the
Oxford Paper Company. The river, which has partially
recovered from the heavy pollution load it picked up at
Berlin, is hit there with another major discharge. Both
the towns and the mill, however, will soon open secondary
treatment plants.
At Lewiston, the biggest city on the Androscoggin, the
river widens and slows and the heavy wastes sink to the
bottom. Their decay, with summer's warm water temperatures,
often dropped dissolved oxygen levels below what was
necessary to sustain fish and other aquatic life. When the
LewistonAuburn municipal and industrial treatment plant
opened in 1974, however, much of that problem was solved.
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One by one, the more than 25 major sources of pollution
on the Androscoggin are being cleaned up. Several completed
wastewater treatment facilities were going through final
start-up operations by the end of 1976. The river now
stands to be one of the first to meet the EPA's discharge
requirements for 1977.
A Trio of New York Rivers
Three great New York rivers famous in fact and legend
-- the Mohawk, the Hudson, and the upper Susquehanna --
were also heavily polluted and are now to some degree
r ej uve n a ted .
Since they run through the heaviest concentration of
people and industry in the country, they have presented
enormous challenges. But from the effort have come the
first signs of success.
The Mohawk
The Mohawk flows through the heavily industrialized
Utica-Rome region eastward to the Hudson.
Today it is reasonably clean. More than 75 percent
of the river's industrial wastewater discharges are now
being treated. Largemouth and smallmouth bass, walleye,
perch, sunfish, and even trout, have returned to waters
they once were forced to leave. The rough fish that took
their place carp, bullheads, and suckers are in
decline.
This represents a comeback, because the river at one
time was severely polluted. Behind the improvement stands a
major effort by New York State, with its Pure Waters Program,
a strong local commitment, and the EPA.
One point on this important river that exemplifies
the change is the portion of the mid-Mohawk at Fonda,
N.Y., which is dominated by the urban and industrial
complexes of the Johnstown-Gloversville area.
Before 1972, the wastewater discharged in to Cayadutta
Creek above Fonda was treated only by an ancient and over-
loaded secondary treatment plant built in 1912. It was only
ineffectively dealing with the sewage from the urban area
around it and with the wastewater from a booming leather and
tannery industry.
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The EPA put up half of the money that upgraded treatment
was estimated to cost. And when the plant was finished, the
water quality in the Mohawk began to improve. Further up-
grading is now contemplated for the plant to meet more
fully the requirements of Public Law 92-500. Although
there is still far to go, the raw wastewater discharges
into that stretch of the river have ended, and today
dissolved oxygen levels in the water are on the rise.
The Hudson
The deterioration by the mid-1940's of the waters of the
strong, deep, fast-flowing Hudson River marked the end
of a wa y of life.
Nowhere was this more strikingly true than in the 13
miles of the Lower Hudson's shoreline in Bergen County. In
the early decades of this century swimming in that reach
of the Hudson, with its beaches and overhanging cliffs, was
the height of fashion. The beaches were lined with stone
bath houses, fancy restaurants, dancing halls, diving boards,
life guards, and bathing beauties. More than 300,000 bathers
came down to the cliff-side beaches along that stretch of the
Hudson in the summer of 1935 alone, many of them riding
ferries up river from New York City. It was a swimming hole
13 miles 1ong.
Then came World War II and with it industrial development
and industrial wastes. By the time the war was over the
beaches were unsafe for swimming and were closed. They
haven't opened since.
When the bathers stopped coming, the ferries stopped
running. Since the pollution had also driven away the
fish, the fishermen left, too. Oil gradually colored the
sands of the beaches and the old stone bathhouses were
abandoned and vandalized. The river along the beachfront
became so polluted by the Sixties that some officials no
longer even bothered to monitor its pollution levels.
But wastewater treatment also started coming to the towns
along the Hudson in the Sixties. Some 160 sewage treatment
plants have now been built, or soon will be, along the
river and its tributaries.
Progress in ridding the Hudson of the more traditional
forms of pollution has been remarkable, thanks to New York
State's billion dollar Pure Waters campaign, dating from
the mid-Sixt ies .
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-1 3-
But now the Hudson has been dealt a new, and even more
serious blow. PCB's (po1 yenlorin a ted biphenols), a nearly
indestructible and highly toxic group of industrial compounds,
have been discovered in the flesh of many fish in the river.
An estimated 500,000 pounds of PCB's lie menacingly on
the bottom of the river in the 50-mile stretch between
Hudson Falls and Albany, many miles to the north of Bergen
County. That is the biggest concentration of PCB's at
large in the environment anywhere in the world.
The PCB's come from the big General F.iectric Company
capacitators below Hudson Falls. This pollution is such
a threat that all fishing, which had been on the rise in
the otherwise much cleaner Hudson, was banned in February
1976 __ for the first time in history.
Stringent action against the PCB problem followed.
General Electric has not discharged any significant quantities
of PCB's into the Hudson in a year. And by next summer it
will stop using the compounds altogether. Meanwhile, a
$6 million joint GE-New York State effort to rid the
river bottom of the material is underway.
The PCB setback came just as fish life was beginning
to flourish again on the Hudson. Crabs were returning to
the Bergen County shoreline. Fishermen were catching shad
that no longer tasted of oil. Bluefish had returned. And
there was even talk -- unthinkable for 30 years -- of
swimming again off the beaches under the overhanging
cliffs.
The PCB's are not the only problem the Hudson faces. It
is still contaminated in some reaches by the more traditional
pollutants. More than 225 million gallons of poorly treated
and often toxic sewage still flush into the water near the
Statue of Liberty whenever it rains. And each day New York
City still dumps 200 million gallons of untreated sewage
into the river. But the $1 billion North River project,
when finished, will be the largest sewage treatment complex
ever built. It should sharply reduce the massive load of
pollution into the lower Hudson.
Along much of the rest of the river the State's Pure
Waters program has already taken hold. The Hudson, once it is
rid of its PCB's, faces a far cleaner future.
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-14-
The Susquehanna
The stretch of the Susquehanna between Binghampton and
Smithboro, N.Y., is also gradually recovering from a long era
of decline.
Its rejuvenation is an example of the now familiar cycle
of an inpouring of money, the construction of massive
municipal wastewater treatment plants, and visible evidence
of a river improving in quality.
An $11 million Binghampton-Johnson City treatment plant
was finished in 1975. The EPA funded almost half of it.
A $4 million facility at Endicott went on line in 1973.
And now monitoring stations all along that reach of the
Susquehanna are reporting cleaner water. The station at
Vestal reports oxygen depletion cut by half and the level
of bacterial contamination reduced many fold from
a total fecal coliform count of 8,000 per 100 milliliters
of water to 200. This is a remarkable improvement. Even
the Smithboro station, farthest downstream from the new
municipal treatment plants, reports marked decreases in
coliform bacteria counts. The Owego monitoring station
also reports a drop in total suspended solids.
Such fish as walleyed pike, smallmouth bass, and muskel-
lunge are back in numbers. That stretch of the Susquehanna,
once mired in pollution, is again taking on the characteristics
of a healthy river.
High fecal coliform levels like those previously
found on the Susquehanna, have long been a problem nation-
wide. It is still a significant problem in many areas,
but as new municipal treatment plants are built, it is
gradually being alleviated.
As Figure 1 reveals, fecal coliforra levels are now
acceptably low in the Northwest, in the Upper Great Lakes.
and in portions of Florida and Colorado. High levels are
still found in much of the Midwest, the East and South.
Among areas showing general improvement in fecal
coliform levels are Colorado, Nebraska and Minnesota
(Figure 2). The turnaround in coliform trends has not
yet occurred along the lower Missouri and the middle
Ohio .
The Urban Rivers of New Jersey
In the last five years two important urban river systems
in New Jersey have also started the long climb back from
contamination.
-------
Figure 1
Environmental Protection Agency
STORET SYSTEM
Fecal Coliform in Water, 1973-1975, 85th Percentiles
Concentration
(organisms/100 ml)
* no data
8 0-200
i 200-400
g 400-800
800 or more
Cells included are those for which data has been supplied
to EPA. Cells are approximately 25 by 35 miles.
Source: Monitoring and Data Support Division, OWPS, EPA
-------
Figure 2
Environmental Protection Agency
STORET SYSTEM
Trends in Fecal Coliform, 1967-69 to 1973-75
Trend
+ Improved 272 cells (59%)
o Less than 10% Change
^ Worsened 167 cells (36%)
Small arrows (barely visible) indicate
less improvement.
Source: Monitoring and Data Support Division, OWPS, EPA
-------
-15-
The Hackensack, which rises in Haverstraw, N.Y., and
flows languidly southward into Newark Bay, was heavily
polluted. Near its mouth the river widens, flowing at a
nearly i nd i seer nab le rate through a swampy marsh called the
Meadows, which is filled with garhage, rusting auto bodies,
industrial oil slicks, and cattails.
By 1971 the Hackensack bore all the symptoms of a stream
in the last stages of deterioration. The Hackensack
Meadowlands Development Commission issued a report calling
it a "highly disturbed and truncated ecosystem" which is
"virtually dead." Many of the fish, the shellfish and
crustaceans, that had populated it for thousands of years
had, over the span of a mere 40 years, been driven out.
A long five-year effort to revive the Hackensack is now
starting to pay off. The development commission in 1976 was
able to report that the river "is coming back." Dissolved
oxygen levels are up. Ribbed mussels have been introduced
into its waters and have survived. Blue claw crabs are back
in abundance. Wild fowl and shore wading birds now frequent
its banks, and stripers, alewife, and herring are turning up in
seining nets again.
A sister system of the Hackensack, the Navesink and
Shrewsbury Rivers, the waters of which had also once been
rich and clean but had become heavily polluted, is now
making a come-back.
In the late Fifties commercial clampers in Raritan Bay,
the estuary into which these two rivers empty, could still
take a good day's catch. The waters were rich in shellfish.
The hardshell and softshell crabs and oysters were perhaps
the finest in New Jersey. People swam without fear in all
reaches of the two rivers.
Then, in 1961, there was an outbreak of hepatitis --
from contaminated clams taken from Raritan Bay. It was a
turning point in the fortunes of the two rivers and their
estuary. The swimming and the shellfish harvesting abruptly
s t op ped .
: The pollution had been building for years, intensified
by the residues of waste from the flow of millions of gallons
of untreated sewage into the Hud son-Raritan estuarine system.
People and industry over the years had moved into the two
river valleys and gradually displaced much of the farm land of
less polluted times.
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-16-
The drainage basins of the Shrewsbury and Navesink were
beset by overflows from malfunctioning household septic tanks,
by runoff from new shopping centers and roads, and by inadequately
treated wastewater from antiquated and overloaded treatment
plants.
Three major projects were built with EPA help -- a
15 mile outfall line and two treatment plants.
Today more than five million gallons of effluent that
once emptied into those rivers each day no longer do.
The two rivers and the estuary have not regained their
high water quality of earlier times, but they are improved.
Four years ago all the waters were closed to she 11fishing .
Now two-thirds of Raritan Bay's 25,250 acres are open on a
restricted scale to some forms of shellfish harvesting. So
are nearly all of the waters of the Navesink and Shrewsbury
Rivers .
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-17-
RIVERS OF THE SOUTH
Many major rivers of the South, no less than of the
North, have experienced the familiar pattern of gradual,
choking pollution. Some of them, too, have been witness to
urgent calls for cleanup. And many have made striking
comebacks. Among the many, here are a handful of notable
ex am pies.
The Pearl
One day in 1960 a diver donned a face mask and wet suit
and slipped into Bogue Lusa Creek, a tributary of the Pearl
River in Louisiana, to examine the impeller of a fixed
aerator at a paper company outfall. Every part of his body
not protected by his wet suit suffered severe chemical
burns.
Two years later a young employee of the Louisiana State
Department of Health came down to the edge of the Bogue Lusa,
barren now of all vegetation and devoid of all signs of life
and dipped a thermometer in the water. When he pulled it out,
he was unable to read the temperature because all of the
paint on the thermometer had been stripped away.
At about the same time, the Pearl River in Mississippi,
just below Jackson, was so heavily polluted that even pollu-
tion-tolerant bloodworms, virtually the only life still in
the water, were forced to leave the river and re-establish
themselves in springs along its edge.
Parts of the Pearl and stretches of the Bogue Lusa had
become as polluted as rivers can get. Yet the Pearl once had
run fast, beautiful and clear for 475 miles from east central
Mississippi south through Louisiana to the sea. It ran
through country timbered with southern pine. Mink, deer,
turkey, and waterfowl populated its banks, and catfish swam in
its waters.
But at the turn of this century, a small sawmill was
built on Bogue Lusa Creek. During World War I, it became
the largest pine sawmill in the world, giving birth to
the City of Bogalusa. In 1917, another paper plant
settled on the creek and grew in size through the years.
A large chemical company moved onto the Pearl upstream.
The cities, the paper mills, and the chemical company
used the river and its tributary at will to dispose of
their wa s te s .
Papermill wastewater was pumped into Bogue Lusa Creek
untreated. The city of Bogalusa discharged raw sewage.
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-18-
The creek became little more than a channel for .carrying
undiluted wastes to the Pearl River. Sludge deposits
settled on the bottom. Gas rose and bubbled constantly in
the creek and oily wastes clung to any object on the banks.
Only the most pol1utant-resistant of life forms could
survive in the creek and life was perilous for fish in the
Pearl River downstream of where the creek entered it. In 1960,
dead and dying fish floated in the Pearl River as far as 30
miles below Bogalusa.
In 1963, citizens in the area had had enough. The
first interstate conference on pollution of the Pearl River
convened in New Orleans and the chief sources of pollution on
the Bogue Lusa were pinpointed -- the Crown Zellerbach paper
mill and the City of Bogalusa itself.
Crown Zellerbach was dumping an average of 76,167 pounds
of BOD into the river every day. The city's untreated sewage
was building up bacterial pollution over 150 times more dense
than the maximum considered safe for water contact sports, and
over 30 times more than is acceptable for general recreation.
Even before the conference convened, however, Crown
Zellerbach had begun moving to clean up its discharges. A
treatment plant was already in the works and would be in
operation the next year. By 1972 the company's discharges
were down to 20,000 pounds of BOD -a day.
The City of Bogalusa moved less rapidly. It had one
primary treatment plant in operation in 1963. In 1967, the
voters defeated a $2,300,000 bond issue to build additional
primary and secondary treatment facilities.:
In 1971, EPA served the city with a 180-day notice
for discharging inadequately t r ea ted, m un ic ipa 1 wastes into
the water in violation of Fed e r al-S t a te standards. Finally,
in 1972, a referendum was passed by the electorate. A $4.6
million treatment plant was started -- 75 percent of it
financed with EPA funds. It was finished in 1975.
At about the same time, Jackson, upstream of the Pearl
River, opened a new wastewater treatment system, built with
the financial help of the State and the EPA.
Slowly the river and its tributary have begun to
return from the shadows of pollution. Bogue Lusa Creek's
color has improved. Fish have returned -- free of the
turpentine taste that once permeated their flesh. Bream,
white perch, trout, and,catfish are back in the creek and
in the river below.
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-19-
Downstream from Jackson, floating sewage and odors are
gone. River sludge deposits appear to have been flushed
out. Dissolved oxygen levels have risen over the last six
or seven years. There is now hope for the river.
Dissolved oxygen problems of the sort that plagued the
Bogue Lusa and the Pearl were once the most common of all
water pollution problems in the U.S. But with the construction
of municipal treatment plants and the control of discharge
from such industrial dischargers pulp and paper mills,
these problems are rapidly being eliminated. DO levels are
now general high --which is desirable -- in most areas of
the country. (Figure 3).
Undesirably low DO levels are still found along the
Gulf and Atlantic Coasts from Louisiana to New Jersey. Low
levels in the swampy bayous of the South may be due in
great part to natural decay of dead plants and organic
material in the warm stagnant waters. Low DO levels are
also found in Ohio, and Indiana and in sections of Wisconsin,
Minnesota, Washington and Maine.
DO levels have been improving noticeably in several
areas including the Carolinas and Virginia., Illinois and
Michigan, Nebraska and Texas. (Figure 4).
Sope Creek
The Chattahoochee River's Sope Creek was hardly better
off in the Sixties and early Seventies than the Pearl's
Bogue Lusa.
Flowing through metropolitan Atlanta, Ga., and beset
by a surge of suburban development, the Sope became little
more than a foul-smelling open sewer. Abandoned by all
pollution-sensitive aquatic life, it had been left largely
to a g'rowing population of -unsightly bloodworms.
Along the same lush river banks where Chief Sope and
his Che r oke e' na t io n once encamped, swimming, fishing, and
picnicking were no longer allowed.
Sope Creek's problem was caused by inadequately
treated wastewater dumping into it from one major sewage
treatment plant and five smaller package plants. Trie
treatment provided, which had been more than adequate when
the Sope was a tumbling, splashing and picturesque stream
on the outskirts of the city, was no longer adequate. In
the Sixties, the basin had developed faster than anyone had
anticipated, and the plants were consequently operating
well beyond their design capacities.
-------
Figure 3
Environmental Protection Agency
STORET SYSTEM
Dissolved Oxygen in Water, 1973-1975, 15th Percentiles
* _
Concentration
(mg/1)
- no data
- greater than 5
- 4-5
- 2-4
- less than 2
Cells included are those for which data has been supplied
:PA. Cells are approximately 25 by 35 miles.
Source: Monitoring and Data Support Division, OWPS, EPA
-------
Figure 4
Environmental Protection Agency
STOREt SYSTEM
Trends in Dissolved Oxygen, 1967-69 to 1973-75
Trend
^ Improved 396 cells (41%)
0 Less than 10% Change
^ Worsened 140 cells (14%)
Small arrows (barely visible) indicate
less improvement.
Source:
Monitoring and Data Support Division, OWPS, EPA
-------
-20-
In 1967, an EPA predecessor agency had funded a
project to build a secondary wastewater treatment plant on
Sope Creek. In the early Seventies the EPA increased the
grant to include necessary interceptor sewers. The treatment
plant was finished in 1973, the interceptor sewers were
nearly finished by October 1975, and most of the package
plants had been eliminated.
Change for the better in Sope Creek was almost immediately
evident. Within two months all bloodworms had disappeared
and the odors that residents had complained of had been
eliminated. The shoals in midstream have changed back to
their natural color, and algae that had built up in the
creek are gone. The common bluegill bream, the warmouth
bream, and largemouth bass are back in the creek and being
caught by fishermen. The creek is now beginning to look
like the stream that had once been so pleasing when the
Cherokees camped by its side.
The Arkansas
The Arkansas was a river beset by another major enemy
of water quality -- turbidity.
A measure of water's murkiness, turbidity is generally
caused by suspended or dissolved solid particles -- sediment
-- from municipal and industrial sources or from such
nonpoint sources as farming., construction, and logging.
Much of the country (Figure 5) enjoys very low levels
of turbidity. Exceptions are the Pacific Northwest, Idaho,
Michigan, Florida, New York, Delaware, most of Pennsylvania,
the Susquehanna and the Monongahela Rivers, and certain
streams in central Vermont.
The Missouri-Mississippi River system along its entire
length is naturally turbid. Turbidity levels are also high
in the Rio Grande as far upstream as northern New Mexico
and in the tributaries of the Gila in Arizona and the Red
River of the South. The Kansas River and the Scioto River
in central Ohio are also turbid.
And so is the Arkansas. For decades silt had settled
in the river as it ran its course through Oklahoma and
Arkansas. Sediment came down from the arid regions of
Oklahoma and Kansas, aggravated by the same farming practices
that triggered the dust bowl in the Thirties.
And during the same period, salt became a major problem.
Sodium chloride and gypsum draining down out of the natural
salt flats and salt springs contributed more than half of
-------
Figure 5
Environmental Protection Agency
STORET SYSTEM
Turbidity of Water, 1973-1975, 85th Percentile
Concentration
(JTU)
* no data
g 0-25
| 25-100
|~ 100-200
|~ greater than 200
Cells included are those for which data has been supplied
to EPA. Cells are approximately 25 by 35 miles.
Source; Monitoring and Data Support Division/ OWPS, EPA
-------
-21-
the river's high salt content. Much of the rest came from
the oil fields, where the quickest and cheapest way to get
rid of the salt water pumped up with the oil was to dump it
into the nearest river. The Arkansas got more than its
share.
By 1955, the river was so heavily choked with silt
that people were saying it was "too thick to pump and too
thin to plow." In the summer the river often ran nearly
dry. In the winter and spring it rampaged. The treacherous,
unpredictable currents and raw sewage from over half a
million people made swimming impossible and boating improbable.
The river was already in such a polluted condition
from the salt and the silt, that the cities and industries
rising on its banks simply wrote it off for any use except
receiving wastes.
But the river was too important for that. Two-thirds of
the land area of Oklahoma drained directly or indirectly into
it. The people in its basin wouldn't let it go for a sewer.
They began to pressure officials, and a combine of Federal,'
State, and local agencies, joined by the industries themselves,
responded. The effort has saved the Arkansas.
With Federal financial help, the two biggest cities,
Tulsa and Oklahoma City, have installed new wastewater treat-
ment plants. Town after town along the river's course has
either done the same, or soon will -- Webbers Falls, Wagoner,
Sand Springs, El Reno, Stillwater, Norman, Okmulgee, Tahlequah,
Miami, and Ponca City.
In Arkansas, Little Rock has built a new facility.
North Little Rock, Fort Smith, Van Buren, Ozark, Clarksville,
Dardanelle, and Morrilton, among others, are acting to lessen
their contamination of the river.
Industry, under Public Law 92-500, is cleaning up
its discharges. And the MeClel Ian-Kerr Arkansas River Navi-
gation project has made the river navigable from its mouth to
the Port of Tulsa. The project stabilized the banks of the
river with a series of locks and dams on the Arkansas itself
and with dams for silt entrapment and flood control on the
maj or tributaries.
The total amount of water coming down the river is
unchanged. But the flow now is more evenly distributed
Likewise, the salt load is still high, but there is more
water to dilute it during critical low flow periods. So the
peak concentration is lower.
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-22-
The tide of other forms of pollution has also turned in
the Arkansas. The river's dissolved oxygen content is better
and its bacterial count lower than ever before. And
the fish are returning -- among them the sauger, a fish
fastidious in its water quality requirements, and the big-
mouth bass.
The entire length of the river now is suitable for a
variety of water uses. Much of it, including the 50-mile
reach upstream from Little Rock, is clean enough for swimming
and water skiing. Below Little Rock, fecal coliform counts
have plummeted -- from 15,094 organisms per 100 railliliters
of water in 1972 to 184 in 1974. At another point below the
city the count dropped from 29,738 in 1972 to 584 in 1974.
Officials in the two states are saying now that the
Arkansas is now cleaner than it has ever been.
A Mountain River
In the mountains of western North Carolina in the 1950's
another southern river, the French Broad, was being polluted
by an unchecked flow of wastes from two major industries and a
city.
The Olin Corporation, American Enka Company, and the
City of Asheville had dumped raw sewage, suspended solids,
and heavy metals into the river until the dissolved oxygen
along its entire reach from Pisgah Forest to Asheville had,
on occasion, dropped almost to zero.
Together those three sources, by the early Seventies,
were dumping an average of 55,323 pounds of BOD, 61,977
pounds of suspended solids, and large quantities of metal
precipitates and salts into the river every day. Many por-
tions of the stream reeked with foul odors and ran black under
a cover of foam. There was little life left in the water.
The EPA, together with the State of North Carolina,
developed effluent limitations and compliance schedules to
diminish the flow of wastes from the three major polluters.
By September 1974, all three had been issued NPDES permits to
control their waste discharges. Even before that, the EPA had
given American Enka Company a demonstration grant to help
build an innovative treatment facility to curb the zinc
content of its effluent.
Both companies were receptive. They took the actions
called for by the State and the EPA and -j^v:. "soon in compliance
with their permit requirements. The Ol-;1^: Co rpor a t io n completed
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-23-
a biological treatment plant In March 1976. American Enka
Company Is upgrading its present wastewater treatment plant
and has changed production processes to reduce the levels of
heavy metal in its discharge.
The city ,' however , had trouble living up to its permit
requirements. Only after a meeting with the EPA in early 1976
did it begin to make satisfactory progress. Now it also is in
c omplianc e.
Already these steps are reflected in the condition of
the river. The odors and the foam are gone and the water's
natural color is returning. Dissolved oxygen levels have
reached 60 to 70 percent of saturation and fish have started
to r eap pear.
The Lower Escatawpa
The lower six miles of the Escatawpa River in Mississippi
was one of the most grossly polluted estuaries in the Southeast.
A paper mill, an organic chemical plant, three fish
meal processing plants, and the towns of Moss Point and
Escatawpa were discharging inadequately treated wastewaters
into the river. Low river flow In the summer months and
poor natural flushing of the estuary were aggravating the
condition. In 1964, the Mississippi Game and Fish Commission
reported extensive fish kills. Fishery prospects on the
river were judged nil.
The five industries and the Jackson County Board of
Supervisors took some initial steps after the publication of
the Commission's report. The International Paper Company
installed primary treatment. Thiokol Chemical put in minimal
treatment, and the three fishmeal companies started recycling
their process wastewaters. Secondary treatment facilities were
built to handle the municipal wastes from Moss Point and
Esca tawpa.
But still the river was polluted. The EPA in 1972 reported
that the lower portion of the estuary registered zero dis-
solved oxygen. Sediment deposits were heavily contaminated and
little life existed in the water.
Since then, the Jackson County Port Authority has built a
secondary treatment system for International Paper Company
wastes. Thiokol is injecting its concentrated wastes into
deep wells, and all three flshmeal companies now have essen-
tially closed wastewater systems.
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-24-
Fish are returning to the estuary and the water quality
in the critical summer months is notably improved.
The Lower Savannah
The Savannah River runs for 310 miles through the heart
of the South on its way to the Atlantic. It is one of the
main interstate waterways of the Southeast, forming the
boundary between Georgia and South Carolina.
Citizens requested an interstate conference on the
Savannah in the early 1960s. Many of them complained that
the river's heavily urbanized and industrialized lower 22
miles had become a threat to the health of residents in the
area. In 1963, an EPA predecessor agency within the Depart-
ment of Health, Education and Welfare convened a conference
with the water pollution control agencies of Georgia and South
Carolina. It was decided there that HEW should study the
pr oblem.
HEW's study confirmed everyone's suspicions. Only
one-fifth of all the sewage from a population of 146,000
people on the 22-mile reach received even primary treatment.
The other four-fifths of the sewage ran directly into the river
untreated. Industries on the lower Savannah discharged
processed wastes, cooling water, and chemical wastes equi-
valent in impact to the raw sewage of an estimated 1,000 000
people.
Consequently, the dissolved oxygen content of the lower
reach of the river was low. Game fish and commercial fish had
become scarce and 11,000 acres of coastal waters in the
Savannah area were closed to she 1Ifishing. All the symptoms
of an imperiled river were present.
As they have done on many rivers, the existing Federal
agencies, and later the EPA, joined with the States to
attack the problem. Making use of persuasion together with
the limited enforcement authority available to them, they
saw to it that adequate wastewater treatment facilities
were built and put in operation. By 1975 all major
dischargers of organic wastes into the lower Savannah were
in compliance with their effluent limitations.
