Stormwater Overflows to Chesapeake Bay Focus of Court Battle
WASHINGTON, DC, August 14, 2008 (ENS) – Operators of the Chesapeake region’s largest sewage treatment facility, the Capital District’s Blue Plains Wastewater plant, have filed a federal court challenge to pollution limits imposed on it by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Environmental groups Thursday intervened to oppose the court challenge brought last month by the District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority, or WASA, against a pollution discharge permit issued to it by the federal agency.
The Blue Plains permit covers two different types of collection systems that deliver wastewater flows to Blue Plains – separate sanitary sewer systems in Maryland, Virginia and portions of the District, which collect only sanitary sewage; and also a combined sewer system in older portions of the District that collects both sanitary sewage and stormwater runoff in the same pipes.
During rain events, the combined sewer system is often unable to handle the flow of sewage combined with rainwater. When this happens, sewage from the combined system is discharged directly to waters of the District without being treated at Blue Plains.
These combined sewer overflows occur at outfalls located at intervals along the Anacostia River, Potomac River, Rock Creek, and their tributaries. There are more than fifty CSO outfalls specified in the permit.
In total, more than three billion gallons of sewage overflows are discharged through these outfalls in an average year. These overflows contain bacteria levels that are unsafe for humans and aquatic species, and also contain nutrients including nitrogen and phosphorous which further impair water quality.
The Blue Plains limits challenged by WASA reflect a cleanup agreement reached by a coalition of five Bay states.
Denitrification tanks at the Blue
Plains wastewater treatment plant.
(Photo courtesy WASA)
In the Chesapeake 2000 Agreement, signed by the U.S. EPA, the Bay states, and the District of Columbia, each party agreed to abide by set limits for the nitrogen pollution found in wastewater which feeds the bay’s harmful algae blooms and creates dead zones where marine life is unable to survive.
Among other things, WASA agreed to a 4.6 million pound annual limit for nitrogen. But WASA is now challenging a permit that gives legal effect to that limit.
“It’s time for the DC Water and Sewer Authority to stop looking backwards and give up on their appeal for the right to pollute,” said Chris Weiss, DC program director of Friends of the Earth. “Current protections need to be upheld.”
The environmentalists argue that the clean water protections must remain in place to protect DC waters and the Chesapeake Bay. Nutrient pollution leads to oxygen depletion and is a leading cause of water quality impairment in the Bay.
The nonprofit environmental law firm Earthjustice is representing Friends of the Earth and the Sierra Club in the case.
“Everyone in the region is looking to Blue Plains to do its part to restore the Chesapeake Bay – after all, it is the single largest source of nutrient pollution draining into the bay,” said Earthjustice attorney Jennifer Chavez.
“Sadly,” she said, “WASA’s suit threatens to delay cleanup of the Potomac River and the bay to the detriment of everyone in this region.”
The sheer size of the Blue Plains’ operations has made it crucial to the success of the Chesapeake cleanup plan. Every day, the Blue Plains facility discharges more than 300 million gallons of treated wastewater into the Potomac River which drains into the Bay.
The plant serves more than two million customers in Washington, Maryland and Virginia, and is the nation’s largest advanced wastewater treatment plant. Blue Plains is also the Chesapeake Bay’s single largest point source of nutrient pollution.
Earlier this year, construction began on a $104 million nitrification/denitrification facility upgrade within the Blue Plains Advanced Wastewater Treatment Plant.
WASA officials say that this and other upgrades being made at Blue Plains are comparable to improving all of Maryland’s 86 significant wastewater treatment plants, or Virginia’s 124 plants.
