Stewing In Filth: EPA To Reverse Sewage Standard, Allow Massive Dumping

[acmavm]

http://www.nrdc.org/media/pressreleases/041209.asp

Policy Rollback Raises Threat of Waterborne Illness, Disease for Millions

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WASHINGTON (December 9, 2004) -- Millions of Americans will face an increased threat of bacteria, viruses and parasites in their water thanks to a new federal policy allowing sewer operators to dump inadequately treated sewage into the nation's waterways. The Environmental Protection Agency's new plan, which reverses a current rule requiring sewer operators to fully treat their waste in all but the most extreme circumstances, will allow operators to routinely dump sewage anytime it rains. The EPA is expected to issue the policy sometime in the next few weeks.

"This new policy will expose millions of Americans to disease-causing parasites, viruses and bacteria in our drinking water and in waterways where we fish and swim," said Nancy Stoner, director of NRDC's Clean Water Project at NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council). "More Americans -- especially the elderly, very young infants, and those with weakened immune systems -- will get sick, and more of them will die."

For the last 50 years standard sewage treatment has involved a two-step process: solids removal, and biological treatment to kill bacteria, viruses and parasites. The new policy allows facilities to routinely bypass the second step and "blend" partially treated sewage with fully treated wastewater before discharging it into waterways. (Some treatment facilities include a third step in which they use chlorine to disinfect sewage, but disinfection does not kill viruses and many other pathogens.)

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Untreated sewage contains a variety of dangerous pathogens, including bacteria (such as E coli), viruses (such as hepatitis A), protozoa (such as Cryptosporidium and Giardia) and helminth worms. The pathogens in sewage can cause illnesses ranging from diarrhea and vomiting and respiratory infections to hepatitis and dysentery. Even with the current, stronger sewage treatment standard, experts estimate that there are 7.1 million mild-to-moderate cases and 560,000 moderate-to-severe cases of infectious waterborne disease in the United States annually.

<snip>

The new policy also is illegal, Stoner added. The Clean Water Act requires sewer operators to fully treat sewage before discharging it except in an emergency. Blended sewage does not meet this requirement, and the EPA has taken enforcement actions against sewer operators in which the agency has clearly stated in writing that blending violates the Clean Water Act.

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This is the future of America. Of course, we can all buy bottled water. Yeah, that's it. Buy water at over a dollar a pop. Eight dollars a day to get the recommended daily requirement. That should make some corporations pretty damn happy.

[noamnety]

1. All part of the plan

We can't be a proper third world country if we have access to clean water.

[shraby]

4. Write off Lake Michigan

Milwaukee pollutes it in hard rains now. It's caused our swimming north of Milwaukee to be off limits in parts of the summer.

[madrchsod]

7. the lake front in chicago get hit

with shit from milwaukee several times year.

[amandabeech]

13. Sometimes it even causes some problems on the eastern

shore around Muskegon and Grand Haven, Michigan.

But then, Grand Rapids, Michigan, with a population of about 700,000 also dumps sewage into the Grand River about 40 miles upstream of Lake Michigan, so it can be hard to tell.

I thought that Milwaukee had hollowed out the rock under the north side to use as a natural runoff storage site so as to avoid the summer dumping. Did that not happen?

[mom cat]

2. Just think of the fortunes that the pharmecuitical industry will make!

This will be great for business! :puke:

[enough]

3. You would think that sewage in the water is

one thing that everyone would agree is BAD. Can Bushco convince the people that clean water is a socialist plot?

[struggle4progress]

14. The Ownership Society wants to privatize clean water. eom

[crasmane]

5. Typhoid, Cholera,

welcome back to our cities and towns.
Given the large flu epidemics that have been forecast for the future, add the risk of these diseases and there's a public health catastrophe in the making.
I suppose they'll blame it on terrorists, won't they?

[nosmokes]

6. this is shitty.

well, somebody hadta say it.

shrub's been acting like a banana republic dictator ever since the coup back in 2000, this will just make us more genuine.

[OneBlueSky]

8. these people are fucking CRAZY! . . .

what the hell is the matter with these idiots? . . . by the time they're done, there will be NO environmental protections whatsoever . . . you'd think Congress would do something about this . . . hello, Democrats???? . . . anyone listening????? . . . un-be-fucking-lievable!!! . . .