BOD discharges from point sources in the river have
dropped by 90 percent. In 1975, for the first time on
record, there were no reported dissolved oxygen violations
at the Fort Jackson monitoring site. Aquatic life was
quickening on the river reach once again and fish were
swimming where they had not been seen in many years.
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-25-
A ROLL CALL OF RIVERS
Ho list of polluted rivers on which some degree of
clean-up has now been achieved can possibly be complete.
Under Public Law 92-500 every river must be brought
back, so the attack is broad, reaching to every polluted
stream in the country. And the role of the EPA varies from
river to river. Because every river is different, the rate of
progress and the degree of success already achieved on each
varies considerably.
Some efforts, as we have seen, border on the spectacular.
Other rivers improve only slowly, and some not at all. The
quality on a few is still worsening somewhat. But as the
cases above show, the progress, where it has occurred, is
heartening, sometimes impressive. And the prospects for
more improvement are good. For many streams, higher water
quality depends only on the completion of projects now
underway. On others, where municipal wastewater treatment
plants are required, construction merely awaits the availabilty
of Federal funding.
The EPA disburses the $18 billion earmarked by the
Congress in P.L. 92-500 for the States and cities to use in
building municipal treatment plants. The Federal share of
such construction is 75 percent.
Figure 6 shows the dollar amounts awarded for construc-
tion nationwide, by county, since January 1970. Figure 7
shows the total dollars spent on treatment plants completed
since then. The two maps show that the distribution of
dollars compares well with the distribution of fecal coliforra
and DO problems (Figures 1 and 3), and also with the distri-
bution of population.
Meanwhile, from rivers and streams all over the
country, some famous, some little known, there come signs
that as treatment plants are funded and built and as
industries comply with discharge requirements, the quality
of the water improves. Some examples:
o On the mighty Ohio. 891 miles long and touching six
states, 97 percent of the sewered population is
served by wastewater treatment of some kind.
Nevertheless, 54 percent of this treatment is less
than secondary and must be upgraded. The PCB's
recently discovered in the river also require
-------
Figure 6
GRANT DOLLARS AWARDED FOR CONSTRUCTION
OF MUNICIPAL WASTEWATER TREATMENT WORKS
JANUARY 1,1970 - JUNE 30,1976
Symbol size indicates
dollars awarded
(by county)
X
$4718-211,200
$211,200-839,906
$339,906-3,632,753
$3,632,753-167,527,500
Total grant dollars awarded, by county. Counties
in the Western STates are larger and fewer in number
bnan are counties in the Eastern States. Symbols
are located at county centroids, not at sites of
treatment works.
Source: Grants Administration Division and Monitoring
and Data Support Division, EPA
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Figure 7
GRANT DOLLARS AWARDED xOR MUNICIPAL WASTEWATER
TREATMENT WORKS COMPLETED IN THE PERIOD
JANUARY 1,1970 - JUNE 30,1976
Symbol size indicates
dollars awarded
(by county)
$4718-100,703
$100,703-300,250
$300,250-974,270
$974,270-36,728,000
Grant dollars awarded, by county. Counties in the Western States
are larger and fewer in number than are counties in the Eastern
States. Symbols are located at county centroids, not at sites
of treatment works.
Source: Grants Administration and Monitoring and Data Support
Divisions, EPA
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action. But the water quality has improved enough
so that, in 1975, 100 successful bass tournaments
could be held on the upper reaches of the Ohio in
West Virginia. That would have been unthinkable
five years before.
o West Virginia's heavily industrialized Kanawha
River , though still far from clean, has had its
dissolved oxygen content rise from below standards
to acceptable levels. Fish and fish food organisms
generally associated with cleaner water are beginning
to return. Among the .fish species sighted now in
the river are crappies, spotted bass, white bass,
and saugar.
o On the Neches River in southeast Texas, the bass
are back after 15 years, and as one fisherman
reports, they are "scrappy ones, and tasty, too."
o Tar Creek, a little prairie stream in northeastern
Oklahoma, was once a water lifeline for buffalo.
But it became heavily polluted in this century.
Its cleanup is now underway and the long absent
wildlife are beginning to return to its banks.
o Not far to the south, Oklahoma's Little Deep Fork.
once a clear stream rolling down to Lake Eufaula,
was also running dark and discolored by mid-century.
A new treatment plant went on line in the town of
Bristow last year and the waters of the stream are
clear again and free of odor.
o Wisconsin's Maunesha River near Waterloo was
heavily polluted in the mid-Sixties by wastes from
a sauerkraut and pickle cannery, a cheese factory,
a slaughter house, and from the town itself. Four
miles of the river were without life of any kind.
A treatment plant was built to handle wastes from
all the dischargers. Now a balanced community
including pol1ution-in tolerant organisms once more
lives in the river.
0 Dry Auglaize Creek runs through Lebanon, Missouri
and which empties into the Missouri River has been
saved in its downward slide into pollution by a new
EPA funded treatment plant, which went on line in
April 1976.
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In 1970, the Mobile-Tombigbee River system in Alabama
was contaminated by mercury and closed to commercial
fishing. The flesh of many bass carried concentra-
tions more than four times higher than the allowable
limit in food for human consumption. Alabama and
the EPA moved jointly against the contamination.
The chloralkali plants in the area pared the quantities
of mercury they were discharging. Mercury concentrations
in fish and in the bottom sediments declined, and the
ban on commercial fishing was lifted.
Chester and Campbell Creeks in Anchorage, Alaska,
in 1970 were posted for no swimming, no body
contact, and no recreation. Only 8 percent of the
sewage then flowing into the creeks was treated.
And because of the high cost of building treatment
plants in Alaska, nothing was being done. The EPA
and the State of Alaska, in consort, funded a
cleanup effort and the local communities began to
act. Now, though the problem is still not fully
solved, 78 percent of the waste is being treated.
And the creeks are beginning to clear.
Ten years ago the Calumet River in the heart of
Chicago was little better than an oily open sewer
where industry dumped its wastes. Pressed hard by
the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency and
the Federal EPA, the industries -- including four
steel mills -- spent $100 million to clean the
Calumet. A decade ago it was considered the
dirtiest of the nine or 10 important streams in
Cook County. Today it is rated by the State as the
second cleanest.
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TKE GREAT LAKES
The five Great Lakes are the world's largest reservoir
of fresh water -- 95,000 square miles. They were also a
major setting for the American industrial revolution, that
enormous outpouring of energy and people and power and
production, which brought pollution to the lakes to match
the ir size.
For more than a century the wastes poured in: raw and
Inadequately treated sewage and runoff from the cities;
chemicals -- sulfates, chlorides, phenols, and ammonia;
oil and heavy metals from industry and shipping; and
pesticides, herbicides, and chemical fertilizers from
agr ic ulture.
Even so vast a reservoir of water as the Great Lakes
can take only so much effluent. Lake Erie became overloaded
with nutrients, largely from municipal wastes and rural
runoff -- but also from industrial wastes and urban runoff.
Much of its waters became clogged with decaying nuisance
plants that used up the oxygen necessary to support other
aquatic life, and the lake began to age prematurely.
Parts of Lakes Ontario and Michigan also became
heavily polluted, Lakes Superior and Huron Less so. In
some parts of the hardest hit lakes, pollution exceeded
levels considered safe for humans. It also jeopardized
the continued existence of many native species of fish.
Most beaches on Lakes Erie, Michigan, and Ontario were
closed. Many fish died. And some fish pulled from the
lakes and its tributaries even today are still not considered
safe to eat, because of the high levels of industrial,
agricultural, and municipal discharges that they carry.
In 1972, the two Nations that share the Great Lakes --
the United States and Canada -- signed the Great Lakes
Water Quality Agreement to continue jointly a long-term
attack on the pollution.
In the most severely polluted lakes -- Erie, Ontario,
and Michigan -- big problems still exist. But in the last
few years, in the lakes and along some of their tributaries,
the States, backed by the Federal Government, have pressed
their part of the cleanup effort. The bulk of the job still
lies ahead. But there are signs even now that point to
pr og r es s .
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Lake Erie -- The Beginnings of Comeback
A decade ago, Lake Erie, a 20,000 year-old inland sea,
was held up as the most tragic case of pollution in the
Nation.
From the beginning, Erie has been the shallowest of
the Great Lakes. It was also farthest along in the natural
process of eutrophication in which, over time, a young,
clean body of water ages, taking on sediment and wastes and
growing shallower until it first becomes a marsh or swamp,
then a meadowy grassland, and finally a forested woodland.
In the early 1800's man began accelerating this
natural process in Lake Erie, until by the middle of this
century, he had telescoped it alarmingly.
"First, the early farmers with their plows began
stripping away the natural protective cover from the rich
farmlands. Sediment began working down Erie's tributaries
and piling up in the lake's already shallow western basin.
Then industry followed agriculture along the banks of
the lake's main tributaries -- the Detroit, the Maumee,
the Cuyahoga, and the Niagara. With industry came the
booming big cities -- Cleveland, Detroit, Buffalo --
bursting along its shoreline. And into Erie came pouring
the nutrients -- primarily nitrates and phosphates--that
hurry the aging process.
The nitrate and phosphate pollution fed the algae
blooms that began to lay down blankets of green slime
across parts of the lake. And as the algae spread it
consumed the oxygen needed to keep other forms of life
alive. By 1966, 65 percent of the bottom water in the
lake's central basin was without oxygen in the summer
months. Beaches on the shores of the States that ring Lake
Erie -- Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York -- were
closed because of high bacteria counts from sewage discharges,
or not used because of the algae in the water.
Before the EPA was formed, the deteriorating condition
of the lake was already moving State agencies and private
citizens to act. Gradually the concern of the middle and
late Sixties began to be translated into money and programs.
Then in the Seventies came the EPA, the joint Canada-U.S.
campaign against pollution in all the lakes, and the tough
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new amendments to the Federal Water Pollution Control Act.
A major effort was launched jointly by the States, the EPA,
Industry, and private citizens.
Phosphate detergents were banned or limited in four
states bordering the Great Lakes Indiana, Michigan,
Minnesota, and New York. In the two-year span from 1972-73
phosphate treatment of wastewater was improved and the
phosphorus load dumping into Lake Erie was reduced by
about 46 million pounds. DDT use was curtailed, industrial
pollution was reduced, and municipal sewage systems were
impr oved.
Then came the first signs that conditions in the open
waters of Lake Erie were improving -- or at least not worsening
Aircraft pilots began to notice that the sheets of shimmering
green algae were receding. Clear water game fish planted
in the lake survived. A few years before they would have
died. Some beaches that had been closed for more than a
decade began to reopen. And in 1975, only 6 percent of the
deep water in the lake's central basin was reported without
oxygen, instead of the 65 percent of 10 years before.
This does not mean that Lake Erie is no longer "aging."
The natural processes still go on. And people are still
contributing to it. Some dischargers continue to violate
established requirements. But the headlong nutrient input
that was hurrying the process appears to have been slowed.
The cleanup effort is, having some effect.
Lake Erie's waters are far from being the only ones
experiencing severe nutrient problems. Indeed, with the
increasingly successful control of other pollutants,
nutrients remain, with toxics, one of the few classes of
pollutants yet to be addressed satisfactorily nationwide.
For there to be a nutrient problem in any given waters,
two separate pollutants must be present in overabundance
phosphorus and nitrogen, each in any one of its many forms.
On any given stream or lake, nutrients are best controlled
by limiting discharges of the specific pollutant in least
supply. On Lake Erie, as we have seen, this meant control of
phospohrus; elsewere nitrogen compounds nitrates especially
are in least supply and control of nitrates is critical.
As Figure 8 indicates, phosphorus levels are now at
reasonable levels in the Northeast, the Northwest and the
-------
Environmental Protection Agency
Figure 8 STORET SYSTEM
Total Phosphorus in Water, 1973-1975, 85th Percentiles
* * * * * « » j,^,
«»«««1»«^
..* * »! * * * * *
V X
Concentration
(mg/1)
-- no data
less than 0.074
0.075-0.160
0.161-0.379
greater than 0.379
Cells included are those for which data has been
supplied to EPA. Cells are approximately 25 by
35 miles.
Source: Monitoring and Data Support Division, OWPS, EPA
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Upper Great Lakes. Levels are still high in the Missouri
River Basin and in Illinois and Ohio generally. The
current low levels on much of the Great Lakes are due to
control efforts over the last few years. (Figure 9). Little
has been achieved elsewhere, and several major rivers --
the Ohio, the Mississippi and the Missouri -- show worsening
condi t io ns.
Lakes Michigan and Ontario
Progress on the other Great Lakes, as on Erie, is just
beginning. The same degradation, the same outpouring of
wastes from industry and agriculture, and raw sewage from
the cities, has blighted the other lakes as well and require
massive cleanup efforts.
Lake Ontario, next to Erie the hardest hit, also began
showing the telltale signs of diminished oxygen content in its
deeper waters. And there has been little progress against
euthrophication in that lake since 1967.
Lake Michigan at its southernmost tip had neither
the great depth nor the strong currents necessary to absorb
and dilute the wastes flowing into it from the greater
Chicago area. The lake's slow flushing time made it a
virtual cul-de-sac for pollution. The new Chicago Sanitary
and Ship Canal has diverted much of Chicago's pollution
into the Mississippi River system, which, when required
treatment is in place, will be better able to absorb it.
On both of those lakes there are the first faint signs
of progress. Federal grants for municipal treatment of
wastewater on the various tributaries, and the NPDES permits
limiting industrial discharges have made inroads. The water
quality is improving. Lake Michigan's shoreline had improved
enough so that 11 beaches on the Illinois North Shore were
able to reopen in 1975 for the first time in six years.
Ontario Beach Park in Rochester, N.Y., reopened in 1976, after
being officially closed for a decade.
The Tributaries
The rivers that empty into the Great Lakes have played'
pivotal roles both in polluting the lakes and in the success
so far in cleaning them up. Like the lakes themselves,
the tributaries illustrate various degrees of accomplishment.
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Figure 9
Environmental Protection Agency
STORET SYSTEM
Trends in Phosphorus, 1967-69 to 1973-75
Trend
^ Improved 182 cells (49%)
o Less than 10% Change
^ Worsened 129 cells (35%)
Small arrows (barely visible) indicate
less improvement.
Source:
Monitoring and Data Support Division, OWPS, EPA
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The Cuyahoga
No river in the United States has a more notorious
national reputation than the Cuyahoga, which flows through
Akron and Cleveland on its way to Lake Erie.
The Cuyahoga, called "crooked waters" by the early
Indians, was fed by pollution from the steel and chemical
industries along its banks and by raw or inadequately treated
municipal wastes. It was running muddy brown in color by the
1960's. Into it, from the industrial canyon along the last
five miles of its course, poured 155 tons a day of chemicals,
oil, iron, and acid wastes. Gas from decaying organic material
fermenting along its bottom rose and burst into bubbles on its
surface. It had a bacteria count -- particularly after a heavy
rainfall -- matching that of raw sewage. It became known
nationwide as the oil-slicked river that was so polluted that
it had caught fire and burned.
The Cuyahoga has attracted considerable EPA attention
and assistance. Since the beginning of the Seventies the
Agency has issued grants for 17 municipal sewage treatment
projects in the Cuyahoga Basin -- projects worth nearly
$148 million.
The visible oil, which made the Cuyahoga a fire hazard,
has nearly disappeared. In 1967, a reporter from the Chicago
Tribune dunked his hand into the river and pulled it out
coated with oil. Last year he dipped it in again and it came
out oil-free. BOD, cyanide, and phenol levels are also down.
A report by the Cleveland Utilities Department also reports a
substantial drop in phosphorus (reduced 45-51 percent) and in
various forms of nitrogen.
But dissolved oxygen levels, a prime measure of the
health of a river, are still low. And some debris and
sewage still float on its surface. An EPA study predicted
that the lower Cuyahoga, even with the municipal and industrial
treatment programs scheduled to be completed by 1978, will
still have difficulty supporting anything but the most pollution-
tolerant forms of aquatic life forms.
The Detroit
The main Erie tributary -- the Detroit River -- is
being acclaimed nationally as a major, if still incomplete,
cleanup success.
The
Clair and
fast-running 30-mile long river, which ties Lake St.
the upper Great Lakes to Lake Erie, runs past the
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City of Detroit. From the day the great French explorer,
Cadillac, founded the city in 1701 until the Civil War, the
Detroit River was admired as perhaps the most beautiful and
pure in the Midwest.
In it sported the most delicate of freshwater fish --
trout, whitefish, tnuskel lunge , smallmouth bass, perch,
sturgeon, and the little emerald shiner, a bait fish
susceptible to the slightest pollution.
But after the Civil War, in the tumult of the industrial
revolution, the river became a vessel for the wastes of the
industries and the cities that burgeoned on its banks. An
appalling tide of effluents, sewage, chemicals, waste oils,
acids, garbage, trash, and sludge from paper plants poured
into the river.
By the late 1940's, the pollution had reached a
zenith. Thirty-five thousand gallons of oil were being
dumped every day into its waters. A quarter-inch thick
coating of oil covered its shoreline. Grease balls eight
and 10 inches across washed up on its banks. And tons of
unseen phosphorus were being washed down the river into
Lake Erie.
In the cold winter of 1948, in the most dramatic episode
illustrating the extent of the river's deterioration, 20,000
ducks diving into openings in the ice came up oil-soaked and
died. Massive duck kills, with as many as 40,000 dying
a year, continued on into the Sixties.
The Detroit's most industrialized tributary, the River
Rouge, flowed rich orange from the thousands of gallons of
pickle liquor, a steel processing acid, that was dumped
into it. But its surface was so coated with oil that the
orange showed only momentarily in the wake of passing
boats. A State of Michigan biologist once drew a bucketful
of water from the Rouge, and in an hour and a half, acids
had eaten away the bucket's bottom.
Environmental concern began to stir along the Detroit
River for the first time in the 1920's. In 1929, Michigan
passed its first basic water quality law. But it wasn't
enough. In the early 1960's, the Lake Erie Cleanup Committee,
an active and vocal citizen group, began to press hard for
a full scale cleanup of the river.
In 1962, the first joint Federal-State conference on
the Detroit convened and out of it came effluent limits for
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Its major industries and municipalities. When the 1972
amendments to the Federal Water Pollution Control Act were
passed, the State of Michigan, supported by the EPA, began
issuing permits limiting discharges into the water.
The City of Detroit in 1969 began building major additions
to its enormous sewage treatment plant. By 1976, $345
million had been spent on the project. When the work is
finished in the mid-1980's, $714 million will have been
spent, $452 million of it in construction grants from the
EPA. The 60 industries on the Detroit waterfront have
already spent between $300 million and $400 million on new
equipment to treat or recycle wastewater.
Today the oil that had been dumped for so long into
the river is virtually gone. The 35,000 gallons a day in
the 1940's were reduced to 3,600 gallons by the Sixties.
Now it is down to 651 gallons. Chloride and phosphorus
discharges have been cut in.half since 1966.
In late 1975, Detroit Mayor Coleman A. Young led a
fishing expedition out on the river. He droped his line in
water that was once again blue-green in color. Fishermen
looking down could see the boat's propeller four feet below
and could remember when they couldn't see four inches.
Some fishermen again are calling the Detroit River "the
world's biggest trout stream."
There have been no major duck kills since 1968. Even
the River Rouge, which ran orange and black with pickle
liquor and oil only a decade ago, is flowing green again.
And the egrets are returning to its banks.
The Grand
Three rivers that empty into Lake Michigan also stand
as successes or partial successes in water pollution
control. Of the three, two the Grand and the Kalamazoo
run through Michigan. The third, the Fox, flows into
the lake from Wisconsin.
In the mid 1960's, despite vigorous cleanup efforts by
State and local agencies and several citizen groups, the
Grand was still heavily polluted. In the summer as it made
its way past the three biggest cities on its banks
Jackson, Lansing, and Grand Rapids it gave off a strong
and disagreeable odor. For 21 miles downstream of the
Grand Rapids-Wyoming-Grandville municipa1-industrial
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complex, it had serious dissolved oxygen problems. Untreated
sewage poured into it at Ionia. Grand Rapids had only
primary treatment. The river ran brownish-green in color.
In August 1966, thousands of minnows and carp were killed
by cyanide that entered the river through storm drains. In
Octob'er 1976, another kill wiped out 2,000 salmon, a
substantial part of the season's run.
Weeds and other vegetation in the river complicated
the problem. Tannery wastes and accidental spills from the
metal-plating industries in Grand Rapids fouled its waters.
In the summer of 1968, the newly created Grand River
Watershed Council joined the Michigan Water Resources
Commission to address the crisis on the river. Plans were
blueprinted to upgrade treatment to secondary levels
basin-wide. Grand Rapids adopted an ordinance to control
the discharges of its industries, including its more than
40 metal-plating companies.
In 1974, primary sewage treatment plants at Spring
Lake and Grand Haven were replaced by a large complex
providing secondary treatment. The town of Wyoming finished
an activated sludge treatment system in 1976. Grandville
had its secondary system on line by 1973. And by that same
year, the amount of metals discharged by industry had
dropped by 90 percent since 1966.
As those things happened, the fish began to return.
Fishermen now come out in force to catch the salmon migrating
to spawning grounds up river. "By 1972 the Izaak Walton
League was reporting a successful trout fishing contest, a
certain sign that the Grand no longer ran as polluted as it
o nc e did.
The Kalamazoo
Not so many years ago, observers from the air said the
Kalamazoo River, meandering westerly through southeastern
Michigan, looked like a thick milk shake.
It had a reputation as Michigan's filthiest stream.
In the 1940's, one of the largest fish kills on record hit
the river. During the summers of 1950 and 1951 there was
no measurable dissolved oxygen in the water over a section
10 to 20 miles below the city of Kalamazoo.
By 1951, an attack that Tiad been mounted by the Michigan
Water Resources Commission on the pollution of the Kalamazoo
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River started to hear fruit. A primary treatment plant was
built near the city of Kalamazoo. But that was only a
beginning: a 1956 survey called for still further reductions
in the waste loads being dumped into the river.
Paper mills were ordered to cut back their oxygen
consuming discharges. And in 1963, the State, the City of
Kalamazoo, five paper making companies, and a pharmaceutical
company joined in a program of water pollution control. By
1967, a high rate activated sludge plant that treated both
industrial and municipal wastes was built.
By the time the EPA entered the picture in the early
1970's, the oxygen-consuming wastes discharged into the river
at the City of Kalamazoo had been cut by 75 percent. All the
way from Battle Creek to Kalamazoo the water began to run
clearer clean enough and with oxygen enough to support
g am e fish.
However, Michigan officials in early 1976 discovered
that the Kalamazoo River is the State's single largest
source discharging PCB's into Lake Michigan. Coping with
that problem and obtaining the advanced wastewater treatment
now required for Kalamazoo and Battle Creek are the challenges
ahead for the State and the EPA.
The Fox
The Fox is the largest river that flows into Lake
Michigan. It originates in central Wisconsin and flows
through Lake Winnebago and into the southernmost tip of
Lake Michigan's Green Bay.
Before the turn of the century several paper mills
were already operating on the Lower Fox downstream from
Lake Winnebago. Today the Fox supports the heaviest
concentration of paper manufacturing in the United States.
Eighteen paper mills and 11 municipal sewage systems
were discharging into a 39 mile stretch of the lower Fox,
and their discharges were devastating portions of the
river. Until recent times it was one of the most polluted
streams in America. Phosphates, ammonia, phenols, and
other organic contaminants pouring into this big river had
at times wiped out dissolved oxygen for distances exceeding
20 miles .
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In its era of heaviest pollution, massive fish kills
were a yearly disaster. As recently as 1974 a kill left
dead fish strewn from one end of the river to the other.
In the past five years municipal and paper mill
discharges of oxygen consuming wastes have been cut from
400,000 pounds of BOD a day to less than 100,000. The City
of Green Bay has installed an innovative and effective
wastewater treatment system. The portion of Green Bay
hardest hit by diminished oxygen levels has shrunk from 150
square miles to 50. Bay Beach, a park and beach area near
the mouth of the Fox at the City of Green Bay, had been
closed in 1936 because of bacterial contamination. It was
reopened in the summer of 1976 for the first time in 40
years.
The cleanup of the Fox River, however, is only beginning.
Many industries have cooperated beyond what was expected of
them. But others haven't. And the oxygen-depleting waste
loads in the middle stretch of the river may have to be
reduced 40 percent beyond the 1977 requirements because the
loadings will still exceed the capacity of the river to absorb
them. Most cities on the Fox have sewer systems that bypass
the sewage treatment plants during heavy rainfalls. That
sewage needs to be collected and treated. And PCB's that
contaminate the river and southern Green Bay must still be
brought under control.
Those are reminders that while the Fox is on the way
back from overburdening pollution, it still has far to
go.
The Indiana Tributaries
Another system of tributaries enters Lake Michigan
from the Indiana side. At least three of those streams --
Trail Creek, Salt Creek, and the Grand Calumet River -- run
cleaner than they did five years ago.
In the fall of 1972, many chinook salmon attempting to
migrate up Trail and Salt Creeks were killed. The same
thing happened again in 1973. (
Investigators soon found that the stretch of Salt
Creek downstream from the Valparaiso municipal wastewater
treatment plant was critically degraded. At times migrating
salmon simply could not survive the low concentrations of
dissolved oxygen and the high concentrations of ammonia and
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reach clear water above the town. The same situation held
on Trail Creek downstream from where Michigan City's
treated wastewater and combined sewer overflows were
entering the water.
Both cities were issued NPDES permits and ordered
to take the first steps toward installing advanced treatment
systems. The Indiana Stream Pollution Control Board
meanwhile started a systematic stop-gap upgrading program
that employed various improved treatment techniques and
emphasized better use of chemical additives.
During the 1975 migrating season, salmon moved unharmed
up Salt Creek past Valparaiso. On Trail Creek the number
of fish kills dropped sharply. But the final triumph lies
ahead, when full scale advanced treatment becomes a reality
on both of those Lake Michigan tributaries.
The Grand Calumet River, which flows via the Indiana
Harbor Channel through Gary and Hammond and then into Lake
Michigan, and which is in many ways the twin of the Calumet
River in Chicago, was once considered "grossly polluted."
Chemical pollution still persists and oily film can still
be seen occasionally, but there are no longer the big
chunks of grease and oil that floated in the water in the
early Seventies. The Grand Calumet today is a much cleaner
river.
A New Threat
To date, the joint efforts of the Great Lakes States,
the Government of Canada, and the EPA, have centered on the
pollution that everybody thought constituted the central
problem the raw wastes from industry and the raw sewage
from the cities.
But recently a new and perhaps more ominous threat
that of toxic chemicals -- has begun to loom large, much of
it from a new and unexpected source, the sky.
High levels of PCB's have been found in fish in Lakes
Ontario, Huron, and Michigan. Mercury contamination of
fish is a problem in the western basin of Lake Erie.
PCB's, mercury, and high concentrations of asbestos fibers
have been found in Lake Superior. Arsenic has appeared.
DDT, while not the problem it once was, still persists.
And even mirex, an insecticide used in the southern United
States to kill fire ants, has been found in fish and bottom
sediments in Lake Ontario. Mirex comes to the Lake in
discharges from a chemical plant at Niagara Falls.
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Sorae scientists now suggest that much of the Great Lakes
pollution may not come directly from sources on the shore,
but from the atmosphere. Particles of phosphorus, heavy
metals, pesticides, and toxic industrial compounds from
industrial processes and incinerators escape into the air and
enter the lakes with the rain and snow, and as "dust."
Toxics, however they reach the Great Lakes, have become
a pressing environmental challenge that must be met. The
toxics problem there takes its place beside the lakes'
still unresolved nutrient problem as one of the two most
severe forms of pollution yet to be dealt with adequately.
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BAYS, HARBORS, OCEANS AND LAKES
Of all waters, perhaps none are as vulnerable to
pollution as those where the land meets the sea -- in the
nation's bays, harbors and estuaries.
The home of the most delicate of marine ecosystems,
many of them have been ravaged by pollution. But most of
them are now on their way to eventual recovery. The Nation
has clamped restrictions on ocean dumping. The EPA, the
States, local governments, and citizen groups have again
and again allied themselves into a force for cleanup. And
their impact on pollution in those important waters has
been felt. The cases that follow stand as reminders that
improvement is possible --and is happening.
Escambia River Basin
In 1968, the Escambia River Basin on the Gulf Coast
of Florida appeared to be polluted beyond hope of recovery.
One local resident mourned the deterioration of this
one-time haven for commercial fishermen, sun-worshipers,
and sport-fishermen in this way:
"Once my whole family enjoyed swimming in the clear
water with sandy bottoms and sandy beaches where now
you would wade in sludge. We caught in half an hour
enough speckled trout for supper on the beach. Now
there is no clean water to swim in. I cannot let my
dog wade in the shallows because he develops a skin
eruption. There are no oysters. There are no speckled
trout in the area. After one of those fish kills...,
about 25 egrets, little blue herons, and great blues
were wiped out from eating these fish. It is rather
heartbreaking to see the old lovely bay become a death
trap . "
By all signs, the 140 square mile estuary was in an
advanced state of eu t r oph ic a t io n . In Pensacola Bay,
commercial shrimp landings were down 99 percent. The
commercial oyster business had virtually ceased to exist
and porpoises, once common, had disappeared.
Fish kills were rampant. Forty-one kills in Escambia
Bay and 32 in Pensacola Bay and the adjoining bayous of the
Santa Rosa Sound wiped out millions of fish. The biggest
kill, in September 1971, had to be measured in square miles
of dead-fish. And the gulf menhaden, a small commercial
fish, was hardest hit of all.
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The principal polluters were the industries that had
mushroomed in the basin since the 1950's and were dumping
millions of gallons of untreated or virtually untreated
wastewater into the river and its bays. BOD loadings from
fertilizer production wastes, alcohol, ammonia, polyvinyl
chloride, and nylon fibers were strangling the marine
ecosys tern .
Effluent from a Pensacola sewage plant was being
discharged after inadequate treatment. Sewage from neighboring
Alabama and Florida municipalities travelled down the
Co neeuh-Escambia River into the bay. The eventual build-up
of organic as well as, nitrogenous and phosphorus wastes
became intolerable.
Heated water from a major manufacturer and a power company
added to the problem. Temperature increases in the Escambia
River surpassed limits recommended by EPA's National Technical
Advisory Committee -- a 4 degree (F) increase from September
through May and 1.5 degrees from June through August. Hot
water discharges by the manufacturer and the power company
had raised the surface temperatures of the Escambia River by
increments of 18.5 degrees and 12.25 degrees, respectively,'
immediately below their outfalls.
Pollutants are not easily flushed from Escambia Bay.
Shallow areas and topographic features limit a free inter-
change between the estuarine waters and the gulf. Consequently,
extensive sludge deposits developed. The L&N (Louisville
and Nashville) Railroad bridge bisecting Escambia Bay further
restricted flow. When bridge pilings needed replacement the
railroad installed new ones without removing the old ones. A
virtually impenetrable barrier was eventually built across
Esc amb ia Bay.
By the late 1960's the situation had become urgent.
In December 1969, Florida Governor Claude Kirk called on an
EPA predecessor agency in the U.S. Department of the Interior
for help. A conference, convened in January 1970, drew up a
blueprint for action.
The plan called for a 94 percent reduction of organic
and nitrogenous waste discharges into the basin, a 90 percent
reduction in phosphorus discharges, immediate removal of all
settleable solid wastes, reconstruction of the L&N railway
bridge by January L973, and the eventual goal of zero discharge
of pollutants into the bays.
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At Florida's request, EPA established an Escambia River
Recovery Study in 1972. It was to monitor and assist in
enforcing standards set by Florida, Alabama, and the Federal
Government, and to investigate other ways to accelerate
recovery in the bays. The City of Pensacola was awarded an
EPA construction grant for an advanced sewage treatment
plant .
The impact of these actions has been substantial. Since
1969 industries and municipalities have drastically reduced
waste discharges. In the five year period between September
1969 and January 1974, BOD discharges have fallen by 57
percent, nitrogen discharges by 73 percent, and phosphorus
discharges by 92 percent. By January 1977, when all dis-
chargers must meet effluent limitations, BOD, nitrogen, and
phosphorous should be reduced by at least 88, 88, and 89,
percent respectively.
Today, thanks to State, private, and Federal cooperation,
the water is clearing. Fish kills are down more than 75
percent since 1970. Shrimp, oysters, and menhaden are
returning. In April' 1975, more than a million striped bass
were released in the Escambia River Delta. Authorities
expect that more than half the fish will survive. Of those
that do not, more will be eaten .by other fish than will die
because of polluted water.
The Escambia, Pensacola, and East Bays had recovered
enough by July 1, 1975, for the EPA to terminate its recovery
study. The Escambia estuary system may never recover to its
original state, but it is clearly an example of what can
be accomplished when private citizens, the State, and the
Federal Government work together.
Gulf of Mex i c o
The Gulf of Mexico ranks fifth in size among the seas
of the world -- 582,100 square miles. It has served as a
long-time shipping port and as an invaluable source of sea-
food.
During the last few decades, a quickening tourist trade
and a myriad of corporations such as DuPont, Shell Chemical,
GAF, and Ethyl Corporation have added new dimensions to the
area's economy. However, as the economy boomed, the gulf's
fragile marine ecosystem began to run the serious risk of
becoming a dead sea -- a dumping ground for toxic wastes.
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There is scant documentation on the volume of industrial
wastes discharged into the gulf before the Marine Protection
and Sactuaries Act was passed in 1973. However, the Council
on Environmental Quality reported in 1970 that 696,000 tons of
industrial wastes were believed to have been dumped in 1968
alone. And, while the number of companies and the types of
wastes involved are unknown, the EPA believes that the volume
of ocean dumping between 1968 and 1973 more than doubled and
could have reached a high of 2,000,000 tons a year. It is
known that wastes were dumped as close to shore as 10 miles,
and, in some cases, very near to or on top of several unique and
valuable coral reefs in the northwestern gulf.
In 1971, several drums of toxic wastes were washed near
shore and were caught in the trawls of commercial shrimpers.
The EPA's Region VI and the State of Texas launched investiga-
tions. The need for stringent controls became evident.
Partially decomposed wastes from the U.S. and Mexico were
being washed about in the gulf and were often deposited on
shore. So the EPA, under the authority of the Marine Protection
and Sanctuaries Act, issued the following regulations:
o Ocean Dumping was to cease or be strictly regu-
lated until companies and municipalities could
build adequate treatment or disposal facilities;
o Ocean disposal of toxics was to stop as soon as
po s sib le ;
o Industrial polluters were to cut ocean dumping by 80
percent; and
o Inspection and chemical analyses of wastes would be
required before barges departed to offshore dumping
sites.
Those and other regulations have brought substantial
progress. In just two years, the EPA and industry have
reduced dumping in the gulf by more than 90 percent. A
comparison the amount of ocean dumping in 1973, 1974, and
1975 follows:
1973
Company Place Year Tons 1974 Tons 1975 Tons
DuPont La Place, La. 250 0 0
La Porte, Tx. 540,000 268,000 38,400
Beaumont, Tx. 480,000 307,000 0
Belle, W. Va. 90,000 90,000 0
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-44-
Company
Shell Chemical
GAF Corp.
Ethyl Corp.
*Sludge only
Place
1973
Year Tons
Deer Park, Tx. 81,000
Texas City, Tx. 216,000
Baton Range, La. 1,680
1,408,930
1974 Tons
66,000
216,000
1,680
948, 680
1975 Ton.
100,000*
0
1, 680
140, 080
Levels in
127,000 tons
1976 are expected to fall to approximately
Virtually all toxics have been eliminated. Only non-
toxic sodium- and calcium-bearing sludge and biological
sludge remain. In order to achieve these reductions,
all dischargers into the gulf have had to develop alternative
methods to dispose of toxics and sludge. One alternative
currently being used experimentally is ocean incineration.
In 1974 and 1975, Shell Chemical burned chlorinated hydrocarbon
at sea under two research permits and two interim permits.
Monitoring conducted aboard the vessel and in the surrounding
air revealed a 99.9 percent destruction of chlorinated
hydrocarbons, with no detectible air or marine pollution.
It was not conclusively proved, however, that oxidation was
complete and that all of the products of the burn were less
dangerous than the original waste material itself. For this
reason, in October 1976, Shell was issued a special three-year
permit to continue its testing of ocean incineration. The
company, however, must still meet certain ocean dumping
criteria.
Central to all the efforts to keep the gulf as free
from pollution as possible was a vigorous public demand that
it be protected. The gulf has clearly profited from this
strong public attention.
Delaware Coast
Just as the Marine Protection and Sanctuaries Act halted
toxic dumping in the Gulf of Mexico, it also forced action
the Delaware Coast.
on
In 1971, the Food and Drug Administration, fearing that
commercial shellfish harvesting areas off the coast might
become contaminated, ordered them closed as a precautionary
measur e.
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After the Marine Sanctuaries and Protection Act passed
the Congress in 1973, the EPA ordered the two cities most
heavily involved -- Camden, N.J., and Philadelphia, Pa. --
to move their sewage sludge dumping sites 40 miles offshore.
They had been dumping only 12 miles out, where the combination
of shallow depths and ocean currents brought the sludge back
toward the shore.
Lowered pollution levels due to the relocation of the
dumping sites made possible the reopening of the shellfish
harvesting areas in January 1975. The next step is to halt
dumping altogether. Camden is now under an F.PA order to
stop all its ocean dumping by 1979, and Philadelphia by
1981. To help them meet those deadlines, the EPA is fostering
development of ways to make use of the sludge generated in
the waste treatment processes. Camden is working on composting
processes that could end its ocean dumping earlier within
18 months.
Kodiak Harbor
Foul odors hung particularly heavy over Kodiak, Alaska,
during the warm August of 1971. And this wasn't new. Since
1967 the citizens of Kodiak had complained of strong smells
in the air over the town and its small boat harbor.
Ironically, the source of these acrid odors was also the
economic backbone of the community. The 15 seafood processing
plants operating in Kodiak Harbor and Gibson Cove processed
over 110 million pounds of shrimp, salmon, crab, scallops,
clams, halibut, and herring every year.
But untreated wastes from the canneries were polluting
the harbor. In 1971, an estimated 72 million pounds of
untreated waste solids, including decomposed fish and shell-
fish, were dumped under the docks and into the inner harbor.
Dissolved oxygen levels fell as low as 1.3 milligrams-per-1iter ,
well below the levels required for a healthy marine community.
The normal range of DO levels for those waters is 9 to 14
milligrams-per-liter.
Dumping reached such staggering proportions that 50
acres of harbor bottom were "matted" over with a black,
foul-smel ling sludge. The toxic and noxious hydrogen sulfide
gases given off by the decomposition of the sludge bubbled to
the water's surface. Floating wastes contributed to the
aesthetic degradation and the water grew murky.
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In 1969, after two years of citizen protests, the Federal
Water Pollution Control Administration, an EPA predecessor
agency, issued a study showing DO levels in Kodiak Harbor to
be abnormally low. Water quality continued to decline, and
the EPA called an enforcement conference in September 1972.
One month later, Congress adopted Public Law 92-500, and in
1973 the EPA issued its first NPDES permits to the canneries
requiring that the quantities of solid waste discharged into
Kodiak Harbor and Gibson Cove be substantially reduced.
Processors began to install appropriate equipment.
One company built a facility to convert solid seafood waste
into a dry packaged protein meal for export as animal feed.
Water quality began to improve. A 1974 EPA study showed
significant reductions in the amount of sludge and hydrogen
sulfide gas in the harbor. While DO levels rose, they
were not yet high enough in 1974 to meet Alaska's water
quality standards for marine life protection. Sludge beds
persisted in near-shore areas where water circulation was
poor. Permits were revised in 1975 to require relocation of
wastewater discharge sites away from existing sludge beds to
zones where water conditions were better. When permit require-
ments are met in 1977, Kodiak Harbor should meet water
quality s tandards .
But even now, the seafood processors have drastically
reduced the solid waste pollution in the harbor. Mounds of
waste no longer rot on the harbor floor as they did five years
ago, and escaping gas no longer bubbles to the Harbor's
surface. The citizen protests are paying off.
Pearl Harbor
In 1969, Pearl Harbor, one of the nation's most beautiful
and renowned harbors was suffering from high volumes of
pollution discharge. More than 7 million gallons of raw and
primary-treated sewage poured into it every day.
Since World War II, the harbor had been closed to the
public, partly for security reasons and partly because it was
so heavily polluted.
Spreading over nine square miles of the island of Oahu,
Pearl Harbor is a combination of three locks or embayments,
originally drowned river valleys that have been modified over
the course of time. Its waters had fallen prey to sewage,
sediment, and debris; nearby open burning dumps also contributed
leachates. The harbor's oyster beds had been covered with
human sewage and municipal refuse. Wastes from power plants,
from sugar processing, from burning dumps, and from naval
operations added to the bacterial build-up, nutrient loadings,
sediment, and debris.
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-47-
A 1970 Executive Order required all Federal facilities
to meet environmental standards, and the Navy gave priority
to Pearl Harbor. In concert with the Army and the Air Force,
the Navy moved quickly to control many of its waste problems.
A sewage treatment plant was completed in 1971.
In September of that year, EPA called an enforcement
conference to review the harbor's municipal and industrial
discharge problems. HPDES permits and Federal grants for
sewage treatment plant construction mandated by Public Law
92-500 were brought to bear. To win public support for the
cleanup program, the Navy opened the harbor. By 1976, con-
ditions had improved. The open burning dumps were closed.
Sewage discharges were controlled and a regional sewer system
to remove discharges from critical harbor areas was under
construction.
While conditions are improved, much is still to be done.
As is often true in clean-up situations, early efforts brought
dramatic change, and later progress has been slower. But
further progress is still being made. The public can now
safely swim, boat, and fish in much of the harbor.
Charleston Harbor
Charleston Harbor in South Carolina, as famous for
the sound of shot and shell as Pearl Harbor, is also experiencing
remarkable environment improvement.
For many years the old harbor, where so much history has
been written, had suffered from heavy pollution. Before
1970, discharges of raw sewage added 30,000 pounds of BOD
loadings a day to the waters. Fish kills were common.
Boaters, water skiers, and fishermen found conditions in the
harbor steadily deteriorating. Scum and a film of oil often
covered portions of its surface.
Revitalizing the harbor has cost in excess of $37 million.
The EPA has contributed $12 million of that total. Virtually
all of Charleston's raw sewage had been discharged by outfall
pipes running across the tidal flats. Today the pipes have been
plugged, and sewage is collected in tunnels deep beneath the
city and the harbor floor, then piped to the Plum Island
Sewage Treatment Plant. Sewage from North Charleston and the
U.S. naval base is treated in an even larger plant. And there
are new facilities at St. Andrews, at Mt . Pleasant, and at
Sullivan's Island.
Fishermen, boaters, and skiers now find the water
free of scum and oil, and less murky. Fishing is improved:
flounder, trout, bluefish, jack, and even mackeral and cobia
are being caught in increasing numbers. Shrimp are also
returning to formerly polluted areas. Daily levels of BOD
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-48-
discharge have been pared by nearly 50 percent -- to about
17,000 pounds. Eventually they will be cut to about 4 500
pound s . .
Conditions in Charleston Harbor might be worse today had
it not been for some late 19th century foresight. In 1895-96
the city's sewage commissioners started planning an innovative
system of separated wastewater and stormwater sewers. The
brick and masonary structures they built are still in use
today. This foresight saved the old city from the sewer
separation problems now plaguing many of the Nation's older
cities.
However, the ancient sewers are causing another problem
Old age has set in. The system is leaky and it lets in the
sea water. At high tide the flow to the treatment plant often
is triple that at low tide. That means the sewer is presently
acting much like a sieve. Since most of the sewers are in the
older section of the historical district, they will be diffi-
cult and costly to replace.
However, the city now has an EPA grant to correct such
infiltration-inflow problems and to build a secondary municipal
treatment plant. Meanwhile, most of the industrial wastes now
receive the equivalent of secondary treatment or better.
T^wo Western Harbors
Two harbors, both in Washington State, are also cleaner
today than they were two decades ago.
One of them, Port Angeles Harbor, is a beautiful bay on
the Straits of Juan de Fuca . This harbor historically had
supported an abundant and varied marine life, with large
populations of clams, shrimp, bottom fish, and crabs. Migrating
salmon also ran in the harbor.
By the 1950's, however, industrial development in the
area had severely degraded the harbor's waters.
Three pulp and paper mills contributed heavily to
the economy of the area but they also discharged large quan-
tities of wastes directly into the harbor. The natural flow
patterns prevented adequate flushing of the wastes. The
waters became toxic to some marine life, oxygen levels fell
below acceptable minimums, and large cellulose fiber sludge
deposits covered much of the bottom. The harbor was no longer
a suitable habitat for the various species of fish and shell-
fish that had long lived there.
During the 1960's, the State of Washington and the
Federal Government initiated regulatory actions to eliminate
the pollution problems. These actions were stengthened by the
formation of the EPA and passage of P.L. 92-500
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-49-
One of the pulp mills was shut down for economic reasons.
And since 1970, the remaining two mills have substantially
reduced waste discharges going into the harbor. The mills are
not yet in compliance with final treatment requirements and in
fact are strongly opposing them. But the benefits of the
waste reductions achieved to date are becoming evident. Water
clarity in the harbor has improved and fish and shrimp
are returning. A strong trend to higher water quality is
evident. The next few years should see the harbor regain much
of its former value as an important marine resource.
Water Quality in Grays Harbor, to the south of Port
Angeles, directly reflects the contributions from its upstream
tributaries and industries. And unlike many other estuarine
systems, Grays Harbor is greatly affected by both point and
nonpoint sources.
Wastes from the wood products industry are the single
most important factor in the water quality of the area.
Besides the large quantities of wastewater discharged from the
local pulp mills, the waters are also influenced by runoff
from woodwaste landfills, by log storage wastes, and by
erosion resulting from poor forest management practices.
Bacterial contamination in Grays Harbor is caused in
part by inadequately treated sewage from four major upstream
treatment plants. Raw sewage overflows and discharges are
common during periods of heavy rainfall. These, together with
pulp mill wastes that are held for high flow releases, join
the other contaminants entering the river and the harbor.
Point source discharges from local fish and shellfish
processors also pollute the harbor. Lumber companies and
cranberry processors add to the problem. And there is the
seasonal influence from ocean upwelling, from the input of the
Chehalis River system, and from agricultural wastes and septic
tank leacha te .
In years past, pulp mill wastes helped lower dissolved
oxygen concentrations to the point that migrating salmon
could not pass through to their spawning grounds. Recent
pollution controls, however, have nearly doubled the dissolved
oxygen concentrations, and salmon once again can safely
pass.
A comprehensive program to reduce point source pollution,
including plans to upgrade the area's sewage treatment, is
now underway at Grays Harbor. A nonpoint source abatement
program will also be necessary, and is under development.
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Two Northern Lakes
A pair of high and beautiful northern lakes, one in
Maine and one in Minnesota, both of which have become
severely polluted, have also started back on their way to
r ec ov er y .
Prior to 1972, the Annabessacook in Maine was a notoriously
polluted lake. Algae blooms lasted 70 days a year, and it was
rare to look into the lake and be able to see more than three
feet beneath its surface.
The trouble at Annabessacook was easily traced. The lake
had been the long-time victim of four major polluters -- the
towns of Winthrop and Monmouth, the Carleton Woolen Mills,
and Globe Albany, a wool finishing plant. These four polluters
together dumped more than 30,000 pounds of. virtually untreated
wastes into the lake each year.
Both Winthrop and the Carleton Woolen Mills had wastewater
treatment. However, Winthrop's antiquated sewage treatment
system was inadequate and the Woolen Mills facility was only
marginally efficient. Even worse, Monmouth had no existing
municipal wastewater plant at all, and Globe Albany discharged
its wastes entirely untreated.
In 1968, Maine's Department of Environmental Protection
classified Annabessacook as one of the four most severely
polluted lakes in the State. Conditions had deteriorated to
the point where action was essential.
Several possible solutions were investigated for cost as
well as for environmental effectiveness. And after much
deliberation a direction that had initially been considered
bizarre and unworkable was selected. It called for the
cooperative efforts of the cities of Monmouth, Winthrop,
Manchester, Hallowell, and Augusta. The wastes from all five
were to be collected and transported to a proposed secondary
wastewater treatment facility in Augusta, treated, and then
discharged into the Kennebec River. The political, institu-
tional, financial, and legal problems of negotiating with five
communities and their associated industries at first seemed
formidable. But the plan proved to be the least costly and
the most environmentally sound. So it was adopted.
In 1971, the Winthrop to Augusta interceptor was com-
pleted. Since then the improvements in the quality of the
Annabessacook's waters have been striking. Phosphorus
levels are down by 80 percent and nitrate levels by 44 percent.
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-Sl-
it is possible to see nine feet down into the lake instead of
three, and algae blooms now last no more than 15 days a '
year .
Now .that the Monmouth to Winthrop to Augusta interceptor
has been finished, there is every reason to believe that
Annab es sac ook' s restoration is assured. But the story does
not end there. The Aug us t a-Cab b es se e regional agency is now-
making plans to preserve the lake's entire watershed. Controls
on growth and development are expected permanently to insure
Annabessacook Lake's environmental integrity.
Perhaps none of Minnesota's 10,000 lakes is more cele-
brated than Lake Minnetonka. It was the "Shining Big-Sea
Water" of Longfellow's Hiawatha. It was also a victim of
20th century urban development.
Minnetonka, 15 miles west of Minneapolis, is the State's
10th largest lake. It is a series of bays, points, and
islands with 31 interconnecting channels covering 14,31.0
acres, with 110 miles of shoreline. Its waters are favored by
small-craft sailors and its northern pike, bluegill, walleye,
and largemouth bass attract hundreds of fishermen. Aside
from its 60 marin.as and private and public launch sites, the
area contains many picnic areas, parks, golf courses, schools,
and resort hotels.
By the early 1960's, however, the lake's quality had
become unacceptable to sportsmen. Green scum and weeds were
abundant. Several fish kills had occurred. Many species of
bottom organisms important in the food web snails among
them had disappeared .
A few decades before, many lake homes had used on-site
septic tanks for sewage treatment. And often during high
water levels some tanks overflowed and contaminated the
lake. To deal with this recurring problem, seven of the
lake's local municipalities built secondary treatment plants
in the mid-1950's. For the next decade, plants dumped their
treated effluent into the lake without apparent ill effect.
But by 1963, the abundance of nitrates and phosphates had
caused severe euthrophication. Weeds and algae grew and
consumed the dissolved oxygen so necessary to fish life.
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Despite Minnetonka's nutrient problem, adjacent Minnehaha
Creek, because of its swift-noving waters, did not become
severely polluted. But there were other complications.
Spring floods were a common threat and in late summer and
early fall the creek often dried up.
With 12 separate municipalities around the lake and six
along Minnehaha Creek, no single one of them on its own would
have been able to clean up and control the pollution.
Consequently, a watershed district of 27 municipalities, A
townships, and 2 counties 'was formed. Pollution and flood
problems were studied, and population projections and hydro-
logical and engineering studies were performed to help develop
an overall water management plan.
A water flow control plan evolved and a dam was built a
half mile downstream from the point where Minnehaha Creek
joins the lake. Flood-plain zoning was adopted in order to
curb unwanted development, and the Minnehaha Creek Watershed
District endorsed a Metropolitan Sewer Board plan to divert
all sewage effluents away from Minnetonka to the Minnesota
River, which could better handle the flow. The diversion plan
called for abandoning the seven secondary waste treatment
plants and diverting sewage to the Blue Lakes central treatment
plant.
The effluents were diverted in 1971-72. Today nutrient
levels are dropping and surface algae are disappearing.
Lake Minnetonka and adjoining Minnehaha Creek are gradually
recovering.
Lake Minnetonka and Minnehaha Creek serve an example
of those areas with nutrient problems where nitrates as well
as phosphorus must be controlled. A more common situation
with regard to nutrient is that in which nitrate levels alone
are crit ical.
Figure 10 reveals that there are high nitrate levels on
the lower Missouri, the middle Mississippi and the entire Ohio
River. High levels are also found in such areas as the
Northeast Coast, Northern Alabama and on the Willamette and
Snake Rivers in the Northwest. Low levels are common on the
upper Great Lakes in northern New England and in most of the
So ut he as t .
As was the case for phosphorus (Figure 9), nitrate
conditions are, for the most part, worsening. (Figure 11).
With regard to nitrate levels, Florida, California and Washington
State are among the few areas showing general improvement.
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Figure 10
Environmental Protection Agency
STORET SYSTEM
Nitrate in Water, 1973-1975, 85th Percentiles
Concentration
(mg/1)
* no data
|| less than 0.272
1 -- 0.272-0.690
1 -- 0.690-1.48
i greater than 1.48
Cells included are those for which data has been supplied
to EPA. Cells are approximately 25 by 35 miles.
Source: Monitoring and Data Support Division, OWPS, EPA
-------
Figure 11
Environmental Protection Agency
STORET SYSTEM
Trends in Nitrate, 1967-69 to 1973-75
Trend
f Improved (35% of cells reporting)
o ~ Less than 10% Change
^ ~ Worsened (50% of cells reporting)
Small arrows (barely visible) indicate
less improvement.
Source: Monitoring and Data Support Division, OWPS, EPA
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-53-
WATERS MADE BY MAN
The Nation in its exuberance to grow, has not only
polluted natural waters, it has also hewn out manmade waters
and polluted them as well.
And, as with all its waters, it must now clean them up.
Two examples are well known -- the Houston Ship Channel and
the Las Vegas Wash. Two others, Stockton Lake and Dillon
Reservoir, are important manmade lakes in raid-continent.
Houston Ship Channel
President Woodrow Wilson went to Houston in 1914, and to
the booming accompaniment of cannon, pushed the button that
officially opened the Houston Ship Channel. It was an act
that turned Houston, until then a mid-sized inland city of
160,000 people, into a port.
No one could have foreseen it then, but Houston was
destined to become the third largest port in the Nation and
the ship channel one of the Nation's filthiest streams.