[rfkrfk]

9. states should act

F... shrub

[phantom power]

10. Last week a Phoenix man died of a brain parasite, which

he apparently got in Mexico. There was a bunch of commentary about how it's a lot easier to contract parasites in Mexico, because their water treatment standards are so much lower than ours (and food standards, etc).

But hey, life here in America has gotten too boring, what with diseases and parasites being so rare. Let's forget all about that, and get back to the good old days, like Mexico.

[midnight armadillo]

11. As soon as I own a house...

I intend on doing one of two things, if not both: install my very own microfiltration, UV sterilization system, and reverse-osmosis system for the drinking water. AND/OR, combine the previous with a rainwater capture system, depending on room and feasibility. Rainwater may not be super clean due to air pollution, but at least it lacks HUMAN SHIT.

Hey NNadir, if you see this thread, how much did your home water system set you back?

[phantom power]

12. and drink only pure grain alcohol with your rainwater.

Maintains the purity of your bodily fluids...

[NNadir]

15. I've been away sulking for a bit, but since you asked...

the system ran about $1500-2000. I may have overpaid a bit.

It costs about $300-400/year to maintain it.

I installed my system not because of fear of fecal contamination, but to assuage some concern I had about perchloroethylene (aka tetrachloroethylene or TCE), which is found in well water in my area in varying concentrations. A few tests on my well have shown concentrations well above the action level. Since I don't test my water daily, I had no insight to the behavior of this problematic compound over extended periods. TCE, BTW, is detectable in about 30% of the ground water in the US. (It's dry cleaning fluid, and is also used as a degreaser for cleaning automotive parts and computers.)

I have an ion exchanger (water softener) as the first component in the line, since Calcium tends to precipitate as either the carbonate or sulfate and such precipitates will foul other parts of the system. The ion exchanger (which uses salt) exchanges partially insoluble Calcium ions (and for that matter ions of Strontium, Barium and Radium - the last found in NJ soils to a significant extent) with completely soluble Sodium ions. This device not only reduces the (slight) radioactivity of my water, but it also protects the subsequent equipment as well as my washing machine, my faucets, my pots and pans, etc.

The next element in my line is a UV lamp. This lamp would kill any fecal coliform that might result from local septic systems, including my own, however that is not why I installed it. I did some library research during a trip out to UCSD and found some information that suggests that UV radiation dechlorinates TCE through the abstraction of a hydroxyl radical from water. The resulting compound tautomerizes almost immediately to give dichloroacetyl chloride which rapidly hydrolyzes to give dichloroacetic acid. Dichloroacetic acid has a very low level of toxicity when compared with TCE, especially volatilized TCE, as one might get in a shower. (In fact, dichloroacetic acid has been investigated as a drug for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease.) The light also has the happy property of destroying the traces of CFC's found in rain water that leaches into ground water.

Next in my line is an activated carbon filter. This filter removes any TCE that makes it through the UV, as well as other organics like MTBE, benzene, etc. It also removes Radon gas. (Lung cancer in the absence of cigarette - and other types - of smoke would be almost unknown. Nearly 100% of all such cancers, though rare, that are not related to smoke result, however, from Radon exposure.) The water after the carbon filter is used for all purposes in my house except drinking water. At my kitchen sink I have an RO (reverse Osmosis) unit that removes traces of sodium and many other elements that have made it through the system. At this point my water is just hydrogen and oxygen, as GC analyses have shown, and is safe enough for even Jack T. Ripper.

My system is probably a huge overkill on a risk/benefit/cost analysis, but we had small kids when we installed it, and my wife thought we should err way on the side of over caution.

[midnight armadillo]

17. Thanks!

Very informative, as your posts always are :-)

That doesn't seem like too steep a price to pay for guaranteed clean water. I'm pretty much sold on cisterns and rainwater collection, but filtration & sterilization is needed for that. A lot of MA depends on private wells for water and there is plenty of industrial pollution around here too.

[NNadir]

18. OK, but be aware that these days, rain water is often not as pure

as treated water.

Depending on the region, rainwater can be contaminated with many of the same toxins found in air pollution. I would suspect that nitrate pollution in particular is often worse in some rain water than it is in ground water. In ground water nitrates are taken up by plants and often reduced by the action of oxidizable metals and micro-organisms. There is no such mitigating effect in rain water.