Houston itself exploded. In less than 20 years its
population doubled. Then came World War II and during
the Forties it nearly doubled again -- from 384,514 to
596,219.
In the early years few were worried about pollution in
the channel. Buffalo Bayou, which winds through the city and
forms the channel's upper reaches, was a lazy little stream
notable for its Sunday swimming and canoe races.
It wasn't until the mid Sixties that people realized the
ship channel had gradually become mired in pollution. By 1968
the BOD load dumped into it by the city and the industrial
giants along its banks, was 406,000 pounds a day.
In December 1967, a group gathered at the edge of the
channel in downtown Houston to mourn its death. They con-
ducted a mock funeral service and issued a death certificate:
death due to strangulation. The EPA was later to call the
channel one of the 10 most polluted major waterways in the
United States.
Wastes were being dumped raw into the ship channel. The
only agency then trying to stem the tide was an understaffed
and underfunded Texas Water Pollution Control Board. It had a
stream monitoring program and water quality standards and
permit procedures. But there were no enforcement teeth.
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In September 1967, the Texas Legislature created the
Texas Water Quality Board, adequately funded it, and author-
ized it to look after the quality of the waters throughout the
State .
By 1970, the BOD being dumped into the channel had been
pared from over 400,000 pounds a day to 300,000. By 1972
the load had dropped to 123,675 pounds a day.
The first signs of a reawakening of fish life in the
channel appeared. Shrimp and crabs and other marine life were
being found at water intake pipes five miles below the
Channel's turning basin. Officials were delighted. One
company, Diamond Shamrock, threw a party and served ship
channel shrimp.
But the victory was difficult to sustain. People were
still flocking into Houston at a rate of 2,000 new residents
a month. And in 1973, the BOD level had jumped back to
175,000 pounds a day. But the loading is now down again to
90,000 pounds a day and headed towards a hoped-for 41,000
pounds by 1979.
The City of Houston has been a major offender in the
pollution of the Channel. It is the source of 75 percent of
the BOD load dumped into the belabored waterway, and the
State's attorney general has filed suit aga1' .st it for contam-
inating Clear Lake. Houston, however, has now started to
expand and modernize its wastewater treatment facilities with
the help of EPA construction grants.
When the EPA came on the scene in the early Seventies,
it joined the Texas Water Quality Board to put all dischargers
under the strict discharge permits mandated by the new
amendments to the Federal Water Pollution Control Act.
Plankton now inhabit the entire 25-mile course of the
channel from Houston to Galveston Bay. Tarpon have been
caught within five miles of the turning basin, and dolphins
appear now in the lower end of the channel. In 1972, the
Texas Water Quality Board collected six species of marine
life on screens in the channel. . A year later it gathered 22
different species. There has even been talk of constructing
a $3 million hotel and tourist center on Brady Island, only
.two miles from the turning basin, where the water once ran
foul and toxic.
The channel is unlikely ever again to run as clean as it
did the day Woodrow Wilson dedicated it. But it appears to
have a future far cleaner than its recent past.
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Las Vegas Wash
This little stream in the middle of the parched Nevada
desert is unique.
It was hewn originally from the bone dry environment by
storms, and for years flowed only intermittently. But with
the establishment and growth of Las Vegas, it now flows
constantly, due primarily to the wastewaters discharged into
it. Flowing easterly from the City of Las Vegas into Lake
Mead on the Colorado River, its waters at one time carried
the waste discharges of three towns and nine industries.
It attracted some 171 species of birds, 40 percent of
which lived there permanently. Fish also came to swim in
the wash and it became the water supply for amphibians,
reptiles, coyotes, bobcats, kit foxes, raccoons, skunks, and
other mammals .
But as the population of the Las Vegas basin boomed, as
industry grew, and as wastewater treatment works aged, the
wash began to be overburdened with pollution. Its already
salty waters became laden with nitrogen, phosphorus, and
dissolved solids. Its pollution reached to Lake Mead and the
Colorado River downstream. Algae began to bloom in that part
of the lake below the wash,- lowering dissolved oxygen levels,
throwing off odors, contaminating the water, and threatening
the wildlife.
In 1967, citizens in the basin and Federal, State and
local agencies began to worry collectively about pollution in
the wash. There was much planning and discussion, but little
else was done. It was not until 1971, when the EPA threatened
enforcement action, that the three municipalities and nine
industries settled on a strategy. A conference was convened.
Legally-binding timetables for halting the pollution were
developed and later incorporated in the NPDES permits demanded
by P.L. 92-500.
Today six of the nine industries discharging into the
wash have halted all discharges entirely. The remaining three
are on schedules to reduce or eliminate their discharges.
That part of the industrial wastewater flows that entered
groundwater and then seeped into the wash has also been
stopped. In addition, plans for tertiary wastewater treatment
for the municipalities on the wash are already underway.
It will take several years to complete the program. But
when it is finished the wash will be a clean manmade stream.
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Two Rese rvoir s
Stockton Lake is a 25,000-acre reservoir 50 miles
northwest of Springfield, Mo., and 135 miles southeast
of Kansas City. It was built by the Array Corps of Engineers
for flood control and power generation.
On July 25, 1970, only seven months after it was built,
fish kills were reported in the Sac River just below the
reservoir. The water being released from the new manraade
lake was so low in dissolved oxygen that it couldn't sustain
the river's pollution-sensitive fish life. Low DO was
reported again on August 1 and August 5. Along one three-
mile segment of the stream more than 20,000 fish lay dead.
The low DO condition had developed at that time of the
year when the lake became thermally stratified. Thermal
stratification is a natural process which occurs in many
lakes. The organisms living in the depths of Lake Stockton
depleted the oxygen there, and the stratification prevented
oxygen replenishment from the oxygen-rich, surface layers of
water. The intakes for the water releases necessary to
generate power lay at the levels of the oxygen-depleted
wa ter .
The Corps successfully halted fish kills temporarily by
installing siphons, which discharged high-oxygen-content
water from the surface layer of the reservoir into the river
at the same time that any low DO water was released.
Concerned parties then went to work on a long term solution.
The Federal Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife, the
Missouri Water Pollution Control Board, the Department of
Conservation and the Federal Water Quality Administration --
an EPA predecessor agency -- were all consulted. And on
October 6, 1970, the Federal Water Quality Administration
decided to take permanent steps to prevent future fish
kills.
At a meeting the following August, several alternatives
were discussed. And on October 13, 1971, it was agreed
that a skimming weir would be the most economical and effective
solution for Lake Stockton's DO problem. A weir is a manraade
obstruction put in a stream to create an artificial cascade.
As the water tumbles over the cascade, oxygen from the air is
drawn in and mixed with it, increasing the concentration of
dissolved oxygen in the water downstream.
Completed in 1973, the weir in Lake Stockton now provides
adequate water quality when water is released for power
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generation during periods of thermal stratification, and the
warm water fishery downstream is thriving. Since installation
of the weir, the oxygen content of water released during
power generation has been maintained and no further fish
kills have been reported. The problem is considered solved.
Only a similar concert of Federal, State, and local
action saved Colorado's Dillon Reservoir from pollution.
When it was built to supply Denver with high quality
water for domestic use, few thought that the reservoir,
high on the Continental Divide, would ever be threatened by
pollution. It lay at 9,000 feet in a rural watershed that had
seen little human traffic since the gold mining era. The U.S.
Forest Service owned 80 percent of the drainage area, and the
private lands consisted mostly of old, abandoned mining claims.
But three things happened to change the situation. The
reservoir itself became a major recreational area. The use
rate, measured in visitor days, soared from 43,000 in 1966 to
1,000,000 by 1976. Three major ski resorts were built in the
area. And Interstate 70 was laid across the Continental
Divide, making the reservoir even more accessible.
Along with the resorts came people and more construction.
In the early 1960's, fewer than 2,000 people inhabited the
basin; in 1972 there were 55,000 housing units already built,
under construction, or planned for the watershed. The pace of
events outran the available treatment facilities, and water
quality in the reservoir was suddenly threatened by man-made
pollut io n.
Colorado officials were worried enough in 1972 to call a
joint State-EPA conference to study the problem and recommend
strategies to deal with it.
It was soon apparent that the threat was real and a
basin-wide plan calling for advanced wastewater treatment,
including phosphorus removal, was drawn up and adopted. Two
EPA grants were forthcoming. Four of the existing 10 waste-
water treatment facilities in the Dillon complex now provide
advanced treatment, and four others have been phased out in
the upgrading process.
A potentially serious eutrophication and public health
problem was headed off. By 1975 EPA's National Eutrophicat ion
Survey found that the reservoir had the highest quality water
of 13 lakes studied in Colorado.
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To keep it that way plans are now underway to deal with
the sludge problems that are the product of the new advanced
treatment processes. Control measures for nonpoint run-off
are now also under study. EPA grants have either been applied
for or awarded for both projects.
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1NNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGY -- FINDING SOMETHING BETTER
There are few secret weapons in the war on pollution.
Mostly it just takes determination, time, and money. But
there have been some new, innovative ideas especially for
treating the billions of gallons of sewage per day that is the
spinoff of a burgeoning population. A major effort is under-
way nationally to develop new technology leading to better
systems of advanced wastewater treatment.
Advanced treatment is not a good thing for everyone
everywhere since it is generally very expensive to build and
operate. In most areas, a well run secondary treatment
plant of adequate capacity can handle all current pollution
abatement needs. In some areas, however, advanced or tertiary
treatment is necessary to remove nutrients, heavy metals or
any of a variety of other pollutants that just can't otherwise
be handled adequately.
The cases that follow show some of the innovative techniques
developed to obtain tertiary treatment when necessary.
Muskegon County's Better Idea
The citizens and community leaders of Muskegon County in
Michigan, went to advanced wastewater treatment to solve
their water pollution problems.
Near the end of the 1960's, each of the many independent
communities in the county were trying to deal separately with
their own municipal and industrial wastewaters in small,
overburdened treatment facilities. Several of the main
industries and principal communities were still discharging
inadequately treated wastewater directly into the county's
lake s.
The three main recreational lakes were being polluted.
The resulting problems included severe algal blooms, encroaching
weeds and periods of foul odor. Swimming and boating were
becoming unpleasant and unsafe. Older industries were closing
or leaving rather than rebuilding and new industries and
businesses were not coming to replace them.
Muskegon County's solution was first to persuade its many
independent communities to agree on a unified approach to the
problem then to develop a common wastewater treatment
system. Working with authorities at the State and Federal
levels, they designed and built a large scale spray irrigation
system that would reliably and safely handle up to A3 million
gallons of wastewater per day.
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This land treatment system has removed about 98 percent
of the BOD, suspended solids, and phosphorus and 70 percent
of the nitrogen from the 27 million gallons of v;astewater
treated daily in the county. It is protecting and enhancing
the county's lakes and streams as well as benefiting Lake
Michigan. In 1975, the system also used its treated wastewater
to irrigate over a quarter million bushels of corn grown
on what had been sandy, unproductive soil. The project
has served as a keystone in the county's effort to revitalize
its ec o nom y,
Although the primary purpose of the Muskegon system
is wastewater treatment, corn watered with the effluent
yielded an average of 60 bushels per acre. That nearly
equals the average 65 bus he 1-per-acre of corn yielded by
Muskegon County's privately owned farms and the land
treatment site has some of the poorest soil in the county.
Sales from the grain reduced the cost of treating the waste-
wa ter by $700,000.
Land application of wastewater has been practiced in the
United States and in Europe for decades. But the Muskegon
project is the first major effort of its kind in this country
using Federal money. Of the some $44 million in construction
costs, EPA funded approximately 45 percent.
The cost of treating the wastewater in 1975 was only
24 cents per 1000 gallons. This included repayment on the
bond indebtedness and all operating costs, and is low compared
with many other more c o nv en.t io nal wastewater treatment
systems.
It is EPA's hope that the Muskegon success may serve
as an example for other communities. A wel1-designed and
well-managed land application system for municipal wastewater
treatment, where it can be maintained without contaminating
the land with heavy metals and other toxic substances, should
be as safe as conventional treatment systems. And it has an
advantage over conventional systems: it reinforces the
resource recovery ethic. It could revitalize and augment
parkland and recreation areas, renew groundwater, and help
supply nutrients for the growth of forests, grasslands, and
even crops.
Lake Shagawa
The citizens of Ely, Minnesota, were faced with a problem
similar to that of Muskegon County. Ely sits on the shores
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of Shagawa Lake, which is the gateway to the Boundary Waters
Canoe Area, a million-acre wilderness on the border with
Canada that has been set aside as a canoeing preserve.
However, Ely's growing recreational traffic has also
generated higher pollution loads. The first sewage treatment
plant was a primary facility installed in 1912 to treat
wastewater before discharging it into Lake Shagawa. But by
1932, pollution in the lake was so serious that a pipeline was
installed to bring drinking water down from another lake a few
miles upstream. In 1954, a trickling filter plant was built
to treat the rising pollution load. It was modified in
1963.
But there was still a problem. The nutrient load that
was reaching Lake Shagawa began to create ugly and foul-smelling
algae blooms. The swimming beaches were closed and the
overflow from the increasingly polluted waters drained
into parts of the wilderness area and into Canada. Ely's
pollution was in danger of killing the recreation boom that
is its major economic resource.
Working with State and Federal officials, the city in
1971 received an EPA research grant to design, develop,
and run an advanced wastewater treatment plant that would
remove most of the nutrient from its wastewater discharge.
The 1.5 million gallon per day plant was built and
started operating in April 1973. The new facility has been 98
percent effective in removing nutrients, and the phosphorus
levels have been held consistently to less that 0.05 milligrams
per liter, a level too low to support algae growth.
The public is noticing the improvement. The Shagawa Lake
swimming beach was open for a full season in 1975 for the
first time in many years.
Ely's experimental treatment plant is more expensive than
the town can afford to operate without further financial help.
But it points to another technically innovative system capable
of solving a difficult pollution problem if it can be
rendered less costly.
Jasper
The little town of Jasper, in the Ozarks, lies in a
setting as beautiful as Ely's. Through it flows the Buffalo
National River, a stream whose pristine waters and tree-lined
banks provide a wilderness setting and support an eco-system
unique in the nid-South.
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Several dwellings within the town limits were using
outdoor privies or septic tanks that operated ineffectively
in the porous limestone rock formations of northwest Arkansas.
The wastes were seeping into open ditches and from them into
the Little Buffalo River, which empties into the Buffalo
National River.
Like other communities in the Ozarks, Jasper recognized
the increasing health hazard created by inadequate septic
tanks. Something had to be done and the town rose to the
occasion.
Not only did Jasper build a treatment plant with
the help of the EPA -- but it was transformed from an un-
sewered community, with septic tank seepage and raw sewage
runoff, into a community with an advanced system capable of
serving projected population growth for years to come.
An advanced treatment facility for a small town is
out of the ordinary. Lower levels of treatment under"normal
conditions would be quite adequate. But the people of Jasper,
the State of Arkansas, and the EPA, had reasons for tertiary
treatment in the little Ozark town. The high quality of water
in the Buffalo National and Little Buffalo Rivers had to be
maintained. Lower levels of treatment wouldn't do the job.
Jasper's plant went into full operation in 1974. The two
rivers running through it are now assured of continued high
wa ter quality.
St. Petersburg
In 1972, the State of Florida required advanced waste-
water treatment with essentially complete nutrient removal for
the critically polluted areas around Tampa Bay.
St. Petersburg responded with a solution that at the same
time was an important first step towards conserving scarce
drinking water.
Before the 1940's the city drew its potable water
from wells in southern Pinellas County, but with the rapid
population growth and the increasing drain on fresh water
supplies, the ground water aquifer was soon overpumped.
Salt-water intrusion followed, and the aquifer had to be
abandoned as a source of fresh water. Since then the city has
drawn its water from northern Pinellas County by pipeline, and
faces future needs it could not supply.
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The city combined the solution to its wastewater disposal
problem with a step towards relieving its water shortage: it
decided to use modified secondary treatment together with
spray irrigation. The treated effluent will be sprayed on
golf courses, parks, and school yards in the city, saving
scarce fresh water for more important uses.
The effluent will be treated to safe levels before it is
sprayed on sites accessible to the public. And the actual
irrigation will occur during hours when there is no public
access. A stand-by deep well storage system will store the
treated effluent during periods when irrigation is unnecessary.
The St. Petersburg effort is one of the first real
attempts in the South to undertake a major recycling program
for treated effluent, complete with effluent distribution,
spray irrigation, and underground storage.
Largo
The town of Largo, in Florida, was under the same pressure
as St. Petersburg to upgrade its treatment. Like St. Petersburg,
Largo chose spray irrigation, but it went one innovative step
f ur the r.
While wrestling with the problem of what to do with
the 10 tons per day of dry sludge generated by the new
treatment plant, the city's consulting engineer discovered
that dried sludge was being imported to the nearby Port of
Tampa from Houston and Chicago and used as a soil-conditioning
base for fertilizer. It was estimated that approximately
100,000 tons of dried sludge are imported into Florida each
year.
Therefore, the city's consulting engineer devised an
innovative and cost-effective system to dewater the wet sludge
mechanically and dry it in a rotary kiln. The end product
is a sludge material in a dust-free granular form salable as
a soil conditioner because of its high organic and nutrient
content.
The advantages of Largo's sludge handling process are
many. It recycles and reuses the sludge itself. It elimi-
nates a less desirable means of sludge disposal. And sale of
the end product will reduce the net cost of the sludge handling
to a figure considerably below that of the other possible
appr cache s.
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Military Innovations
Many military bases once contributed significantly
to pollution levels. That is now changing. With the focus
now on clean-up, several bases have adopted spray irrigation
of their treated effluents.
Tyndall Air Force Base, in Florida, was notified by EPA
in 1971 that its sewage treatment facilities were outmoded and
completely inadequate to meet State and Federal requirements.
The EPA and the State of Florida agreed that advanced
wastewater treatment would be required at the base's main
plant before discharge to the adjacent beach area on the Gulf
of Mexico. Those waters and the beach had been marked for
recreation and were to be suitable for fish and wildlife
propagation. Effluent limitations were set for BOD and
suspended solids. And wastewater from a second sewage treat-
ment plant was no longer permitted to empty into Pearl Bayou,
a tributary of St. Andrews Bay and a haven for shellfish.
After a series of negotiations and consultations, the
Air Force designed and built a spray irrigation system.
Completed in 1975, the system has completely eliminated all
discharges from the base into the Gulf of Mexico and St.
And rews Bay.
Eglin Air Force Base is on Florida's Choctawhatehee Bay
near Fort Walton Beach, a prime recreational and fishing
area.
In 1970 Eglin's wastewater disposal system could not
provide the degree of treatment required by Florida's Department
of Environmental Regulation. The EPA, the State, and the Air
Force consulted and decided that spray irrigation in the air
base's undeveloped sandy woodlands was the best solution.
The system was completed in early 1975. Since then the Air
Force has also helped Okaloosa County authorities design a
spray irrigation system for itself that also is to use Federal
lands.
.The Eglin system has eliminated wastewater discharges
into Choctawhatehee Bay and Santa Rosa Sound, allowing those
waters to be used for recreation. They will also eventually
be suitable for shellfish. The system eliminated three
outfalls and enhanced the quality of the gulf beaches in the
Fort Walton area.
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Georgia's Dobbins Air Force Base and its industrial
Air Force Plant //6 were discharging sewage and industrial
wastewater into Rottenwood and Nickajack Creeks, tributaries
of the Chattahoochee River. Rottenwood Creek enters the
Chattahoochee just above Atlanta's drinking water intake.
In 1966, an interstate enforcement conference was held to
advise all dischargers to the Chattahoochee River that, by
1971, secondary treatment or its equivalent would be necessary
for all wastewater discharges.
For Dobbins and its industrial complex, the requirements
were more 'strict than that. The proposed treatment process
was to be a three-stage system, which had been approved by EPA
and the State in 1970.
The system for the industrial plant was completed and
put in operation in 1972. The existing wastewater treatment
plant was upgraded, and the facilities for a new third stage
of treatment were finished in May 1976.
This advanced waste treatment system now produces
effluent of a quality approaching that of drinking water.
Reuse of the water for industrial purposes is currently being
studied. And the discharge site for the effluent from Dobbins
has been moved to a point on the Chattahoochee River well
below Atlanta's water supply intake.
Hobbs Selling a City's Wastewater
Hobbs, New Mexico, is one of the few towns in America that
markets wastewater -- and at a price equal to what it gets for
drinking water.
It took a court fight and a lot of doing, but Hobbs
eventually changed a serious pollution problem into an environ-
mental and economic asset. The court fight was due to contami-
nation of the Ogallala groundwater formation, from which the
city draws its water supply.
In the end, the water supply was protected, wastewater
treatment facilities were improved, and a market -- temporary
at least -- for treated wastewater was found in a nearby oil
field.
Hobbs' environmental success story, like many others, is
the product of the cooperative efforts of Federal and State
agencies, the city, and others -- lawsuits notwithstanding.
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In 1970, the New Mexico Environmental Improvement Agency,
while conducting a routine sampling, found that high nitrate
concentrations were present in water supply wells near the
Hobbs wastewater treatment plant.
Additional sampling and flow measurements showed that a
dome of wastewater approximately two miles across and 40 feet
high had built up in the alluvium formation south and
east of the city. Some shallow wells in a low-income area
adjacent to the wastewater treatment facility were found
to be contaminated.
The courts ordered Hobbs to provide a potable water
system for all homeowners in the affected area, to pump
the contaminated water out of the dome, and to stop the
discharge of the polluted water into the Ogallala formation.
Publicity generated by the litigation attracted the
attention of the oil industry, which approached the city
council and offered to buy the wastewater. The oil companies
wanted to inject the water into a deep geologic formation as
part of a secondary oil recovery operation.
It is estimated that the dome of contaminated water,
together with sand-filtered sewage, can be pumped out and used
by the industry for a period of about eight years, at a net
profit to the city. Hobbs has worked out a fee schedule equal
to the rates charged for its potable water. Water lines have
also been laid in the area to serve all persons whose water
supply wells were contaminated.
Now the City has reapplied for EPA and State construction
grants to reach the treatment level necessary during times
when the oil field cannot use the wastewater, and later when
the oil recovery is completed.
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NONPOINT SOURCES
Many activities important to the life and economy of the
Nation over the years -- construction, farming, mining, and
forestry -- have had another, environmentally negative, side:
they.have often set in motion processes of erosion and runoff
harmful to the environment.
The wastes from these sources' have added substantially to
the pollution of the Nation's waters. And they constitute the
nonpoint source problem that as yet knows no fully adequate
solution. They present themselves now as a major environmental
challenge of the future. But in some places the problem has
been attacked already with some success.
The Monongahela Pollution from the Mines
The clean-up of the upper two-thirds of the Monongahela
River is an example. The rugged, scenic Monongahela begins
at the confluence of the West Fork and Tygart Rivers in West
Virginia and flows for 128 miles northward into Pennsylvania,
joining the Allegheny at Pittsburgh to form the Ohio River.
Its coal-rich basin is one of the most intensively
mined regions in the world.
During the 19th century, the Monongahela supported a
profitable fishing industry. Aquatic studies in 1886 iden-
tified 40 fish species, including the pollution-sensitive
walleye and muskellunge. But by the early 20th century,
acid mine drainage from active and abandoned coal mines had
ravaged the small tributary streams and polluted the upper
reaches of the Monongahela from Fairmont, West Virginia, to
Charleroi, PennsyIvanis. Heavy industrial development from
Charleroi to Pittsburgh had killed off virtually all fishlife
in the river.
By 1950, the Monongahela had become an aquatic waste-
land. Acid mine drainage -- runoff from active and abandoned
mines -- on the upper river brought low pH levels, severe
turbidity, bottom deposits of chemical precipitates, and high
concentrations of iron, manganese, and sulfate. Boats, dams,
and instream facilities were plagued by corrosion.
Steel mills and coke plants on the lower river near
Pittsburgh dumped untreated phenols, oils, greases, cyanide,
organic coal tars, ammonia, and suspended solids into the
wa ter .
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In 1957, the Ohio River Valley Sanitation Commission and
the University of Louisville conducted a fish resource study.
At a typical monitoring station on the Monongahela, 50 miles
downstream from the West Virginia border, only two small
bluegill sunfish were found. The pH levels at the station
were unacceptable the water was high in acids and the
river was pale chartreuse in color.
The major turning point in the campaign to save the
Monongahela came on December 17 and 18, 1963, when conferees
met in Pittsburgh to discuss the pollution of the river
and its tributaries. It was agreed that the major problem
was acid drainage from active and abandoned mines.
Indeed, mine drainage is the principal cause of acidic
conditions nationwide. Acidity is measured using the pH
scale: 7 indicates neutral harmless water. Numbers less
than 7 indicate acidic water, with smaller numbers indicating
inceasingly acidic conditions: water with a pH of 6 is slightly
acidic, water with a pH of 4 is very acidic. A pH greater
than 7 indicates alkaline conditions, which are the opposite
of acidic. Although aquatic organisms are more tolerant of
alkalinity than of acidity, highly alkaline waters (with pH
greater than 10) are just as undesirable and as caustic
as acidic waters. As Figure 12 reveals, highly acidic condi-
tions are associated primarily with the Appalachian mining
regions. Acidic conditions are also found in the Southeast
generally and in New England. Highly alkaline conditions are
almost non-existent.
Once it was agreed that the mines were responsible for
the acidity problems along the Monongahelia, all of the
mines were inventoried. Then, in 1965, the active coal
mines were required to treat their discharges to make them
alkaline rather than acidic and thus compensate for the
prevalent acidity. Discharges were also to contain no more
than 7 milligrams per liter of iron. Pennsylvania and West
Virginia stepped up enforcement procedures and State funds
were earmarked for research and development.
Conditions improved. Water quality monitoring records
from the late 1960's and early 1970's showed higher pH levels,
and thus less acidity, in the river's upper reaches. Pollution-
sensitive fish returned among them largemouth bass, catfish,
and emerald shiners.
The lower reaches of the river, while vastly improved,
still have far to go. Discharges from the heavy industry
and the active and abandoned mines between Charleroi and
Pittsburgh continue to result in violations of water quality
standards. But even that stretch is improving: carp and
bullheads have returned. The EPA and the States have issued
permits to the majority of point-source dischargers, and most
of the polluters will meet their 1977 deadlines.
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Figure 12
Environmental Protection Agency
STORET SYSTEM
pH in Water, 1973-1975, 15th & 85th Percentiles
_
9-0303==
» * » 3 «
30MM
*«»»»-]
*3«»»«»»»»»>i:50031«-
.9BB
S3333O35'
pH Level
* no data
o neutral (6.5-9.0)
81 somewhat alkaline
It somewhat acidic (5
highly alkaline (9
ft highly acidic (5.5
(9.0-9.5)
.5-6.5)
.5 or greater)
Or less)
Cells included are those for which data has been
supplied to EPA. Cells are approximately 25 by
35 miles.
Source: Monitoring and Data Support Division, OWPS, EPA
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There are exceptions. The steel industry appealed the
deadline and the effluent limitations in its permits, and a
round of negotiations followed. The EPA in September 1976,
reached an agreement with U.S. Steel, the largest industrial
discharger on the lower Monongahela, calling for final dis-
charge limitations on 72 of 87 outfalls by July 1, 1977. The
remaining outfalls will follow, under a phased compliance
schedule, by November 30, 1981. While there is still a legal
question whether the EPA can set a compliance date after July
1, 1977 -- the deadline set in P.L. 92-500 -- the agreement is
considered a major accomplishment.
Since 1970, the EPA has awarded 16 Pennsylvania communi-
ties $22 million to construct secondary wastewater treatment
facilities. The EPA awarded another $26 million to the
Allegheny County Sanitary Authority for the big secondary
treatment plant servicing Pittsburgh. On line since 1973, it
serves 1.25 million people from McKeesport to Pittsburgh and
treats 200 million gallons of municipal and industrial dis-
charges daily. Additional EPA planning grants authorized in
Section 208 of P.L. 92-500 have been issued to study industrial
discharges, ground water contamination, and sewer problems.
Dents Run watershed, on the Monongahela near Morgantown,
West Virginia, shows how pollution can be controlled at both
active and abandoned mines. As a joint demonstration
project by the EPA, the West Virginia Department of Natural
Resources, and the Consolidation Coal Company, the Dents Run
project has worked well. It has reclaimed over 400 acres
of strip-mined land, at a cost of $2 million. Smoldering gob
piles have been reshaped, covered with fertile soil, and
replanted. The pH in the 14.6 square-mile watershed has
risen from an average of 3 (highly acidic) to 6 (slightly
acidic). And local residents have reported minnows in the
upper portion of the watershed. Hydrated lime treatment
plants have eliminated much of the acid mine drainage and
the bright-orange color in the water.
The Monongahela's revival has been a team effort. The
West Virginia Department of Natural Resources, the Pennsylvania
Department of Environmental Resources, Pennsylvania's mining
industry, and the EPA worked together with success -- particularly
on the river's upper reaches.
Today there are bass tournaments on the West Virginia
portion of the Monongahela. Muskellunge frequent the river's
lower reaches, and hikers and boaters are again a common sight
on its banks on warm summer days.
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Considered a "dead" river for 70 years, the Motion-
gahela now has new life.
The Colorado -- A Salt Problem
The Colorado is the classic case of a river that has
been over-used.
Salt enters the river as a product of natural weathering
and decomposition of rock formations and soil in the basin.
The process is accelerated and the salts are concentrated by
irrigation, evaporation from reservoirs, and the "exporting" of
the river's water to metropolitan areas. The salinity worsens
as the river winds downstream from its headwaters.
Three states that rely on the lower Colorado -- California,
New Mexico, and Arizona -- have especially felt the sting of
this brand of pollution. Mexico has also been affected.
Salinity has cost California and Arizona alone an estimated
$50 million a year in lower crop yields and for treatment of
public drinking supplies.
The seven states in the Colorado basin, the EPA, and the
Interior Department agreed on a salinity control policy in
December 1973:
o Salinity levels in the lower main stream would be
maintained at or below 1972 concentrations, which the
States and the Federal Government had earlier agreed
were accept able;
o Numerical criteria for specified points on the river
were to be set by October 18, 1975; and
o The States involved were to develop salinity control
plans .
The 1974 Colorado River Basin Salinity Control Act
provided funding and technical assistance to help curb salinity.
The Act also authorized programs to implement the policy and to
improve the quality of water reaching Mexico.
The problem is complex. Natural processes, irrigation,
and other water use practices all come into play. Solutions
are also complex, involving control of natural pollution
sources as well as costly changes in water use practices.
There has been progress -- much of it in water conserva-
tion. There have also been successful irrigation demonstration
-------
-71-
projects. Solutions to several. runoff problems have been
found. Irrigation scheduling has cut water use and raised
crop yields. In some places trickling filter irrigation has
replaced sprinklers. These and other techniques are now all
at work in the basin.
So far, the 1972 salinity levels have been maintained in
the lower Colorado. Programs to improve the quality of water
going xnto Mexico are on schedule. And the public has accepted
as the first priority the need for new irrigation practices
conserve water and minimize pollution. That growing public
acceptance is perhaps the most important achievement of the
Colorado salinity control effort to date.
_A Metropolitan Lake
to
in 'Tavatnr
-------
-72-
DRINKING WATER
Congress passed the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974 (P.L,
93-523) to assure that public water supply systems meet
minimum national standards for the protection of public
health. The act authorized the EPA to establish a joint
Federal-State system to implement the standards and to safe-
guard underground sources of drinking water. The act also
provided for Federal grants to aid States in surveillance and
enfo rcement.
It is too early to see the impact of the new law, since
the national interim primary drinking water regulations
recently issued by the Agency do not become effective until
June 24, 1977. But some cities and towns have already faced
drinking water problems and acted to correct them.
One group of pollutants commonly linked with drinking
water is phenols. They are organics that come from certain
types of industrial activity and give drinking water an
unpleasant odor and taste. Since they are not widespread in
the environment, they are measured only in those areas of the
country where they are a problem. (Figure 13). Where they
do show up they are troublesome.
Cambridge and the Lead Problem
There are other serious drinking water problems as well.
Lead is one of them.
The EPA's standard for lead in drinking water is 50
micrograras per liter. Too much lead may severely damage the
human nervous system: lead poisoning in its advanced stages
has caused irreversible brain damage, especially in children.
A 1974 sampling of 10 homes in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
found lead levels in the drinking water ranging from 51 to
an alarming 276 micrograms per liter. The Agency discovered
the source of the lead through extensive sampling of 383
households in Cambridge and neighboring Somerville and
Boston -- it was leaching into the drinking water from
corroded plumbing. Lead exceeded standards in 25 percent of
the homes tested in Boston, 30 percent in Somerville, and 14
percent in Cambridge.
Boston and Somerville draw their water from the Boston
Metropolitan District Commission (MDC). Following the EPA
study, the MDC began adding a zinc-phosphate compound to
reduce the lead pipe corrosion.
-------
Figure 13
Environmental Protection Agency
STORET SYSTEM
Phenols in Water, 1973-1975, 85th Percentiles
Concentration
(ug/1)
no data
less than 1
1-2
2-4
greater than 4
Cells included are those for which data has been supplied
to EPA. Cells are approximately 25 by 35 miles.
Source: Monitoring and Data Support Division, OWPS, EPA
-------
-73-
Cambridge, which has its own reservoir, added sodium
hydroxide to the water to reduce its pipe corrosion. The
concentration of lead in drinking water fell substantially.
A sampling in November 1975, found no detectable lead in
eight of the 10 homes studied earlier, and only 20 raicrograms
per liter -- less than half the standard -- in the other two.
Huron and the Chloroform Problem
The EPA's 1975 National Organic Reconnaissance Survey
found that the drinking water in Huron, in South Dakota,
contained the highest concentration of bromodichlororaethane, a
suspected carcinogen, and the second highest concentration of
chloroform of all the 80 cities sampled. Both compounds have
caused tumors in rats and mice and may pose a cancer risk to
humans.
Public concern in the State led to an EPA grant to the
South Dakota School of Mines to study the problem. The study
indicated that these organic compounds were being formed at
the point of chlorination in the water supply's pretreatment
plant, and that the amount formed was highly pH dependent.
When the point of pre-chlorination was moved and the pH
was adjusted, the amount of chloroform in the treated water
dropped by 75 percent.
Two Villages in Alaska
Seventy percent of Alaska's natives live in small
villages where safe .drinking water is often a luxury.
In summer, the drinking water is simply rainwater, or
water drawn from often stagnant or contaminated streams and
ponds. In winter, unproductive wells send villagers to the
ice fields literally to cut out their drinking water and melt
it in contaminated fuel drums. Either way, in either season,
the drinking water is a health hazard.
Harsh weather conditions, annual flooding, the rugged
terrain, and poor soil conditions render simple waste disposal
methods nearly impossible in the Arctic North. A strong smell
of decomposing wastes along the shore is common in the summer-
t irae .
In 1976, the average life expectancy of a rural Alaskan
was half that of other Americans. Thus, the need to improve
rural Alaska's environmental health conditions, including
the quality of its drinking water, is urgent.
Since the cost of doing anything in Alaska is higher
than in most other places, the Federal Government began
sponsoring the Alaska village demonstration projects called
for in Public Law 92-500. Two projects, in the villages of
Emmonak and Wainwright, are especially notable.
-------
-74-
Local natives, with the help of the U.S. Public Health
Service and the State of Alaska, put a specially-designed
multipurpose facility on line in Emmonak in early 1975. It
effectively provided safe drinking water, sanitary bathing
conditions, and adequate waste treatment, as well as laundro-
mat services and health education and training programs. The
inhabitants of the village were scheduled to assume ownership
of the facility in late 1976. A similar facility in Wainwright,
destroyed by fire, is being rebuilt and will be ready in late
1 9 7 7
Drinking water in Emmonak, which is 130 miles south of
Nome, now meets Public Health Service standards. School
attendance is also up -- an indication of decline in childrens'
disease. The Emmonak example has worked so well that the idea
is now spreading to other Alaskan villages. The Canadian
Government has also become interested.
Whether the program succeeds over the long run depends
on how successful Alaskan villages, still hard pressed
economically, are in winning some degree of financial indepen-
dence. That problem is still far from solved.
-------
-75-
AIR POLLUTION SEEN AND UNSEEN
Air pollution evokes the image of something that can
be clearly seen -- a dingy haze hanging over a city, bringing
with it foul odors and smarting eyes. That, in the public
mind, is air pollution at its worst. Yet what can't be seen
is often more dangerous than what can be seen.
One pollutant -- carbon monoxide (CO) -- can neither
be seen nor smelled. Yet in high concentrations it is far
more lethal than other pollutants that are visible and foul-
smelling, but otherwise harmless.
The Mandate
The mandate for attacking the nation's air pollution,
visible and invisible, is embodied in the Clean Air Act of
1970. That precedent-setting legislation empowered the EPA to
establish ambient air quality standards to protect the public
health and welfare -- then see that they a re ' enforced.
The Agency works in close consort with the States, which
draft and enforce implementation plans subject to EPA review
If necessary, the Agency itself prepares and enforces its own
plan. The EPA also sets emission standards for new pollution
sources and for all sources of especially hazardous pollutants.
And it sets and enforces limits for emissions of carbon monoxide,
hydrocarbons, and oxides of nitrogen from the Nation's auto-
mobiles, trucks, and motorcycles.
To carry out the law's strict requirements, the EPA
has established two kinds of standards for the most comeion
air pollutants. One set -- the primary standards -- has
been drawn to protect human health. The other -- the
secondary standards -- is more restrictive and has been
established to clean the air of visible pollutants and to
prevent corrosion, crop damage, and other impacts stemming
from polluted air.
The National Accomplishment
What battles have been won against air pollution have
been fought largely by the States and cities. And there have
been major victories. In city after city there is a strong
downward trend in the volume of emissions escaping into the
air, the ambient concentrations are diminished, and the air
has become clearer.
-------
201
c
Air pollution contr
underway only for the last
ime the effort has concentFal
Cxn^^r "--- .
l^^\^f^^)o^
« a ^ A f\ « *.» ! J A n « «* 1 A 1* * «
'»**,
most widespread, best understood, and most
'nationwide scale has
and a half years. In
on curbing emissions
that
of the
troublesome pollutants,
0
Particulates . perhaps the most widespread of all, have
been. sharply curtailed. (Figure 14). The technology for
curbing particulate emissions was already available before the
.national ef fort began. The States and cities had been at work
o,n the 'ptoblem f or ,2JL_y_ej*rs But the Federal Clean Air Act
them new weapons to" use in their fight.
There is still much work to do. Figure 14, a map showing
the current status for particulates nationwide, shows which of
the 247 Air Quality Control Regions (AQCR's) are not yet
meeting the
"-", what
standards .
the general
The map also shows, with
trends are in each state,
or
map paints a general picture of particulate air
quality, but it has limitations. Some AQCR's, especially in
the West, are very large. For example, most of Nevada is one
AQCR. So is Nebraska. Wyoming has one AQCR that embraces
much of that State.
or
Such large areas can be classified as non-attaining
because of a single monitor in one heavily polluted area,
"hot spot," even though the air quality in the rest of the
region is excellent. Conversely, areas not shaded in do not
necessarily have excellent air quality everywhere. It simply
means that no monitor now in operation in the area is regis-
tering a standards violation.
Figure 14 shows that particulate levels throughout the
U.S. are either already good or improving.
o Particulate problems east of .the Mississippi are
generally associated with industry. The levels are
improving in all eastern States except Florida and New
Hampshire, where levels are low, but gradually rising,
and Maine and Mississippi, where there is no significant
change.
o Particulate air quality in the northern Great Plains
appears to be deteriorating somewhat. But the air
quality there is still very good, except in scattered
hot spot s.
-------
Figure 14
TOTAL SUSPENDED ^ARTICULATE
AIR QUALITY STATUS
KEY:
REGIONS NOT MEETING PRIMARY ANNUAL AMBIENT AIR QUALITY STANDARDS
(J) STATE AMBIENT LEVELS AT MORE MONITORS IN STATE IMPROVING THAN DETERIORATING 1970-1975
0 STATE AMBIENT LEVELS AT MORE MONITORS IN STATE DETERIORATING THAN IMPROVING 1970-1975
SOURCE: OAQPS, EPA DATA
NOTE: Some of the shaded regions, especially in the Southwest, have
only one site violating standards; the air elsewhere is "pristine."
The designations indicated are not current for NM,TX,AR and LA.
-------
-77-
o In the West and Southwest the problems are generally
associated with hot spots or fugitive dust. Levels
are improving except in Idaho, Nevada, and California.
o In most metropolitan areas, high particulate levels
are due primarily to readily controlled major point
sources. In these areas, where the particulate
problem was generally the worst five years ago, the
nationwide trend is decidely downward. (Figure
15).
Sulfur dioxide (S02) levels are another major air
quality concern. There is still some dispute over the best
way to reduce S02 emissions. Some dischargers have turned to
low sulfur fuels, to lower their S02 levels. Where scrubbers
have been required, however, widespread industry opposition
has brought delay. Irregular trends in S02 levels across the
Country are the result. (Figure 16).
Nitrogen dioxide (N02) levels are currently a serious
problem in only two or three metropolitan areas, and motor
vehicles contribute the bulk of that pollutant. There are
technical tradeoffs between controlling N02 and controlling CO
and hydrocarbons from motor vehicles. Since the last two were
given priority, N02 emission were at first allowed to rise
somewhat. That helps explain why N02 levels, as shown in
Figure 17, rose somewhat in certain metropolitan areas between.
1970 and 1974. There is, however, a general downward trend,
which will quicken as NOx emissions standards for new motor
vehicles are tightened.
Photochemical oxidants are the most prominent pollutants
that result from motor vehicle emissions. They are formed in
the atmosphere from the reaction of hydrocarbons and oxides of
nitrogen, both of which come primarily from auto exhausts.
When oxidant levels are examined in the shorter term, as in
Figure 18, no clear nationwide trends are apparent. In the
longer term there have been decided downward trends. (See
Figure 22).
When the substantially stricter auto emissions standards
of 1975 and 1976 begin to take hold in the next two or three
years, oxidant levels are expected to decline in major
cities throughout the country. Widespread violations of
oxidant standards in rural areas, however, may continue to be
a pr ob lent.
Lead is another air pollutant that has passed under
tighter control over the last three years. Lead emissions
-------
Figure 15
PART1CULATE TRENDS FOR SELECTED CITIES
1971-1975
LOS ANGELES (AQCR)
1971-1975
DENVER
28.5
IB
1971-1975
NEW YORK (AQCR)
1971-1975
WASHINGTON. Ox.
I 1971-1975
1971-1975 CHARLOTTE, N.C.
ALBUQUERQUE
KEY:PERCENT OF DAYS WORSE THAN SECONDARY PARTICULATE
STANDARDS FOR SELECTED YEARS
EPA Region X data
Source: State data provided by Monitoring and Data
Analysis Division, OAQPS, EPA
-------
Figure 16
SULFUR DIOXIDE TRENDS FOR SELECTED CITIES
80
STD
STD
STD
47
27
21
1971 1974
ST LOUIS
1971 1975
HOUSTON
1971 1975
MEMPHIS
14
17
22
1971 1975
ATLANTA
1971 1975
CINCINNATI
KEY: ANNUAL MEAN SO2-BUBBLER DATA
NOTE: The corresponding air quality
standard (80) is indicated by the
horizontal line above each graph.
Source: State data provided by Monitoring and Data
Analysis Division, OAQPS, EPA
-------
Figure 17
NITROGEN DIOXIDE TRENDS FOR
SELECTED CITIES
172
138
144:
ir
J
<;.
i
471
108 n
The corresponding primary
standard is 100.
_ 1970-1972-1974
PORTLAND. OREGON
1970-1972-1974
CHICAGO, ILL.
1971-1973-1976
BURBANK. CALIF
1971-1973-1975
LOS ANGELES. DOWNTOWN
1971-1973-1976
AZUSA. CALIF
1970-1972-1974
DENVER, COLO.
93
.108,
99
1970-1972-1974
NEWARK. N.J.
1970-1972-1974
BAYONNE. N.J.
1970-1972-1974
CAMDEN. N.J..
KEY: ANNUAL MEAN NO2~MtCROGRAMS PER M3
Source:
State data provided by Monitoring and Data
Analysis Division, OAQPS, EP?.
-------
Figure 18
OXIDANT TRENDS FOR SELECTED CITIES
09
15
22
07
00
1973-1974-1975
MEMPHIS
18
n
1973-1974-1975
DETROIT
39
27
IB
1973-1974-1975
LOS ANGELES
DOWNTOWN
1973-1974 1975
TUSCON
1973-1974-1975
DENVER
1973-1974-1975
HOUSTON
1973-1974-1975
BUFFALO
45
27
34
197319741975
NEW YORK CITY
1973 1974-1975
CHARLOTTE
60
44
AH
5.1
!973 '974 1975
CAMDEN
1973 1974 197!)
BAYONNf '
KEY: PERCENT OF DAYS AT OR ABOVE THE OXIDANT OZONE STANDARD
i.08 ppm 1-hr) THIRD QUARTER
Source: State data ~ provided by Monitoring and Data
Analysis Division, OAQPS, EPA
-------
Figure 19
2.8
£ 2.4
o.
<
oc 20
O
O
CC
O
I 16
3
UJ
u! 1.2
o
UJ
I-
0.8
UJ
m
i 0.4
TRENDS IN AMBIENT LEAD LEVELS
PREMIUM GAS
REGULAR GAS
AMBIENT LEAD
I
I
_L
I
I
I
1
I
I
1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974
KEY-AMBIENT LEAD LEVELS AT 92 URBAN SITES
3.0
2.0
1.5
1.0
0.5
O
CO
oc
UJ
O
CO
u.
O
I-
UJ
Z
O
u
UJ
Source: Office of Research and Development, EPA
-------
-78-
also escape Into the air primarily from automobile tail
pipes; it is used as an anti-knock additive in most high
octane gasolines. With the required use of lowlead and
unleaded fuels, the lead levels in the air have started to
recede (Figure 19). Ambient levels of lead are now as low as
they were in 1965, and are continuing to decline, despite the
larger number of cars on the road.
SO2 and Particulates -- Twin Problems
Two of the major pollutants that hang in the air over
the Nation's cities are sulfur dioxide, which is colorless,
and suspended particulates, which are highly visible. Both
are unpleasant to breathe and harmful in high concentrations.
Suspended particulate matter is airborne dust and grime
in all its forms. It lies on the air as a dark haze that
dirties all exposed surfaces. Houses in cities where parti-
culates are a problem must be painted more often than elsewhere.
Moreover, particulates can become dangerous to health when
they enter the lungs.
S02, when it mixes with water vapor and oxygen, is
converted to sulfurous and sulfuric acids, both of which are
corrosive and capable of pitting metallic surfaces. S02 and
its related compounds are especially damaging to human tissue.
The lungs are particularly vulnerable, even more so when the
pollutant and its compounds have become .attached to particulates
The hazards of S02 and particulates are especially
pronounced because they tend to be formed at the same time
with the combustion of most coal and some fuel oils. However,
efforts to control levels of S02 and particulates have produced
some of the finest achievements in pollution control of the
last five years.
The Big Three
Among all classes of stationary sources, three stand out
as pre-eminent contributors of particulate and sulfur dioxide
emi s sions :
o Coal-fired power plants.
o Coal-burning industrial and commercial boilers
i.e., heating plants for specific factories or
bull ding s.
o Integrated iron and steel mills and coke plants, which
transform coal into industrial coke for use in steel
mills.
-------
-79-
In 1970, these three classes of sources emitted 35
percent of all particulate emissions nationwide and 62
percent of all S02. emissions .
Figure 20 shows how potential and actual emissions from
these sources changed from 1970 to 1974. It also shows how
far they still must go to comply fully with the emission
limits of the State implementation plans.
In each graph, the total height of the bar reflects.
what total emissions would be if the industry had no pollution
controls. The shaded portion of the bar indicates actual
emissions. The unshaded portion shows the amount of-emissions
prevented by applied pollution control- technology. The "1975
levels" show where the industry should have been.1 not where it
actually was.
The Chart reveals that particulate emissions from
power plants and steel mills were already fairly well co'n-
trolled in 1970. Some further reductions -have been achieved
by power plants, but very little by steel mills. Considerably
more will be required if air quality goals are to be met.
Without a strong pollution control program, the new power
plants and steel mills built between 1970 and 1974 would have
raised the spectre of still higher emissions. But current
pollution control . requirements have caused emissions actually
to decrease, despite a larger, number of sources.
Particulate emissions from industrial boilers, which
were high in 1970, were cut substantially by 1974. Further
reductions are still required.
There was little, control of S02 emissions in 1970 for
any of the three classes of sources. But by 1974 the emis-
sions had been curbed substantially. Reductions in power
plant and industrial boiler emissions brought these sources
within reach of the full compliance goals. Further reductions
will now require scrubbers and will be harder'to accomplish.
Reductions in S02 emissions from steel mills by 1974,
although significant, still left these sources far from their
full compliance levels. .
Places Where the Air Is Clearer
Most meteorologists and experts in air pollution control
maintain that overall trends in air pollution levels can best
be measured over a span of five years or longer. Much of the
-------
Figure 20
EMISSIONS REDUCTIONS ACHIEVED
BY SELECTED INDUSTRIES
197O-1974
PARTICULATES AND SULFUR DIOXIDE
COAL FIRED POWER PLANTS
w
E *0
10* TONS/VE
S
$
O
a "
2
Vf
10
PA
-
MS
\S^
RTICULATES
44.S
2.9
v\XX'
4V.S
i
1970 1974
K7BFULL
COMPLIANCE
LEVEL
SULFuA OXIDES
1970 1974 1979
POTENTIAL
COAL FIRED INDUSTRIAL/COMMERCIAL BOILERS
PARTICULATES
§ 4.0
>.o
a
i
1973 FULL
COMPLIANCE
LEVEL
SULFUR OXIDES
1J74 H75
POTPMTIAL
1970 1974 1173
POTENTIAL
1973 FULL
COMPLIANCE
LEVEL
1975 fULL
COMPLIANCE
LEVEL
INTEGRATED IRON AND STEEL MILLS AND COKE PLANTS
o
o
I"
a
i
PAflTICULATES
I
» 100
§
5
i
M
.1973 FU
.-^"ICOMPII
3 I LEVEL
SULFUtt OKIOES
1
NOTE: Bars
labelled "1975"
show target levels
for that year,
not the level
actually attained.
Data on actual
emissions for
1975 were not yet
available when
this report was
being prepared.
1973 FULL
COMPLIANCE
LEVEL
1970 1971 I»>S
POTENTIAL
POTENTIAL
D CONTROLLED EMISSIONS H ACTUAL EMISSIONS
SOURCE: DSSE. EPA DATA
-------
-80-
data we cite in this section does not meet that criterion.
But in the data that is available, there are encouraging
signs that the clean-up efforts are working.
The New England States are among those that have won a
striking victory over air pollution. The primary standard for
S02 is no longer violated in Rhode Island, Massachusetts,
Vermont, New Hampshire or Maine.
Plants in those States are permitted to burn only low-
sulfur fuels. However, if the regulations are relaxed to
allow burning of higher sulfur fuels (and the EPA. believes that
they should be in some cases), S02 levels may increase
unless stack gas cleaning devices or fuel-cleaning technologies
are used.
Particulate emissions have also been curbed substantially
in these States. Ten incinerators in Massachuse11 s that
once emitted 17,451 tons of particulate matter a year now emit
only 106 tons a reduction of over 99 percent. That has
more than halved total particulate emissions in the areas
of the State where the incinerators are located. Six paper
mills in New Hampshire and Maine once emitted 40,153 tons of
particulate per year. Those levels have also been cut by 99
percent a 70 percent reduction in particulate emissions in
the areas where the mills are located.
In the greater Portland, Oregon area, particulate standards
were violated in 1970 by emissions from a variety of sources.
Wood processing plants alone accounted for 40 percent of the
particulates in the air. Industrial fuel combustion, grain
loading facilities along the Columbia and Willamette Rivers,
and a large aluminum processing plant also contributed sub-
stantially. Control of those sources helped Portland meet the
primary standard for particulates in 1973, and the secondary
s tandard in 1975.
An air quality maintenance plan is now being drafted that
will assure that particulates never return to their former,
unacceptably high levels in the city.
In Springfield. Missouri, the local pollution control agency
in 1970 opened a vigorous attack on the sources of particulate
emissions, most of which were industrial. Ambient standards
violations were traced to wood preserving activities, gray
iron casting, chemical lime manufacturing, and electric arc
furnaces and boilers using wood chips and saw dust for fuel.
All sources are now in compliance. As in Portland,
no primary standard violations have occured since 1973 and no
secondary standards violations since 1975.
-------
-81-
In some areas -- designated by the EPA and the States as
Air Quality Control Regions -- primary standards are not, as
yet, fully met. But air quality is nonetheless substantially
better.
One such region is the New York metropolitan area.
Figure 21 shows how sections of the city exposed to primary
standards violations have been reduced markedly from 1970 to
1974. The current situation is still not totally satisfactory,
since primary standards are still being violated. But further
control actions are underway by State and local agencies, with
the support of the EPA, and the already small part of the city
still subject to standards violations will continue to shrink.
The situation is similar in Detroit, Michigan, and in
surrounding Wayne County: as late as 1971, air pollution was
a serious problem. At some locations the air was irritating
to breathe. Since 1971, particulate emissions have been
reduced from 139,000 tons per year to 82,000. S02 emissions
have dropped from 490,000 tons per year to 250,000. Eighty-
five percent of the major sources are in full compliance with
emissions limitations. Smoke from burning rubbish and from
apartment and home furnaces have also been curbed substantially,
and the air in Wayne County is consequently cleaner.
The enforcement effort, however, continues. In 1975,
some 42 Detroit area firms made additional changes in their
operations, mostly adding new pollution control equipraent , and
that has reduced emission levels still further.
Gary, Indiana, was notorious for its heavy industrial
pollution. For years its skies were clouded and red with
smoke and soot particulates -- largely from the mills and
plants of the United States Steel Corporation.
Over the last few years that has started to change.
In 1965, particulate levels in Gary were almost 2 1/2 times
the primary standard. By 1970, they had been reduced to 1 1/2
times the standard. In mid-1976, although the primary standard
was still routinely being violated, the extent of the area
exposed to unacceptably high pollution levels has shrunk.
Industry, however, still has far to go to keep pollution at
safe levels in the city.
In Chicago, in 1970, two of every five monitoring
stations showed violations of the annual standard for S02.
In 1975, there were no violations at all. In the same
period, particulate levels fell significantly. In 1970 every
monitor showed a violation of the particulate standard; in
1975, only half the stations recorded violations. Chicago
once was considered a "dirty-shirt town" because of the
soot-laden air. It is still far from a clean-air city, but
with the success of past and present pollution control
efforts, Chicago is losing the stigma of its old reputation.
-------
Figure 21
Population Exposure to Particulates
New York Metropolitan Area
1971-1974
9.9 MILLION PEOPLE EXPOSED
1971
2.9 MILLION PEOPLE EXPOSED
1974
AREAS WORSE THAN ANNUAL STANDARD (75jjg/m3)
SOURCE: OAQPS. EPA DATA
-------
-82-
In C incinnat1 . Ohio , in 1970, 85 percent of the monitor-
ing stations reported violations of the annual standard for
particulates. In 1975, fewer than 15 percent did.
Birmingham. Alabama, in 1972, registered annual average
particulate levels 2 1/3 times the primary health standards.
By 1975 the highest level had been reduced by 23 percentto
1.8 times the primary standard. Further reductions are
expected in the next two years. As of inid-1976, annual
particulate emissions had been lowered 83 percent, from 1972
levels from 155,000 tons per year to 26,350 tons. A drop
of 10,000 tons more a year is planned by 1977. The days are
now gone when Birmingham wa's perpetually enveloped in a smokey
haze .
In Las Vegas. Nevada, particulate pollution came from an
entirely different source than in the big cities of the South
and the North. Emissions from two power plants were fully
matched by the combined particulate emissions of five major
mining operations, which produce mineral lime, gypsum, and
tit anium.
In the last few years, one of the power plants and the
five mining firms have reduced their particulate emissions by
more than 95 percent, from 5,450 pounds per hour to between
160 and 230 pounds.
In 'Chattanooga, Tennessee, and its surrounding valley,
particulates have also been a severe problem. Tight control
of several classes of sources, however, has lowered emissions
from 14,848 tons a year in 1970 to 4,800 tons in 1976. And
air quality levels have improved. In 1975, only two of twelve
monitors operated by Hamilton County recorded annual ambient
air quality levels above the standard.
In Philadelphia , municipal refuse incinerators once
contributed nearly a 'tenth of all particulate emissions. Two
of the six incinerators have been equipped with electrostatic
precipitators and the rest have been converted to transfer
stations from which refuse is hauled to landfills. Ninety-nine
percent of the emissions from the incinerators has been
eliminated .
In Pennsylvania and the other Mid-Atlantic States,
power plants remain a prime contributor to particulate and S02
levels. In the period 1970 to 1975, the States of Virginia,
West Virginia , Maryland, Delaware, and Pennsylvania have
lowered power plant particulate emissions by 462,559 tons per
year -- a 58.6 percent reduction from those sources over the
last five years. The reduction has contributed significantly
to lowered levels of ambient particulate. Average levels in
these States dropped from 4 percent above the primary standard
in 1970 to 16 percent below the standard in 1974.
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Pollutants from the Exhaust Pipe
Motor vehicles emit several major classes of pollutants,
including hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, and oxides of nitro-
gen. The hydrocarbons and oxides of nitrogen join in the air
to form photochemical oxidants -- whic(h form the infamous smog
of Southern California. Motor vehicles are also the primary
source of carbon monoxide emissions.
Photochemical smog first became a severe problem in Los
Angeles County because of the early dependence on the auto-
mobile and the especially adverse meteorological conditions in
the basin. Now photochemical oxidants have become perhaps
the most widespread and troublesome of all air pollutants
nat ionwide.
California, appropriately, was the first State to begin
controlling emissions from motor vehicles in earnest. The
State's emission standards for new motor vehicles date to
1966, two years before the Federal program began. The first
benefits of control actions were felt there as-well (Figure
22). And the State continues to set emission standards more
stringent than elsewhere in the U.S.
While the changes are significant, they are no cause for
complacency. Oxidant levels several times the standard still
occur regularly in suburban areas to the east of Los Angeles.
And virtually every, person in the metropolitan area is still
exposed to air in violation of standards. Although short
term patterns, such as shown in Figure 18 for the Los Angeles
downtown site, may conflict with the general downward trend,
violations are not as frequent or as severe as they were five
years ago.
Emission controls on vehicles have also lowered carbon
monoxide levels in California. In the last five years, the
magnitude of the highest one hour carbon-monoxide concentra-
tion was decreased by 21 percent in metropolitan Los Angeles,
by 13 percent in the San Francisco Bay Area, and by 55 percent
in San Diego County.
Although emission controls on cars help, it is now
clear that alone they will not be enough to achieve oxidant
air quality standards in the most severly polluted areas. If
air quality standards are to be met universally, something
will have to be done especially in urban areas to
diminish the heavy American reliance on the personal automobile
as the primary mode of transportation.
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Figure 22
Population Exposure to Oxidants
Los Angeles Metropolitan Area
1965-1974
1965*1966
LOS ANGELES
MAP AREA
1969-1970
Shading indicates fraction of
days each year on which stan-
dards violations occurred:
more than 50%
20-50%
fewer than 20%
1973-1974
SOURCE: OAQPS, EPA DATA
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The Street Campaign Against Auto Pollutants
Changing so basic a pattern of transportation takes
time. Meanwhile, vehicle related pollution must be dealt
with in the interest of public health. The EPA, in concert
with State and local governments, has looked for'answers in
four directions: vapor recovery at the gas pump, inspection
and maintenance programs for vehicles on the road, reduced
vehicle use, and, to a lesser extent, more efficient traffic
pa t terns.
Vapor Recovery
The wavy fumes floating from a gas tank when a car is
being filled are hydrocarbons -- gasoline vapors -- escaping
into the air. Vapor recovery aims to recapture those hydro-
carbons at various fuel transfer points where they are likely
to be emitted -- at ship and barge onloading and offloading
docks, at truck terminals, at storage tanks, and at service
station gas pumps. Controlling such emissions is a difficult
and expensive process.
»
E.h-e;r'ea-r-et-w-o-^s t e p s to vaporrec every: control of
bulk__t_ran8_fer losses), and control at the gas pump. The EPA
promulgated Stage I and Stage II regulations, which specify
the nature of those controls, in late 1973. The District of
Columbia made control of bulk transfer losses mandatory in
1974, and nine states set a uniform deadline of March 1, 1976.
Six of those States, and the District, are also scheduled to
introduce gas pump controls by May 1, 1977.
Controls on escaping vapors can, in some cases, deliver
emission reductions great enough to bring an urban area's
air into compliance with ambient standards.- Vapor recovery
can be implemented by local ordinances, as they are in San
Diego, San Francisco, and the District. The ordinance then
becomes part of the State Implementation Plan.
Colorado's approach was to form a vapor recovery task
force. On it sit representatives of the EPA regional office,
the State Air Pollution Control and Oil Inspection Divisions,
local fire departments, and the gasoline marketing industry.
The task force smoothed the way for installation of recovery
systems now operating at all seven bulk gasoline terminals and
at some 1100 gas stations in Denver. These efforts are
expected to recapture 3000 !tons of vapor in 1976 almost a
million gallons of gasoline.
The deadline for gas station controls in the city is
May 1, 1977. The task force is now ironing out the cost
and safety wrinkles of a system that will eliminate the
estimated 2,500 tons of vapor lost yearly at the pump.
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California is committed to controlling service station
vapors in all of its major metropolitan areas. The San Francisco
Bay Area, not without some difficulty, began a two step
program in 1973. It completed the first stage, bulk transfer
control, in 1974. The second stage, pump recovery, began on
January 1, 1976, after several delays. Vapor recovery systems
at the Bay Area's 2,500 service stations will capture some
3.5 million gallons of gasoline a year.
i
A recent EPA-commissioned study suggests that the
onus of installing recovery systems might be burdensome
for small bulk plants. The $5000 cost per station for San
Francisco gas pump systems which will cost the consumer
about 1.2 cents a gallon more for gas was objected to by
many operators. Some have sought court orders suspending the
regulation indefinitely.
While recovery costs money, it also clearly saves gasoline.
An EPA study in Texas estimates that emission reductions
at gasoline storage tank loading sites in 1976 was 2,500 tons
in the Houston-Galveston area and 919 tons in San Antonio.
That will mean savings of 1.7 million gallons of gasoline a
year. That same control, plus pump control, in other areas of
Texas could save another 13,000 tons a year -- an estimated
8.2 million gallons.
Controlling Auto Emissions
The strict emissions standards that Congress originally
required new-car manufacturers to meet by 1975 were essen-
tially technology-forcing. The standards have been adjusted
on a continuing basis since 1968. Even with the cleaner new
cars, meeting the goals of the Clean Air Act in heavily
polluted areas will require controlling emissions of vehicles
already on the road. If the original new-car standards for
1975 had been met, hydrocarbons would have been cut only in
half by 1977 because of the continuing use of older cars.
Moreover, while automobile control systems are capable of the
required reductions, experience shows that even controlled
vehicles are not meeting standards throughout their useful
lives. In part this is because they are not properly maintained.
Cars are required to meet standards for 50,0.00 miles, but
as Figure 23 shows, emissions have been increasing as the car
grows older. Even after one year of operation, the majority
of cars do not meet their emissions standards.
Inspection and maintenance (I/M) programs are one way to
bridge this performance gap. The States and the EPA continue
to press Detroit to produce better con,trol systems for the
future. But I/M is still considered a critical part of the
overall strategy. .
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Figure 23
AVERAGE EMISSION LEVELS FOR AUTOMOBILES
AFTER 1 YEAR OF USE
Ill
1 a
g
^ *
I 4
e ?
(9
0
-
-
-
"
_
8.74
HC
3.07 (I 3.02
3.59
3 58
1 1.32
1 ~ - STANDARD
PRECONTROL 1971
1972
1973
1974
1975
100
80
60
40
20
0
86.5
I
Ul
i
w
39.6
36.9
22.92
CO
STANDARD
PRECONTROL 1971
1972
1973
1974
1975
10
a.
t 8
5.06
(0
<
ec
3.54
4.55
3.47
Z46
STANDARD
PRECONTROL 1971
1972
1973
1974
1975
NOTE: (1) Although vehicles tested were considered to be
"one year old," the average mileage of the vehicles
tested varied from 8,800 to 15,600.
(2) The data for 1974 and 1975 are preliminary.
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Such programs are in operation now in various States and
cities. Chicago » Cincinnati, New Jersey. Arizona, Nevada, and
Oregon are all implementing one of a variety of systems.
Riverside. California, has a pilot program that is expected
eventually to encompass the Los Angeles area. The Riverside
program is unique in providing extensive diagnostic data about
the engine down to the condition of a particular spark
plug. This not only could help meet air quality requirements,
it could help prevent major individual breakdowns and improve
gas mileage.
Curbing Vehicle Use
The third thrust in the offensive against vehicle-related
pollution would reduce the number of vehicle miles traveled..
At least 63 urban areas will require more than just cleaner
cars to attain standards by 1985. Ways will have to be found
to assure that even the cleaner cars are driven less. A
spectrum of incentives and disincentives to reduce vehicle use
are possible.
Discouraging driving with more attractive alternatives is
one approach. New Jersey has been a leader in that effort.
Regulations issued in 1974 called on large employers in
certain parts of the State to design programs to inspire
employees to use mass transit and carpooling instead of
individual cars. So far, 149 companies have filed such plans,
which include a mix of car-pooling, company transportation,
and mass transit promotion strategies. Six New Jersey com-
panies and one New Jersey State official have been awarded
certificates of appreciation by the EPA's regional office for
their outstanding efforts in the program.
The six companies are Bell Telephone Laboratories,
Hoffman-LaRoche , Inc.; Sandoz, Inc.; Insurance Company of
America's Corporate Information Services Division; Prudential
Insurance Company of America; and the Singer-Kearfott Division
of Aerospace and Marine Systems.
Spreadingout the Traffic
Emissions can also be reduced by more efficient vehicle
rout ing .
In Lincoln. Nebraska, air quality monitoring in 1974 showed
eight violations of the one-hour carbon monoxide standard (40
milligrams per cubic meter) and 328 violations of the eight
hour standard (25 milligrams per cubic meter). The monitoring
station is located near the central business district -- on
the city's principal traffic artery.
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The Lincoln-Lancaster County Health Department, was
notified of the violations by the regional EPA office. When
it learned they were traffic related, the department went to
the city council and the city traffic planners and devised a
plan to re-route traffic and synchronize signals to reduce
traffic congestion at stop lights.
Carbon monoxide data analyses are not complete for 1975.
But the data now available suggest success: they show a
descending curve of carbon monoxide emissions at the monitor-
ing station.
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SOLID WASTE -- STEMMING THE TIDE
"Solid waste" includes most of the discards of our
high consumption society: garbage, empty bottles and plastic
wrappings, animal carcasses, worn out tires, junked refrigera-
tors and cars, and old newspapers and magazines an endless
list of items no longer needed or wanted. The outpouring of
waste has quickened since World War II with the proliferation
of plastics and disposable packaging of all kinds.
The traditional method for disposing of solid waste was
to "dump" it -- either in an "organized" site on unused land,
or else at random on a vacant lots, in stream beds, or along
the roadsides. The case histories that follow will show what
has been done by the States with EPA support to change
this throw-away tradition.
The Campaign against Open Dumps
A site on St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands is an extreme
example of the environmental drawbacks of the traditional
open dump. It also shows how enlightened solid waste manage-
ment practices can make a difference.
Managers of the main dump'on St. Thomas burned the solid
waste regularly, creating significant air pollution and odor
problems. Bulldozers would level the dump and push the
remaining refuse into the adjoining waters of the Atlantic
Ocean, thereby extinguishing any lingering flames and extending
the dump area seaward. When coastal winds and current
shifted, waste would be scattered along the southwestern
shore of the island.
When it rained, the rain water percolating into the
ground would carry contaminants from the exposed refuse down
with it. The resulting leachate threatened to undermine the
quality of the local drinking water.
Moreover, the dump site, in operation for 15 years,
covered 15 acres next to the Virgin Islands' principal airport.
The smoke restricted pilot visibility, making an already
tricky airport a much more hazardous place to land.
In 1973, the EPA threatened to use the 1899 Refuse Act to
close the dump. So Virgin Island officials re-routed the flow
of wastes to a landfill on the southeastern side of St.
Thomas. While the new operation does not conform completely
to recommended practices, it is still a great improvement over
the old open dump.
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The EPA has continued to press for even better solid
waste disposal practices in the Virgin Islands. The Agency
has funded programs to help develop a solid waste management
plan, to institute training programs for operators of solid
waste facilities, and to establish and staff a solid waste
planning office.
While threatened EPA enforcement action played a decisive
role in the Virgin Islands, improvements in waste management
elsewhere have rarely stemmed from direct Federal intervention.
In most places, State, not Federal, officials have forced the
decisive improvements of the last five years. The EPA's role
has been limited -- by Federal law -- to granting small
amounts of "seed money" and significant amounts of technical
and planning assistance. However, with EPA encouragement and
support, State programs since 1970 have become stronger and
substantially more effective.
Wisconsin is an example of how an action-oriented State
agency armed with the necessary authority can make things
happen. The State, like many others, has concentrated on
promoting properly engineered sanitary landfills.
As the name implies, landfills are well-controlled
land disposal sites for solid wastes. In a sanitary landfill,
wastes are first spread and compacted in layers a few feet
thick. They are then covered daily with a layer of earth
and again compacted. In such sites, potential odors, fires,
and wind blown wastes are controlled. The site is also
prevented from becoming a breeding ground for flies, rats, and
other potential disease carriers.
Once landfill operations are terminated, the site is
suitable for recreational uses. Many of them have been made
into golf courses or parks.
Local authorities in Wisconsin, working with the State's
Department of Natural Resources, accomplished these things:
o Closed a dump in the City of Wash bur n that had
allowed surface runoff to empty into an adjacent
ravine. The site was re-engineered, sloped, covered
with topsoil, and seeded to stop the runoff problem.
A new site was opened in a more suitable location and
is being run now as a sanitary landfill.
o Re-engineered an abandoned dump in the City of Merrill
to stop further serious leaching into the groundwater.
They also improved operations at the current site to
eliminate runoff problems.
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o Converted a large open, burning dump in Lincoln County
into a sanitary landfill and were then able to close
many small dumps*
o Selected a geologically suitable site for a new
landfill in LaCrosse County. The topography and soil
type at the site now prevent runoff or leachate from
polluting streams or groundwater.
o Developed a landfill design adequate to prevent
runoff and leachate in Juneau County. where no
naturally suitable sites were available. The design
includes a clay liner beneath the site and a leachate
collection system. Several landfills in the county
without such design features and with documented
leachate and runoff problems are being closed.
The cumulative impact of these efforts, and many more
like them, has been to cut to a minimum the polluting effect
of solid waste disposal in the State.
Other States have also done exceedingly well, particu-
larly in the Midwest. Among them:
o Iowa in 1970 had 800 open dumps. In July, 1976,
it had only 240. In 1970, there were only 10 sanitary
landfills, serving 10 percent of the State's popula-
tion. There are now 109 serving 93 percent of the
population.
o In Missouri . from 1970 to 1976, the population
served by approved landfills jumped from 10 percent
to 82 percent.
o In Kansas the increase was from 20 percent to 91
percent.
In all four of these midwestern States the changes have
come with tougher State-wide solid waste legislation and
better staffed State agencies. When the Federal Solid Waste
Disposal Act was adopted in 1965, a total of two persons
staffed these four State agencies; there are now 40. In the
intervening years the number of open dumps in the four States
has diminished from an estimated 2400 to 744, and vigorous
efforts to improve land disposal practices are continuing.
Sludge -- A New Worry
Household and commercial wastes -- trash and garbage --
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are only part of the solid waste problem. Another, of
mounting concern, is sludge, the residue generated by air and
wastewater treatment operations. The pollutants that were
prevented from entering the air or water become the sludge.
Since indiscriminate dumping of sludge into the water or air
is no longer allowed, ridding ourselves of it has become a
major land disposal problem.
The most troublesome sludge -- because it is so abundant
-- comes from municipal sewage treatment plants. It will
become an even more acute problem as more and more wastewater
treatment plants go on line under the new, stricter water
quality laws. Municipal sludge is a particularly vexing
problem because it frequently carries highly toxic metals and
organics, which, when disposed of on land, can be taken up by
crops or leach into groundwater and contaminate drinking
supplies .
The EPA has established a multi-disciplinary task force
to help States, localities, and industry find the best ways to
dispose of their hazardous wastes. In the meantime, localities
have been approaching sludge disposal in various ways and with
various degrees of success.
Lake County L 1^1 lino is . for instance, designed a special
landfill for sludge disposal. The 271 acre site consists of
an access road, a sludge storage building, and a leachate
collection system. Ten monitoring wells have also been
constructed, at a cost of $12,000, to help verify that
leachate does not pollute the local groundwater. If such
pollution is detected, the county will take steps to correct
it. The cost of the facility, including the land, trucks, and
machinery, carae to $860,000. By comparison, one rejected
alternative was a $5 million incinerator. When the site is
totally filled, as projected, in 25 years, it will be turned
into a park.
Another Way to Do It
Land disposal must for a while remain the principal
method for dealing with most solid waste. However, two other
solid waste management techniques are beginning to emerge:
o recycling, also known as resource recovery, which
reuses rather than discards the material in unneeded
items, and
o waste reduction, which entails redesign of consumer
products or packaging so that less waste is generated
in the first place.
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Resource recovery is especially promising and it benefits
in two ways: first, it fosters conservation, rather than
disposal, of potentially valuable resources; second, it
reduces the volume of waste to be disposed of in landfills,
and thereby cuts land disposal costs.
Certain grades of paper, some metals, and energy have all
been recovered successfully from municipal wastes.
Energy is recovered by burning the "organic" portion of
solid waste, such as paper that can't otherwise be recycled,
plastics, and food scraps. Energy recovery alone can substan-
tially reduce waste volume: as little as 5-15 percent of
the initial waste remains afterwards. Moreover the revenue
from energy recovery can more than pay for itself.
Energy from Wood Wastes
While widespread recovery of paper, metals, and energy
holds promise, it is still in the demonstration stage.
Alternatives less comprehensive, however, are already in
operation. Among them is energy recovery from wood wastes.
A system developed by the American Walnut Com.pany is a
notable example. The company's Kansas City. Kansas, plant
saws and processes walnut wood for gun stocks and other wood
products. It generates, as unwanted byproducts, large
quantities of sawdust, wood chips, and other wood waste.
The company originally burned such wastes in a teepee
burner, which created a dense plume of black smoke. When
cited for violating local air pollution ordinances, the
company modified the burner design. Not only did that fail to
reduce pollution sufficiently, it increased the plant's
consumption of natural gas. The company then attempted,
unsuccessfully, to find a buyer for its wood waste. Finally
it decided to construct a starved-air type boiler that gener-
ates steam by burning the waste. That worked. Part of the
steam, formerly generated by a gas-fueled boiler, is used to
cure wood. The remainder is sold locally to other users of
s te am.
The net result: a twin advantage -- less air pollution
and less consumption of natural gas.
Recycled Paper
The Federal Government itself is one of the leading
practitioners of the art of recycling -- and selling --
high grade waste paper.
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In Denver alone, 30 Federal agencies, under the direction
of the Federal Regional Council, have reclaimed 361 tons of
waste paper in less than a year and sold it to a Wisconsin
firm for $38 a ton. EPA guidelines now call for the program
to be extended to Federal agencies nationwide. It is estimated
that 223,000 tons of high grade paper fiber a year will be
recovered, recycled, and sold. The operation will save the
government $7.4 million a year in waste disposal costs and
allow 3,791,000 trees to remain unlogged.
Energy savings are a further benefit. Paper can be
made from recovered fibers with 60 percent less energy than
from virgin materials.
Salvaging Abandoned Cars
Market demand and market price alone are often reasons
enough to recover energy or waste materials. But sometimes they
aren't. Salvaging abandoned automobiles, for instance, is not
always profitable.
In Montana, the distance of the State from scrap markets
is so great that auto salvage isn't profitable for a private
salvage company. State lawmakers have therefore adopted
legislation to help underwrite the cost of removing auto
hulks. The program is financed by nominal fees: $2 on
transfer of vehicle title and fifty cents at the time of
annual re-registration.
These funds have been used to establish and maintain
county graveyards for junked cars. When 200 hulks have
accumulated in one of these yards, the State advertises for
bids to haul them away for scrap metal.
An unanticipated benefit of this program is the energy
it saves. Producing a ton of steel from auto scrap takes
8500 kilowatt-hours less energy than producing the same
amount of steel from iron ore. In some areas of the country
that much energy could supply the electrical needs of an
average household for an entire year. The program thus has
not only eliminated a blight on the Montana countryside, but
it is saving energy.
The Bottle Bills
Waste reduction means not just recovering useful materials
from the waste stream, but preventing them from entering that
stream in the first place.
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For instance, instead of "recycling" bottles -- collecting
them after they are discarded, then melting them down and
using the glass to make new bottles -- they can be designed
to be returned and reused. This saves the cost and energy of
having to reraanufacture the bottles between each use. Since
bottles and other packaging items make up a large share of
America's waste stream, the savings can be significant.
In Oregon, a bottle bill was passed by the State legis-
lature in 1971 and took effect in October 1972. It banned the
sale of beer and soft drinks in pull-tab cans. It imposed a
minimum two cent deposit on beer and soft drink bottles of a
standard design reusable by more than one bottler, and a five
cent deposit on non-standard bottles reusable by only one
c ompany.
Oregon legislators viewed the bottle bill chiefly as a
litter-control measure, although the people who lobbied for
it were also aware of its potential as an energy saver. The
idea was that Oregonians would return bottles to grocery
stores to recover their deposits rather than throw them out
their car windows. Pull-tab cans simply would not be available
to throw away.
Oregon's bottle bill has been popular and effective.
o Roadside litter has been drastically reduced.
Studies and surveys show that beverage related litter
has declined by 83 percent.
o Consumers are returning a surprisingly high percentage
of the beverage bottles to retailers to redeem their
deposit money. On the average, four out of every
five bottles leaving stores are coming back.
o Consumer prices for beer and soft drinks have re-
mained competitive with those of neighboring Washington
State, which does not have a bottle law.
o Consumers overwhelmingly approve of the bottle bill.
In polls taken throughout the state since it was
passed, 90 percent said they favored it. A similar
percentage said that returning bottles to the store
was not an inconvenience, which claim is borne out by
the fact that they are buying more beer and soft
drinks than ever.
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o The switch to returnable containers in Oregon saves
energy sufficient to heat the homes of slightly over
2 percent of Oregon's population -- or some 40,000
people.
The idea shows some prospect of spreading. Vermont
soon followed Oregon with similar legislation. Bottle bills
were on the ballot in four other states in 1976 Maine,
Michigan, Massachusetts and Colorado. They passed in Maine
and Michigan.
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RISKS, SPILLS AND DISASTERS
In the early morning hours of a day late in October 1973,
fifteen cars of an eastbound freight train careened off the
track and plunged into a gully near the village of Rush,
Kent ucky. Hearing the crash from his wooden frame house across the
road from the wreckage, Bobby Joe Middleton saw fire spreading
under the cars and hurried his wife and three children through
the rain and darkness to a neighbor's home a few hundred yards
away. As he watched, 10 minutes later, a tank car exploded,
sending flames 50 feet high, destroying his car and truck
and the surrounding trees, blistering the paint on his house,
and melting the window panes.
Two of the derailed cars were filled with acrylonitrile,
a highly flammable liquid used in making plastics, which can
give off cyanide gas when exposed to air. Forty-three thousand
gallons of the highly poisonous fluid gushed into Williams
Creek, killing fish and setting it afire. Several car loads
of coke burned fiercely on both sides of the track. A car
filled with metallic sodium, also highly reactive, lay ruptured
on its side.
State policemen and members of the Boyd County Rescue
Squad arrived and spread out across a broad area surrounding
the wreck, warning residents not to drink the water and to
keep livestock away from the stream. The EPA regional office
in Atlanta sent an on-scene coordinator and undertook to
evacuate the valley. An area three miles in diameter was
cord oned off.
Earthen dams were built across the creek, peat moss was
applied as a filtering agent, and stream water was sprayed
upward for aeration. The chemical remaining in the cars was
allowed to burn off, to prevent cyanide contamination and
further explosions.
Since Williams Creek runs into a tributary of the Ohio
River, scientists feared contamination of that major waterway.
The EPA initiated several weeks of intensive monitoring, while
railway cleanup crews cleared the debris, to ensure that
drinking wells and the Ohio itself had not been poisoned. When
concentration of acrylonitrile dropped rapidly in the vicinity,
it was decided that the area was once again safe for the local
residents. A cooperative effort by State and local authorities,
railroad crews, and the EPA had headed off what might have
been a major environmental disaster.
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Dealing with Crises
One EPA function is to act in environmental emergencies
such as that. It is in the business of scaling down environ-
mental risks, whatever their form. That means keeping a
watchful eye on whatever degrades the quality of life and
doing so in such a way that the local community and its economy
are disturbed as little as possible.
Where risks must be evaluated, the Agency draws on its
centralized store of experience and technical resources to
recommend the safest operating procedures. When an accident
such as the one in Kentucky does occur, EPA's role is to help
the States and localities cope with the consequences.
The Agency runs a vigorous spill prevention and control
program. Since its oil pollution prevention regulation was
issued in late 1973, more than 7,100 Spill Prevention Control
and Countermeasure (SPCC) plans have been reviewed.
In the Southeast alone several thousand on-site inspec-
tions were made at oil storage facilities. The U.S. Coast
Guard and State agencies joined in the inspection and review
effort, and by 1975 only 692 oil s-torage facilities in the
Southeast about 10 percent of the total were not in full
c ompli anc e.
The measures have paid off. U.S. Coast Guard records
show a gradual, steady decline in spills from those facilities.
In 1973, 2,660,000 gallons escaped; in 1974, 1,524,936
gallons were spilled; by 1975, the figure was down to 1,149,113
gallons, half what it had been three years before.
An EPA Midwest regional office has received seven spill
reports in petroleum operations since January 1975. Each
spill was contained by folowing the procedures specified in
the local SPCC plan, with no resulting damage.
Public Law 92-500 put the onus of preventing and cleaning
up pollution accidents largely on industry itself. The oil
industry, responded in many areas across the country by
forming spill response cooperatives to help bear that burden
at least cost.
The Southeast Wyoming Spill Cooperative, for example,
was formed in 1972 by twenty-one companies from all phases of
the oil business -- exploration, drilling, refining, and
pipeline transmission. The Co-op has stockpiled materials for
cleanup and containment at strategic locations within its area
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of coverage, from which they can be quickly dispatched to a
spill site.
The company responsible for a spill is the first line
of defense against it, not only by law but by proximity, i Once
a spill occurs, every minute counts. Even with jet aircraft,
response time from the the EPA regional office in Denver to a
remote Wyoming site would be counted in hours.
A 16,000 gallon spill into the Powder River near Kaycee,
Wyoming» and a second spill, which dumped over a quarter-million
gallons of crude oil into Casper Creek, did only negligible
environmental damage, thanks to the Coop, which moved swiftly
to clear the oil from the waterway. Without such immediate
on-the-spot action the spill could have been a disaster.
A Santa Barbara in Kansas
On one hot July night in 1975, a corroded oil line in
central Kansas ruptured, sending 588,000 gallons of crude
oil flowing downhill toward the Saline River , three miles
away .
The immense magnitude of the spill, the largest in
Kansas history, matched that of the 1969 catastrophe in the Santa
Barbara Channel in California. The black torrent was discovered
by an unfortunate cat, which returned in the early morning
hours to farmer Fred Obermue1ler's house, wailing and with its
fur slicked down.
By this time the oil had advanced to within a mile of
the river. Amoco, owner of the pipeline, was notified and an
all-out race to prevent the oil from reaching the waterway
followed. Huge pits dug across the oil's path quickly filled
to depths of 12 feet. The Kansas Department of Health and the
regional EPA office both sent investigators and supervisory
personnel to the spill site. The oil was pumped into transport
trucks and stored nearby, while the remaining oil in the dry
wash was burned or soaked up with prairie hay. Contaminated
ground was plowed under or scraped off and buried.
The only damage from the incident: the loss of four
small apple trees by farmer Obermueller and temporary contam-
ination of the dry wash and some wheat fields that had already
been harvested. Amoco's on-site cleanup chief predicted the
fields would yield a poor crop during the next season, but a
better than average one the year after when the oil in the
earth will have decomposed and begun to act as a fertilzer.
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A Chemical Spill in Kentucky
Ready access to the right information is critical in any
environmental spill. It helped avert a catastophe near Lowe,
Kentucky, on May 20, 1976.
The EPA was informed that a train carrying industrial
chemicals had derailed outside of town. Cars were damaged and
ruptured: 40,000 gallons of methylene chloride and carbon
tetrachloride had poured into an adjacent stream, killing all
fish and damaging its remaining biota. Other tank cars
containing ethylene oxide, trichi oroethylene, ethylene glycol
and hydrofluoric acid lay tangled and leaking.
The EPA immediately notified the Kentucky State authorities
and responsible railroad officials. Drawing upon the Techni-
cal Assistance Data System, a data bank set up to help in such
emergencies, the Agency was able quickly to determine and to
alert all concerned of the hazards of each of the toxic
substances that had been spilled and how to handle them.
Two-hundred fifty people were evacuated from the sparsely
populated area, which was completely cordoned off.
For the next several days, EPA's on-scene coordinator
continued to work closely with State, local, and railway
officials to neutralize the spill and limit further damage.
Several techniques, including aeration and filtration, were
used to prevent wider contamination of the nearby water.
Because of the EPA's experience in spill control and access to
critical information and thanks especially to the diligence of
State and local personnel, the efforts were successful.
Rescue At Clarksburg Pond i
When the EPA's regional emergency response branch received
a call in the summer of 1974 from the New Jersey Pesticides
Projec11 reporting hundreds of dead bluegill, sunfish, and bass
floating in Clarksburg Pond, it sent an investigating team.
The investigators found a toxic herbicide called DNBP
(dinitrobutyIphenol) concentrated in the water. It had been
used in an adjoining parki-ng lot as a weed killer and had been
washed into the pond by a heavy rain.
The Clarksburg pond holds about 3 million gallons of
water and covers only slightly more than an acre of land.
But the area's wildlife depends on the pond for its water.
The toxic substance also threatened to contaminate the ground-
water, and since the pond empties into a tributary of the
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Delaware River, the Delaware was threatened as well. The spill
into Clarksburg pond posed dangers that couldn't be ignored.
A unique device that had not even left the factory yet
was hurriedly shipped from Wisconsin on a wide, flatbed
trailer and reached the pond after two days of non-stop
driving. Developed under a research contract from EPA, the
huge unit, employing carbon column filters, began pumping the
water out of the pond at 200 gallons per minute. Five filters,
the first two sand and anthracite to trap suspended solids and
algae, the other three each containing three tons of activated
carbon, absorbed the bulk of the DNBP that had washed into the
pond. After 90 cubic yards of gravel were removed from the
lot, the area was flushed and the runoff put through the
filtering unit as well.
Frequent samples of tap water taken from local homes
since then have shown the groundwater to be unaffected. Today
the pond is again filled with fish life. Birds, amphibians
and insects are present in abundance.
A pesticide called toxaphene also sent the treatment
trailer lumbering southward from Washington, D.C., the following
spring. A bag of the highly toxic poison had been dumped in a
pond near Plains, Virginia, and threatened to contaminate the
Manassas water supply, which serves 40,000 people. After more
than a month of cleanup operations, including filtration of
the entire pond, most of the toxaphene was removed and the
community was saved from harm.
The Clarksburg incident was the maiden voyage for the
carbon-column filter and its first victory. It has since
seen service not only at Manassas, but in a PCB spill in
Seattle as wel1.
Toxics in the Duwamish
A 250 gallon dose of PCB accidently spilled into the
Duwamish Waterway near a Seattle industrial-commerical complex
in mid-September 1974. A Westinghouse electrical transformer
containing the substance and owned by the Department of
Defense was dropped in the water while being loaded aboard a
barge.
Within two days an EPA field team had collected bottom
samples and traced the spread of the toxic material. Most of
the PCB had stayed near the dock where it had spilled, but
there was a second pocket farther out in the waterway.
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The EPA had three choices. It cotild send down hard-hat
divers to pump the contaminated water and mud into a Navy
barge; it could remove it through a 22-inch pipeline dredge
onto Kellogg Island offshore; or it could use small hand held
dredges to pump the water and spill material into pre-settling
tanks and then use the physical-chemical treatment trailer
from New Jersey.
It chose the third alternative, and by late October had
recovered 80 to 90 gallons of the contaminant. The Army
Corps of Engineers was then ordered into the emergency by
the Department of Defense. In March, as the engineers dredged,
the EPA continued to monitor the PCB in the waterway.
The substance, for the most part, had penetrated only a
foot deep into the bottom mud. But at the spill site itself
there were still dangerous levels up to four feet deep.
Dredgers finally had to dig all the way to bedrock -- 10 to 12
f .e e t deep in their efforts to recover as much PCB as
possible.
Another 140 to 150 gallons of PCB's were removed by March
13. All together, 220 to 240 gallons of the original 250
gallons spilled had been removed. Most of the danger was
past.
The PCB.Search
PCB's were only recently recognized to be persistent and
widespread threats to the environment. They can cause birth
defects, even when present in low levels. They can accumulate
in the food web, and they are harmful to fish and shellfish, which
absorb high quantities of the substance from polluted waters.
First manufactured in 1929, PCB's have been used in
paints, castings, hydraulic fluids, and in refrigeration and
electrical systems. In 1970, Monsanto, the only U.S. producer,
voluntarily restricted its sale of PCB's to those using it in
transformers and other "closed systems." The company cut its
annual production from 70 million to 40 million pounds.
The Los Angeles County Sanitation District in 1970-73
began to investigate several hundred industrial discharges in
a search for the sources of PCB's in that area. By 1975,
district investigators found there were only four significant
sources remaining all rebuilders of transformers. The
district worked with the companies to stop the PCB's from
entering the sewers. Separate work areas were set up for
equipment containing the chemicals, and even workmen's clothes
were kept separated for eventual disposal in a special landfill
for hazardous wastes.
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Speedy detection of the PCB sources was only possible
because Los Angeles County requires industries to have "separ-
ation boxes," which allow samples of industrial effluents to
be taken before they enter the sewer and mix with the effluents
from other dischargers.
PCB levels in the district's combined effluents had
already been reduced dramatically -- from 76 parts per billion
(ppb) in 1970, to 16 ppb in 1972 (reflecting Monsanto's
voluntary control effort) to below 0.02 ppb by 1975. And now,
since the district's work with the rebuilders of transformers,
PCB levels have dropped below the limits of detectibility.
Irreparable Harm
At times, the environmental damage from a toxic substance
as persistent as PCB can be irreparable.
In March 1973, some 1500 gallons of a PCB and a second,
very similar compound, were spilled when the driver of a
truck, noticing a leak from the liquid cargo, dumped the
entire load on the roadway in a rural area near Kingston,
Tennessee . The chemical was absorbed into the soil over a
wide ar ea.
The substances were Aroclor 1254 and polychlorinated
benzenes, both highly persistent and very toxic. Three days
after the dumping, the EPA began the first round of a sampling
program that lasted several months. Initial data pointed up
the presence of the substances in both the groundwater and
the soil.
Massive cleanup operations initiated by EPA were carried
out by the companies bearing legal responsibility. Contaminated
soil was packed and sealed in metal drutn-s and shipped from the
spill site. Almost 12,000 drums were filled from trenches and
excavations in three areas. When safe levels of the chemical
had been reached in both the water and the soil, the landscape
was restored by sealing and backfilling.
The cost of the cleanup was a million dollars, plus
many thousands of dollars later paid in suits brought by local
residents. Two years after the initial spill, the EPA studied
the fate of the spilled materials. The findings showed the
chemicals to be highly tenacious. The PCB and polychlorinated
benzenes had not undergone any significant amount of biode-
gradation, and while the levels still present at the site are
not considered hazardous, they will remain there for many
years to come.
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FishinR Expeditions
It is one thing to track down a known quarry, but
quite another to go hunting without knowing what you're
looking for. EPA does such "reconnaisance monitoring"
periodically, to detect unwanted elements in the water or
air. It does not always return empty handed.
While analyzing water samples as part of its national
drinking water study in 1975, the EPA found concentrations of
the suspected carcinogen BCEE (bis-chloroethylether) in
Philadelphia's water supply. Its source was traced to the
Rohm and Haas Company's Bridesburg Plant, which temporarily
halted its manufacture and immediately started to install
treatment equipment. Within the year the levels had dropped
low enough to meet EPA guidelines.
In April 1976, a citizen's group discovered a toxic and
carcinogenic component of rocket fuel in Bait imore's air. The
EPA traced the source to the FMC Fairfield Works. The Agency
then cooperated with the Maryland Bureau of Air Quality to
bring about the voluntary shutdown of the process that was
letting the toxic into the air.
In the same year, the Dupont plant in Belle, West Virginia,
was discovered discharging DMN, a toxic and carcinogenic
chemical, into both the air and the water. It was a byproduct of
the manufacture of certain organic chemicals. Dupont eliminated
the water discharge, and is now working with the West Virginia
Air Pollution Control Commission to install control equipment
to eliminate the air emissions.
Detective Story
Locating the source of a pollutant is not always so easy.
When the EPA received a letter from a Harrodsburg. Kentucky,
citizen complaining of a recurring odor from the town's major
spring and creek, it consulted with the Kentucky Department of
Natural Resources, which requested the Agency to investigate
f ur ther.
State investigators had already conducted dye tracer
studies and found a connection between the Harrodsburg spring
and a sinkhole into which the Corning Glass Works discharged
its was tewa ter.
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The State had also concluded that the odor was caused
by decomposition of Sphaerot11 us, microrganisms that feed
on nutrients in the water. For some as yet undetermined
reason, the Sphaerotilus were dying, leaving behind a malodorous
slime.
But why were they dying? And was the connection with
the Corning sinkhole responsible? Compounds of strontium
and the rare earth element cerium were found in water samples
from the spring, in sediment collected from Town Creek, and in
wastewater discharged by Corning. Since these elements are
not native to Kentucky soil, and were present in Coming's
discharge, the State and the EPA considered the source found
and the mystery solved.
Corning agreed to install additional treatment equipment
and alter manufacturing techniques to improve the quality of
its discharge. It has worked. Citizens report no further
odor from the spring, and the slime growth that plagued the
creek has disappeared.
Repairing the Damage
No amount of planning and prevention can reduce environ-
mental risks to zero, or prevent the inevitable moments when
the EPA is faced with a "fait accompli." The steps that
follow a disaster or potential disaster then become critical:
ending the destruction, saving what remains to be saved, and
making sure it won't happen again.
Utah's Ogden Bay lies along the eastern edge of the Great
Salt Lake on a major flyway for migratory waterfowl. It is a
beautiful, fragile, and incredibly varied eco-system with
extensive nesting and feeding areas.
But for several years, until the summer of 1974, a
veritable death trap -- a five and one half acre waste lagoon
-- lay a scant half-mile away from the refuge. The lagoon
contained oil residues and acid sludge from an oil recovery
operation conducted for a railroad in the late Sixties.
Even after the operation was abandoned, the waste con-
tinued to be dumped into the natural drainages and was con-
tained by poorly constructed dikes. A combination of precipi-
tation, runoff, and high ground water left a lagoon system
containing three layers of waste material: an oil/water
emulsion on top, a strongly acidic, oil-contaminated water
layer, and, on the bottom, acid sludge and contaminated filter
c ake .
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The lagoon became an irridescent, polluted pond. Its
glistening surface attracted and trapped hundreds of waterfowl,
including Canadian Geese and several varieties of ducks.
On one occasion the bodies of eight sheep were also found
floating in the stagnant liquid.
The major threat to wildlife, however, was not entrapment
in the lagoon itself; it was the imminent danger of a massive
failure of the dikes. More than a million gallons of oil
emulsion and contaminated water would then flow into the
refuge itself.
State and Federal officials were alarmed. In Oc'tober
1973, EPA Administrator Russell E. Train declared the lagoon
to be an imminent and substantial threat to the environment,
and requested that the United States attorney for the district
of Utah seek relief in the courts. Attempts to encourage the
owners of the property and the owners and operators of the
re-refinery to cleanup the lagoon dragged on for several
months, with no action.
In 1974, a Federal team began to work hand-in-hand with
Utah State and county agencies to initiate a cleanup plan.
It soon became evident that immediate emergency action was
required. The lagoon was dangerously full -- scant inches
remained between the oil surface and the top of the dike. The
annual peak of precipitation was imminent, and this, combined
with spring snow runoff, could lead to overtopping and catastrophic
failure of the dike.
As a first stop-gap measure, emergency contractors placed
sandbags in the eroded and weakened portions of the dike and
constructed an oil-skimming pond to contain the emulsion in the
event of a break. A road had to be built up and a work area
constructed. Irrigation pumps skimmed waste oil from behind
the weakened dike into another, higher section of the lagoon.
Screens at the pump inlets were required to prevent bird
carcasses from clogging the pipes.
It was decided to "land farm" the top two layers of
polluted liquid. The liquid would be spread out in a thin
layer on specially prepared Air Force land nearby and covered
with a relatively impermeable clay. The process of emptying
the pond and stabilizing the area then began. The bottom
layer of sludge was treated in place. A clay liner was built
around it and cross dikes were built to stabilize it. Then
tons of alkaline soil were mixed with it and an 18-inch cap of
clay was compacted over the area to seal it against erosion.
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The capped and lend farmed oil has now decomposed to form
a kind of artificial fertilizer today, local plant growth is
re-established on the lagoon cap, and on the land farm there
has also been an extensive regrowth of native vegetation.
Graceful Canadian Geese still share the skies with the soaring
flocks of seagulls, and herons and tiny wading birds continue
to frequent the bay.
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INDUSTRY MAJOR ACTORS IN THE ANT IPOLLUTION DRAMA
Industry, because it has played such a major role
in polluting the environment, has also had to play a major
role in cleaning it up.
Many companies have lagged. Some have had to be forced
to take the necessary -- and expensive steps to undo the
environmental damage done. Some have been more successful
than others. A handful have pioneered new pollution control
techniques and in doing so have accomplished far more than was
expected of them.
The record is full of such efforts by industry. Four
examples of where the struggle has been difficult or expensive,
but also fruitful, are those of the pulp and paper, copper,
power, and food processing industries.
Paper Mills
Pulp and paper mills historically have been among the
worst water polluters. But new treatment facilities are
changing that.
The paper industry in New York State is a good example.
The 65 paper mills, which produce 6,500 tons of pulp daily,
form the single largest group of industrial polluters in the
State. In the early sixties, the industry was dumping a
half-million pounds of organic waste (BOD) into State waterways
every day, and it was consuming much of the lifegiving oxygen
on which the fishlife depends.
The industry in New York was at first slow to act. But
after State and Federal permits based on the new effluent
guidelines were issued, 39 new treatment plants were
built, 16 mills were hooked up to municipal systems, and
steps were initiated for the other mills as well. This
resulted in a record of accelerated pollution abatement in the
1970's unmatched by that of any other industry in the State.
Since the mid-60's, the BOD level in New York rivers
has fallen from 500,000 to 165,000 pounds per day under the
State's Pure Waters program. Plant expansions, closures,
and new plant openings have left a net loss of six plants.
Total production, however, remains about the same, despite a
66 percent reduction in discharged waste.
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The technological breakthrough by the Gulf States
Paper Corporation in the South may be a portent of things to
come in the paper industry nationally. Its Tuscaloosa plant
on Alabama's Black Warrior River is the oldest mill in the
State, built when discharges into the river were virtually
unregulated. The intervening decades saw the river further
channeled for navigation and dammed for power production.
Water flow sometimes dropped to 12 hours a week in the
critical summer months. At times dissolved oxygen levels
reached zero.
The company decided that a highly efficient effluent
control system was required. It would take eight years of
research to develop, but the outcome would be a tertiary
wastewater treatment system no longer dependent on the
river.
Today that system is a reality. A four-stage activated
sludge process first removes 85-90 percent of the plant's
BOD. Ultimately, the process removes over 90 percent of the
color and most of the remaining BOD. The result exceeds the
requirements of the toughest EPA effluent guidelines -- and
they didn't have to be met until 1983.
In 1934, Gulf States Paper Corporation produced 45,000
tons of paper per year and discharged over 25,000 pounds of
BOD per day. Today production is four times greater --
180,000 tons per year -- yet the discharge has been reduced
94 percent to 1,500 pounds of BOD per day. The rate of
discharge per ton of paper produced is now less than 2
percent of what it was in 1934.
Gulf States Corporation won a special award in 1976 from
the Alabama Environmental Quality Association for its color
removal system. And it received the American Paper Institute's
1975 environmental improvement award. The National Wildlife
Federation also honored the company with a special conservation
award -- only the third ever presented by the Wildlife Federation
to a manufacturing company.
Copper Smelters
Copper smelters also generate a disproportionate share
of pollution in some States. Seven smelters in Arizona, which
represent about one half of the nation's copper processing
capacity and contribute substantially to that State's economy,
also emit most of the State's sulfur dioxide.
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Many of the smelters were built decades ago when pollution
controls were not considered essential. Inspiration Copper
Company's old furnace in Miami. Arizona, for instance, was
built in 1915.
The State of Arizona now has regulations to control S02
emissions and is currently proposing to tighten them.
But the Inspiration Copper Company did not wait for the
State to tighten its regulations. The company began
looking for alternative controls as early as 1970. By March
1971, it had decided to replace its old fuel-fired reverbera tory
furnace with an electric furnace that would allow 100 percent
of process gases to be put through a double-contact sulfuric
acid plant. This is the best system available for capturing
sulfur pollutants that would otherwise be released into the
air.
The system went on line in 1974 at a cost of $54 million.
It has cut emissions -- both S02 and particulates -- more than
90 percent and has virtually eliminated visible air pollution
from the company's smelter operations.
Power Plants
Power plants, through sheer numbers, have the potential
for enormous environmental impact. They can emit large
quantities of S02 and particulate matter, severely reduce
visibility, and generally degrade air quality. But some
companies have dealt with the problem effectively.
The Dairyland Power Co-op in Alma, Wisconsin, lowered
its S02 emissions by 80 percent after the Wisconsin Depart-
ment of Natural Resources required it to switch to low sulfur
fuels in 1974. The Co-op also installed an electrostatic
precipitator that brought matching reductions in total
suspended particulates. Ambient standards are now being
me t.
Fuel switching of that sort, however, is not always
practicable. Other approaches permit use of less expensive
forms of energy. The Kansas City Power and Light Company
and the Kansas Gas and Electric Company built an 820 megawatt
steam electric generating plant at LaCygne, Kansas, that uses
such a process.
The plant is located near a large coal deposit, which
straddles the Kansas-Missouri stateline. The coal is of
low quality, containing up to 6.5 percent sulfur and 24
percent ash (which, after combustion, becomes particulate).
If burned without controls, it would generate and emit 97,000
pounds per hour of S02.
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The company decided to install limestone slurry scrubbers,
designed to remove 80 percent of the sulfur oxide's from the
flue gases. This plant was the first of its size to use flue
gas desulfurization and is the largest such system in operation
in the world today. The cost of its air pollution control
equipment came to $45.4 million.
The Nashville Thermal Transfer Company takes the search
for fuel economy a step further. The facility burns municipal
solid wastes as its primary fuel to produce steam and chilled
water for a limited number of buildings in downtown Nashville.
The facility, therefore, doubles as a power plant and a
facility for resource recovery.
Following its start-up in 1974, a number of severe
mechanical, operational, and financial problems surfaced. An
unfortunate cost-cutting decision allowed the plant to begin
operating with equipment that could emit 2,036 tons of air
polluting particulates a year.
One electrostatic pr ecipi ta to r: has now been installed,
which should allow the plant to operate with one boiler
and comply with air pollution emissions by reducing particulate
emissions 92 percent. In 1977, a second electrostatic precipitator
will be installed, and both waste-burning boilers will be
allowed to operate.
Diablo Canyon on California's Pacific coast illustrates
the familiar problem of new technology bringing with it new
difficulties.
During a 1974 test, Pacific Gas and Electric's 2300
megawatt nuclear facility was found to be discharging large
amounts of copper from its cooling water system. The metal
was killing marine life in the Diablo cove. Red and black
abalone harvested by commercial fi'shermen and local skindivers
were particularly hard hit.
Environmental detective work traced the poisoning of the
abalone to corroding copper pipes. Whenever the power plant
was shut off and the pipes emptied of water, salt air infiltrated
into the system and corroded the pipes.
The California Department of Fish and Game, represented
by the State attorney general, initiated legal action against
PGfiiE in mid-1975 requiring the company to halt further
pollution 'in the cove and to repair the damage to the marine
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environment. By November the Company had replaced the copper
tubes with non-corrosive titanium at a cost of $5 million.
A settlement is now being negotiated in which PG&E will
finance construction of an abalone hatchery to be operated by
the Department of Fish and Came. Abalone from the hatchery
will be used to stock areas where kelp beds and sea otter are
being reestablished.
Food Processing
One element is common to almost all food processing:
organic waste. Finding environmentally sound methods to
dispose of it requires approaches tailored to the unique
circumstances of each industry.
Sugar Mills
The environmental impact of uncontrolled sugar wastes
was most graphic in Hawaii.
Sugar cane mills produced "trash" (waste foliage) and
"bagasse" (fiber left after juice extraction) equal in weight
to 50 percent of the total harvest. The cane harvesting and
sugar extracting process were also stripping substantial
amounts of top soil away and into the sea. At the same time,
the extraction process was failing to recover much of the
sugar from the sugar cane.
Traditionally all of these wastes plant fiber,
stripped top-soil, and organic wastes were discharged
directly into the Pacific Ocean with the plant wastewaters.
Huge floating mats of decomposing fiber were formed, sometimes
washing up on nearby beaches. Thick sludge banks accumulated
on the ocean floor. Red plumes of water fanned out in a thin
film over the sea. Five sugar mills on the northeast coast
of the big island of Hawaii dumped 4-5,000 tons a day of this
flotsam into the ocean. Sixty to 70 miles of Hawaiian
coastline were littered with bagasse.
State efforts to check it were unsuccessful, so the EPA
started enforcement action against the mills in late 1972.
This led to a consolidation of operations into five mills,
eliminating three sources of pollution.
Permits called for an end to trash and bagasse discharges
entirely, and for reduced suspended solids in the mill effluents,
By the beginning of the 1976 season, all of the mills had
achieved substantial compliance, and the water is now clear of
t he debris.
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Stlll to come are steps to reduce the amount of suspended
solids in cane washwater, and to find non-polluting means of
disposing of the bagasse, which can be used as fuel to
generate electricity. Two sugar mill companies already use
it for that purpose. They sell the excess power they generate
to the Hawaiian Electric Company. Adopted before the energy
crisis, the process is already producing a significant
percentage of Hawaii's electric power.
Other companies use the cane wastewater to reclaim land
for cultivation. The soil and organic material from the wastes
make a fertile mantle when laid over the porous volcanic rock
so common on the Islands. Higher recovery of sugar from the
wastewater has also paid off in more product per ton of cane
harvested .
The pollutants, as frequently happens, have turned out
to be of benefit when recovered and put to use.
Cattle Feedlots
Cattle and other animals raised for food generate wastes
potentially damaging to an ecosystem.
Such a situation existed on an island feedlot in Idaho's
Snake River, close to the town of Payette. The island was
subject to annual flooding, which flushed organic matter,
bacteria, and nutrients into the river.
The result was low dissolved oxygen and generally
eutrophic conditions in both the Brownlee Reservoir and
the river downstream. Fisheries and recreation were impaired
and heavy algal growths appeared seasonally throughout the
Hell's Canyon area. Odor from the feedlot discharges also
afflicted area residents downriver.
A consent decree with the owner-operator in 1973
relocated the facility to an offstream site remote from
waterway. This action focused the concern of the entire
ind us tr y .
The Idaho Cattle Feeders Association was active in
developing national effluent guidelines and in assisting its
members to comply with them. The Dairymans Association, the
Soil Conservation Service, the Extension Service, and the
Food Producers of Idaho cooperated to greatly accelerate the
installation of control systems.
Permits were issued to 73 feedlots with a total popu-
lation of 400,000 animals. A large percentage of those
feedlots were discharging process or runoff effluent to the
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waters of the State. Complete compliance has been achieved
by 69 of the feedlots, and the four remaining, with 14,000
head, are on acceptable clean-up schedules.
Potato Processing
Cattle feedlots were not the only source plying Idaho's
rivers with organic wastes. Potato processing operations
throughout southern Idaho also burdened the State's waterways
in the 1960's and early 1970's.
The J.R. Simplot plant at Caldwell, Idaho, once a problem,
today stands as a model of what a company can do.
Wastewater from the Caldwell plant carried high concen-
trations of nutrients, suspended solids, and BOD. It was
given primary treatment in holding ponds, then discharged to
the Boise River. This daily outpouring of 2,500 pounds of
ammonia, 593 pounds of phosphorus, 7,500 pounds of suspended
solids, and 41,000 pounds of BOD fed the algae and the sludge
banks, and severely depleted the river's dissolved oxygen.
The nutrients flowed on to create excessive algal concentra-
tions in the Snake River's reservoirs from the Brownlee
Reservoir on down.
Seasonal low flows in the Boise River prevented the
company from using conventional biological treatment systems
-- they Just were not good enough. The Idaho Department of
Health and Welfare worked with Simplot to arrive at a plan
to meet the stringent water quality standards demanded in the
discharge permit issued by the State in 1972.
J.R. Simplot elected to end its problems by ending
its discharge altogether -- with a system combining primary
treatment and spray irrigation. Prodded by a 1974 deadline,
Simplot hurried construction of the system, and on September
6, 1973, advised the EPA that the Caldwell plant no longer
discharged wastewater.
A study by the U.S. Soil Conservation Service and Agri-
cultural Research Service indicated that virtually all
of the 40,000 pounds of BOD, the nutrients, and suspended
solids have been eliminated from both stream and groundwater.
Dissolved oxygen levels have improved, and the sludge banks
are disappearing.
Moreover, nutrients in the wastewater are now sprayed
on the land to produce high protein forage, which is combined .
with other solid wastes from the plant to feed 26,000 yearling
steers. The waste heat in the effluent now sprayed on the
land allows a 10-11 month growing season and an annual yield
nearly twice that of normal crop lands in the area.
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Cltrus Industry
In Florida, three thousand miles from the Snake River,
another industry is demonstrating that waste products can be
converted from a liability to an asset.
For many years, Florida's citrus processors dumped their
liquid wastes into the nearest waterway, overloading the
receiving water with organic material. The solid wastes were
piled up on the ground. Like so many pollution problems,
it developed because no one knew what else to do with the
waste. The results were depressed oxygen levels, discolored
waters, fish kills, and odors, which grew worse as the
industry expanded.
The first attempts to seek alternative methods of
disposal came shortly after World War II. The industry began
producing cattle feed from waste peelings and orange pulp.
By 1950, all of this solid waste was being converted into
cattle feed.
In the early 1960's, however, a State of Florida study
tound that citrus waste was one of the most significant
sources of pollution in Lake Apopka. Prodded by threats of
legal action, the citrus industry started a long-term effort
to treat those portions of its waste stream that were resulting
in the greatest contamination.
t
In 1968 a Federal grant funded the construction of an
innovative activated sludge plant at the Winter Garden Citrus
Cooperative. This technology proved successful and additional
systems were built at other sites. Some of these facilities
are presently disposing of their treated effluent by spray
irrigation.
Experimental spraying of citrus waste directly back on
the orange groves is underway and r.esults indicate that
it can be done without damage to the trees or fruit. NPDES
permits issued to most citrus processors in 1974 have spurred
industrial programs to recycle cooling water and to use
additional spray fields. The end result may be total reuse
and zero discharge.
Today many of the formerly polluted lakes in Central
Florida have returned to their original purity.
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SAVING THE RARE AND THREATENED
Certain bird and animal species, stands of rare and
valuable trees, national parks, and wetlands in general fall
easy prey to pollution. They are finite -- and unique. They
are easily wiped out and, once gone, they are gone forever.
For many years, before the tide of pollution became
so alarming, little thought was devoted to protecting such
forms of life and such areas of national value and beauty.
But in recent years some have come so near to destruction
or extinction that the danger to them could no longer be
ignored. In many cases action came just in time. Here are
a handful of examples.
Four Vanishing Birds
The osprey, peregrine falcon, bald eagle and brown
pelican, four great and picturesque birds, wereuntil recently
--all in serious danger of extinction.
Pesticides had affected the calcium metabolism in all of
these birds, rendering their eggshells so thin that they broke
under the weight of nesting birds, making reproduction virtually
impossible. Recent bans on DDT, dieldrin, and restrictions on
other chlorinated hydrocarbons, will diminish that threat.
Pesticides, however, were not the only factor driving the
birds toward extinction. In many cases their natural habitat
was also being destroyed.
The osprey, an eagle-like fish hawk, had nearly been
exterminated. Now it is slowly making a comeback. Some 130
young osprey were' born in 1976 along Eastern Long Island
Sound, the best brood in 20 years.
There have been massive cooperative efforts on behalf of
the osprey by Cornell University, the New York Zoological
Society, the Carolyn Foundation, the New York State Department
of Environmental Conservation, and :one private corporation
the Northeast Utilities Company. These concerned organizations
have transplanted uncontaminated eggs and chicks from the
Chesapeake Bay area to previously unsuccessful nests on Long
Island and the Connecticut coast. Transplants were made in
1968, 1971, and 1973 and each time the eggs and chicks were
readily accepted as their own by the adult osprey in the new
location.
Cornell ornithologists started breeding the peregrine
falcon in captivity in 1970. By 1973, the offspring of
captive falcons were surviving. And in 1975, they were being
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released regularly into the wild. This was a major milestone
since the peregrine falcon had not been seen in the skies
over the eastern United States in 20 years. Now the goal is
to release enough young birds so they can breed and re-establish
themselves naturally on the eastern seaboard.
The bald eagle was also on the brink of extinction.
Today there are several thousand new-born eagles in the
United States. Alaska, Puget Sound, Chesapeake Bay, and the
Mississippi River area all report rebounds in their eaele
populations. 6
The bald eagle's return is no accident. In 1972 the
Federal government, with the help of Seven-Eleven Inc., Hunt
Wesson, and Anheuser Busch, set aside a 4000-acre eagle
preserve in the upper Midwest. The Wisconsin Eagle Valley
Environmentalists launched a campaign in 1976 to raise $2.5
million to help manage the preserve. The National Wildlife
Federation set up a computer data bank as a clearing house for
eagle information. Egg transplants between Minnesota and
Maine are now common. And forest activities, such as timber
cutting and snowmobiling, as well as overhead plane routes'
have been altered or restricted with the eagles in mind.
Brown pelicans are also returning to the coasts of
Southern California and the Northwest Baja Peninsula in
Mexico. Only four young fledglings were hatched in 1969.
The number rose to 1185 in 1974. While their productivity is
still too low to maintain population stability, their numbers
have grown steadily since 1971. The increased breeding is
probably due to the availability of more anchovies and the
arrival of new birds from the. more successful pelican colonies
to the south. The higher fledgling rates reflect improved
egg-shell conditions.
With continued strict control over toxic pesticides,
all four of these once endangered birds should soon be a
common sight again.
Mangroves -- Father to an Ecosystem
^Mangrove trees are an essential component of Puerto
Rico s sensitive ecosystem. As the mainstay of the transition
zone between the land and sea, these trees, which grow in
marshes, serve as protective barriers in stormy weather.
They are also a source of shelter and nourishment for an
enormous variety of marine and terrestrial life. Their roots
form a tangled web at the water's edge to trap sediment,
leaves, twigs, and other flotsam, which compact into a firm
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surface essential to sponges, sea anemones, oysters, and
limpets. Such commercial species as the majarra, jack,
snapper, and ladyfish spend at least part of their lives in
the channels that lace the mangrove forests.
The detritus formed from their leaves, twigs, and bark
is the basis for a food web essential to the marine community.
Microorganisms feed on the detritus. Marine and insect
larvae feed on the microorganisms. And juvenile fish feed on
the larvae.
Many rare and endangered birds have been attracted to the
peace and tranquility of the mangrove forests. It is not
uncommon to spot a snowy egret, a peregrine falcon, or a
little blue heron.
But the mangroves are in serious danger. More than 80
percent of them have been destroyed. Of Puerto Rico's original
64,000 acres, less than 12,000 remain. And, today the
remaining forests are still threatened by public and private
development projects.
The need to intervene was obvious when it became known
that PFZ Properties, Inc., planned to develop the 266 acre
Vacia Talega apartment-hotel complex eight miles east of San
Juan. Of the 266 acres to be used for the complex, 170 are
mangrove wetlands.
The EPA saw the danger and in September 1974, issued a
notice of violation, ordering PFZ to cease discharging rock,
sand, and dredged soils into the mangrove marshes without a
permit. PFZ countered by challenging the order in court.
And, in January 1975, the case was tried in the U.S. District
Court in the District of Columbia,
The United States, in its case against PFZ, argued that:
- The mangrove wetlands are navigable waters since they
have "historic navigability" and are connected to a
navigable lagoon;
- The wetlands are therefore waters of the United States and;
- The Vacia Talega project would eliminate a mangrove
forest in these waters vital the coastal ecosystem.
In short, EPA lawyers argued that the mangrove forests
fell under the protective umbrella of the Federal Water
Pollution Control Act.
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The court ruled in favor of the EPA. It was a landmark
decision, the first to expand Federal regulatory jurisdiction
to wetlands. Using its authority under Public Law 92-500, the
EPA has succeeded in protecting the mangrove swamps, at least
for the time being.
PFZ has recently applied for a Corps of Engineers
discharge permit, and a comprehensive environmental impact
statement is now being prepared.
Yellowstone
American tourism boomed in the 1960's. And the National
Parks were overwhelmed by sightseers. Yellowstone, one of the
Nation's most raagnificant natural showcases and the first of
its national parks, absorbed a 50 percent increase in visitors.
Each year, more than 2 million people flocked to enjoy the
natural wonders of the great park.
An area naturally unsuited for extensive human use became,
in the summer season, a burgeoning population center. Yellowstone
began to share many of the problems familiar to the Nation's
sprawling suburbs. The overload on existing wastewater
treatment plants and sewer systems was tremendous. And the
U.S. Park Service faced a dilemma: how to upgrade tourist
facilities and still maintain the natural state of the park's
waters. The future of the park's pristine streams and lakes,
as well as that of the Yellowstone River, which originates in
them, was at stake. Something had to be done.
In the late 1960's, a consultant evaluated the existing
sewer systems and prepared a blueprint for a waste water
treatment and disposal system. The Federal Water Pollution
Control Administration made other pollution control studies
and found these problems:
- Continued sewage discharge into Yellowstone Lake;
- raw sewage overflows from existing facilities; and
- existing treatment facilities not meeting established
Federal requirements.
Once the Park Service had adopted a plan to alleviate
these problems, Congress authorized $5 million for construction
of necessary pollution controls. Small sewage systems were
incorporated into the existing regional plants. Today, the
systems serving the major population centers are complete, or
nearly so. Virtually all direct discharges to surface lakes
and streams have been eliminated. Land application of the
treated efluent has been accomplished with spray irrigation
and rapid infiltration.
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However, there is still work to be done. Seasonal
variations in both weather and tourism complicate
operation of the treatment plant. So EPA has offered aid in
the ongoing construction of two new plants to cope with
seasonal loads. The National Park Service is also currently
evaluating the impact of non-point source pollution from
campgrounds, motels, restaurants, and visitor areas.
But preservation of the natural beauty of Yellowstone
now seems assured.
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TWO CITIZEN TRIUMPHS
Often an environmental victory is a tribute to the
actions, collectively or individually, of citizens. Rarely
are such people able to employ the sanctions of legal authority
or power of any kind; they must instead rely on a tireless
resolve and a will to see an environmental wrong righted. If
not for them, the work might not have been done, or if done,
certainly not as quickly as it was.
Two examples shine through in the recent history of
river clean-up efforts. One centers on a big western river,
the Willamette, and is a tribute to collective citizen action.
The other concerns an eastern river, the Buffalo, polluted to
the extreme, and which now, on the way to rejuvenation,
stands as a testimonial to the persistence of one man and a
responsive State agency.
The Willamette
The Willamette, a giant of a river, the Nation's 12th
largest in water flow, is a stream of great beauty and
many uses.
Within its watershed stands much of Oregon's timber and
farm land. Two-thirds of the state's population lives within
its basin. And the basin contributes an equal proportion of
the State's industrial output. It is a major source of
domestic and industrial water supply and the mainstay of
irrigation, navigation, power production, fishing, fish
propagation, and recreation in the Pacific Northwest.
Today all known municipal and industrial wastewater
sources on the Willamette are meeting Federal and State
environmental requirements. The river is alive with migratory
salmon, native trout, and other game fish. It is used
for every form of water recreation -- fishing, swimming,
boating, and canoeing.
It was not always so.
In the early 1920's, the Oregon State Board of Health
found the Portland harbor area of the lower Willamette
severely polluted. All industries and municipalities on the
river were then dumping their wastes into the water untreated.
In 1927, the Portland City Club called the Willamette
"ugly and filthy." It got to the point that construction
workmen refused to work along its banks. A study conducted
then by the Oregon Agriculture College now Oregon State
University showed that levels of dissolved oxygen in the
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river were dropping below 0.5 parts per million at Portland
where the Willamette joined the Columbia. Five parts per
million is the minimum desirable levels to support life on the
river.
As late as 1967 the Izaak Walton League was describing
the lower Willamette as a "stinking slimy mess, a menace to
public health, aesthetically offensive and a biological
cesspool."
Sulfite waste liquors toxic to fish were entering the
water from paper mills and were lowering oxygen levels danger-
ously close to those lethal for migrating salmon. Rafts of
sludge up to six feet across, buoyed by gases of decomposition,
flecked the river upstream from Portland Harbor. Downstream
from Willamette Falls, globs of stringy bacterial slime
attached to floating wood fibers were befouling the river.
Oregonians, however, were not willing to put up with such
c ond i tions.
The story of active citizen concern for the welfare of
the Willamette begins nearly as far back as the pollution
itself. In the late 1920's, the Portland City Club surveyed
local people and found 48 percent of them favored anti-pollution
legislation for the river.
But it was a decade before this concern could overcome
desultory and largely ineffective efforts and be translated
into action. In 1938, after the State legislature failed to
act, the Oregon electorate passed, by a 3 to 1 vote, a re-
ferendum creating a State Sanitary Authority and a compre-
hensive water quality control law.
Within nine years the first muncipal sewage treatment
plant was on stream on the Willamette. In the next decade
all cities in the valley built primary treatment plants.
And by 1969 all of the plants had been upgraded and pollution
from domestic sewage wastes had been reduced by 85 percent.
But still the river was dirty. The main polluters now re-
maining were the pulp and paper mills.
What was to happen in the five years following 1967 is a
story of collective citizen action unmatched anywhere.
Cleanup of rhe Willamette became a major issue in the
1966 gubernatorial campaign. Both candidates were pledged to
it. And the man who won, Tom McCall, later personally chaired
the 8-month long water quality standard-setting sessions of
the Oregon Sanitary Authority. In that brief period the
Authority set standards not only tor the Willamette, but also
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for all the other interstate and intrastate waters of Oregon,
standards that were to be among the first in the country to
win Federal approval under the new 1965 National Water Quality
Ac t .
In 1967, the Oregon Legislature, riding the environmental
wave sweeping the electorate, completely rewrote and stream-
lined the State's water quality laws. In 1969, it strengthened
them further. By the time P.L. 92-500 was passed in 1972,
Oregon was already closing in on the target set five years
before for a revitalized Willamette.
Since 1973 the State has issued the permits necessary for
all industrial and municipal facilities dumping into the
river.
There are no more sludge rafts nor is there bacterial
slime on the Willamette. Every "unsafe for swimming" sign has
disappeared. Dissolved oxygen levels have risen above the 5
parts per million minimum in Portland Harbor.
By 1974, record salmon runs were coursing up the river.
Crayfish no longer crawled out on the banks to die. Bass had
reappeared in large numbers. Catfish, perch, and crappies
were abundant. The sturgeon was as abundant as it had been at
the turn of the century.
On the momentum of this citizen success, there is a
continuing drive to make the river a model for the Nation.
Plans for a greenway along the river's bank from Eugene to
Portland are well underway. Work is started to further
improve the water quality along certain stretches of the
river. The State and three regional councils of government
are now addressing the remaining problems of urban stormwater
runoff and pollution from agriculture and forestry operations.
The EPA has already made a grant of more than $3 million
toward that work.
Wastewater treatment beyond the secondary level now pre-
vailing in every city and industry on the river may eventually
be necessary in the fast-growing Willamette valley. But if
the past is any indication, Oregonians will demand it.
The Buffalo
When the nation was born, the Buffalo River was but a
narrow, shallow stream emptying into the Niagara. It was a
stream small enough that it could be worked with, shaped,
contoured and controlled.
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In 1818, it was dredged deeper upstream and its flow
redirected. A century later it was straightened, widened
further, and dredged still further upstream. And with
the constant widening and deepening, it ran progressively
siower .
It was shaped and reshaped and changed into the 1960*8,
until, during the summer months, when evaporation was high and
precipitation was low, there was little or no discharge
from the river at all. Indeed, it sometimes flowed upstream
as water backed into it from Lake Erie.
By 1968, the river was an environmental disaster. A
study found no oxygen and little life in it throughout most
of its length. One of the biggest concentrations of heavy
industry in America straddled its banks in South Buffalo.
The river was so polluted by steel, chemical, petrochemical,
and coke plants that its ink-black, oil-befouled surface
broke into flames four separate times. It was poisoned by
oil spills, phenols, iron, and unoxidized steel wastes, and
by nutrients from municipal wastes.
In 1953, the New York State Water Pollution Control
Board held a public hearing to classify all New York State
streams. They were to be put in categories frotn Class AA
(drinking water pure) to Class D (fit only for agricultural
and industrial use).
Industrial spokesmen argued at the hearing that a
classification between C and D was fitting for the Buffalo
River and that Class C was unattainable. What they preferred
was a classification that would permit industry to continue to
discharge into the Buffalo's surface waters with minimum
tr eatment .
In the audience at that hearing sat a retired Buffalo
jeweler and realtor named Stanley P. Spisiak. He was not
new to the conservation struggle. For 20 years he had been
waging a one-man campaign against defilement o£ Lake Erie and
its tributaries. At the end of the public hearings he demanded
a second hearing in 60 days to permit a careful weighing of
industry's evidence. It was granted.
Spisiak came to the second hearing armed with support
from hundreds of people and organizations, data from the U.S.
Public Health Service, and the backing of the Canadian Govern-
ment.
When the hearing was over the Niagara and certain upper
reaches of its tributary, the Buffalo, had been assigned a
Class A rating. That meant that trom then on the water
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qualtty of the Buffalo had not only to be maintained at its
current level, but drastically improved.
There followed in the train of that one-man victory, a
two-decade long struggle against pollution of the river.
In 1965, the City of Buffalo issued bonds to finance the
multi-million dollar Buffalo River Improvement Project.
The cost was to be amortized by the five major industries on
the river over a 20-year span. The project came on line in
1967.
In 1965, each industry along the river was told by the
Federal Water Pollution Control Administration, an EPA
predecessor agency, to submit wastewater abatement plans with
a target date of 1970 for achievement of planned pollution
c ontr ols .
Primary responsibility for locating the sources of
pollution on the river and finding the best ways to treat it
fell to Eugene F. Seebald, the Regional Director of the New
York State Department of Environmental Conservation for the
Buffalo area and now Director of the State's Division of Pure
Waters. In 1966, he surveyed the river by helicopter and boat
and traced the discharges.
Seebald organized a joint task force of Federal, State,
county, and city representatives for cooperative surveillance
of the river -- one of the first of its kind in the country.'
The task force met biweekly until it had adequate knowledge of
the nature of the pollution, its sources, and its effect on
the river.
Then, armed with a carrot and a stick -- tax incentives
to industries that agreed to build their own treatment plants
and legal authority to compel pollution abatement if necessary
the Buffalo Region launched an all-out campaign to clean up
the river.
Conditions slowly began to change -- which was remarkable
considering the degree and duration of the pollution. In
1968, no bottom organisms could be found over half the length
of the Buffalo. By 1970 dissolved oxygen was beginning to
return, and pollution-tolerant organisms were reappearing.
Two years later, dissolved oxygen could be measured in the
river at every depty, and a fish was caught in the Buffalo
River for the first time in 30 years -- a sheepshead. That
catch made the front and editorial pages of newspapers through-
out Western New York and the Niagara Peninsula.
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The waters of the Buffalo River have now changed from
black to brownish-green in color and are growing cleaner. A
new waterfront city has emerged at the mouth of the river, at
Buffalo Harbor. A new marina sits at the river's entrance,
and a hotel is proposed for the immediate shoreline. A new
water-front complex, including a tree-lLned walkway and a
fishing area, now exists. Midway up the river, a park wild-
life sanctuary has materialized on the site of a former city
d ump.
After ten years of water pollution control work under the
State's Pure Waters Program the river has gone from a "bad"
rating below 50 in 1968 to its current "medium" rating in the
65 to 70 point range (based on a 0 to 100 scale).
Today Stanley Spisiak can say: "There are substantial
numbers of fish in the Buffalo River now for the first time
in 75 years, even as far as the Harlem Road Bridge. Why,
you can see men from Republic Steel and National Aniline on
their lunch hour fishing for carp near the South Park Bridge."
The river is still polluted. Municipal sewage is still
a major problem. And the river's problems with residual toxic
substances, although under intensified attack, have not yet
been eliminated. But the Buffalo is no longer the oil-covered,
methane-belching, stagnant, and flammable cesspool it was less
than seven years ago.
And Stanley Spisiak is a recognized environmental hero.
Newspapers have paid him editorial tribute and the EPA has
honored him with a special award. His is a classic case of a
single citizen's triumph.
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CONCLUSION
Progress in the environment has resulted from collective
effort. In every case it has been possible only because a
group of citizens or agencies or industries has acted --
often all of them in concert. For the most part dischargers
of pollutants have voluntarily complied with the requirements
set by the EPA and the States. And the record of compliance
i s impr es sive.
To meet the goals of the air and water legislation,
dischargers have had to reduce their emissions and effluents
to meet EPA regulations and State Implementation Plans.
Figure 24 reflects increasing compliance by major air
pollution sources throughout the country. In June 1974,
there was 63 percent compliance by the 16,558 sources then
identified as capable of emitting over 100 tons per year.
In June 1976, the number of sources so identified had
increased to 21,948 and their compliance was at 82 percent.
Municipal and industrial sources of water pollution
have been issued permits limiting their discharges. Most
permits detail specific steps -- milestones to be met --
towards full compliance by July 1977. Figure 25 shows the
level of compliance of major municipal and industrial point
sources with milestone commitments for different
areas of the country.
As of June ,1976, about 86 percent of the 4,566 major
industrial permittees in the Nation were meeting the mile-
stones in their compliance schedules. It is anticipated
that more than 50 percent of the municipal permittees,
however, will fail to achieve secondary treatment in 1977
as the law .requires. That is primarily because of a shortage
of construction grant funds.
Some enforcement has been necessary. Figure 26 shows
that the number of EPA enforcement actions has climbed
gradually over the last six years. Federal enforcement
activities, however, represent only a portion of the total
enforcement effort, since the task is shared with State
and local governments. In most instances, the primary
environmental regulation is at the State or local level,
with EPA personnel and resources playing only a backup
role.
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Figure 24
INDUSTRY COMPLIANCE WITH AIR
EMISSION STANDARDS
FY74TOFY76
,76%
83%
FY 74-FY 76 FV 74-FY 76
EPA REGIONS
FY 74-FY 76
FY 74-FY 76
FY 74-FY 76
82%
FY 74-FY 78
KEY: Percentage of major point sources in compliance
with emissions limitations. Major sources are
those with potential emissions of 100 tons per :
year or more.
SOURCE: EPA Regional Reports of June 1974 and June 1976
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Figure 25
MAJOR MUNICIPAL AND INDUSTRIAL
WATER POINT SOURCE COMPLIANCE
91 90
MUNI. IND.
MUNI. IND.
MUNI. IND.
MUNI. IND.
MUNI. IND.
MUNI. IND.
KEY: JUNE 1976 COMPLIANCE LEVELS WITH SCHEDULES
SOURCE: FPRS JUNE 30 REPORI
MUNI = MUNICIPAL
IND = INDUSTRIAL
Note; More than 50% of municipal point sources are
expected to fail to attain secondary treatment
in 1977 as required by law.
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Figure 26
EPA ENFORCEMENT ACTIONS
WATER
STATIONARY AIR
MOBILE AIR
PESTICIDES
6,000
5,000
4,000
3,000
2,000
. 1,000
FY71 FY72 FY73 FY74 FY75 FY76
SOURCE OE, EPA-FOR CLARIFICATION ON ACTIONS SEE
EPA ENFORCEMENT-"A PROGRESS REPORT"
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The Future
The cases in this report have dealt, for the most part,
only with the Nation's first generation of pollution problems.
Tomorrow's environmental efforts will concentrate on a
different set of problems with their own unique and peculiar
characteristics -- problems an order of magnitude more difficult
to grapple with than those of the past. For some of them
adequate techniques to solve them have not yet been developed.
Solutions will require imagination, commitment and continued
effort -- from the Congress, from Federal, State and local
governments, from industry, and from the public.
The EPA's experiences over the last half decade demon-
strate that, in water pollution control, point sources
are only part of the problem. Nonpoint sources are an
even more formidable factor, and there will be a signal
shift of effort in that direction in the future.
The Agency must also close in on the equally difficult
problem of controlling the myriad minor sources of air pollu-
tion. It must as well move vigorously to find new technologies
and innovative ways to deal with solid wastes. It must act
decisively against the sometimes deadly perils of hazardous
pollutants and toxics in the environment, and against noise
and radiation pollution. It may even be necessary to take
steps to abate pollution of the upper atmosphere.
And ultimately it must look beyond pollution abatement
to the more sophisticated arena of pollution prevention --
the identification and control of potential pollutants before
they actually damage the environment.
These are some of the challenges that still awaits
us .
°US. GOVERNMENT POINTING OFFICE: 1976 722-254/164 1-3
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