Nitrates can be toxic, and can cause, especially in infants, whose hemaglobin is somewhat different than that of adults, syndromes such as methemoglobinemia, a syndrome where hemoglobin is rendered inactive owing to the oxidation by nitrate of the ferrous ion (found in normal hemoglobin) to ferric ion.

Nitrate pollution is one of the more serious issues facing the water supply, not only because of toxicity issues, but because of eutrophication, especially in combination with phosphates. Also nitrogen exhibits very complex chemistry in the oxidized or reduced state, particularly in nitrogen-oxygen species. Intermediates such as N-nitroso compounds, nitrites, and various other species have serious physiological effects, not limited necessarily to carcinogenicity.

From a specification standpoint, the maximum allowable concentration for nitrate in drinking water is said to be 10 ppm. The maximal allowable concentration for nitrite is 1 ppm.

I note that my system as described above has no effect whatsoever on nitrates or nitrites. Any protection I have from these species comes from largely from naturally occurring denitrifying bacteria, and as I've said, oxidizable metals. Interestingly denitrifying bacteria use nitrate, nitrite and other intermediates much as higher organisms use oxygen, as electron acceptors. They have evolved this system because they are anaerobes, and cannot generally survive in the presence of oxygen. This means that such bacteria often survive in the presence of decaying organic matter, i.e. sewage.

In the 1950's it was expected that sewage would someday be purified by intense irradiation, and that water would under these conditions be easily be made recyclable. Experiment, though, showed that irradiation was a very effective means of killing bacteria and removing organics, but the water so obtained was toxic owing to a complex array of nitrogen intermediates, including the compounds above as well as diazines, hydrazines, hydrazoic acid, dinitrogen trioxide, dinitrogen tetraoxide, hyponitrous acid salts, oxohyponitrite salts and various organo nitrogen compounds, all radiochemically generated from amines and nitrates. (I would suspect though, that such a scheme would work under supercritical water - i.e. high temperature -conditions in the presence of organics or other reducing species, though to my knowledge this has not been tried.)

It may be possible to use certain anionic exchange resins to mitigate nitrate toxicity, but I admit that I am unaware of such resins being commercially available for water treatment purposes. (The resins in existing water softeners are cationic exchange resins.) If the problem becomes bad enough, I'm sure such resins will find their way to market, but hell, if that happens where going to have more serious problems than a nice cool safe glass of water.

[CrispyQ]

19. May I ask if you considered a water distiller . . .

& if not, why not? I thought it was the best way to 'sanitize' water, but I have not done near the investigation you have! Also, can you recommend any books or websites to educate myself on this issue?

TIA for your response.

[NNadir]

20. No, I did not consider this option because...

it is energy intensive relative to what I actually installed.

I would not expect that water from a continuous distillation apparatus would be particularly clean when compared with carbon filters. Certain trace organics, for instance, MTBE and its degradation products, Methanol and t butyl alcohol might actually be concentrated in such a distillation process, were they found in my water.

Another mechanism via which impurities might be concentrated would be through the existence of something known as azeotropes. The most famous example of an azeotrope is the water/ethanol system. A mixture of water and ethanol boils at a temperature less than either pure ethanol or water, resulting in a 95% solution of ethanol in water, also known as "190 proof alcohol." It is not possible to obtain pure alcohol by simple distillation, and one must resort to physicochemical means. (In the case of alcohol, to obtain "200 proof" 100% alcohol, the 95% "190 proof" alcohol is usually distilled in the presence of Calcium oxide which chemically reacts with the water to remove it.)

Azeotropic systems can be very complex. There are for instance, ternary azeotropes consisting of ethyl alcohol, toluene and water. I do not know (I'm not sure if anyone does) whether azeotropic type mixtures involve with TCE, the contaminant for which I installed my system, but it would not be completely surprising if one did. Therefore I did not consider distillation at all.

I did consider ozonolysis, which potentially would be better than my system but cheap home use equipment for this type of purification does not exist. Ozonolysis is used commercially however to generate very pure, germ free water. It is an excellent procedure and has many environmental advantages. I believe it will eventually supplant chlorination as an option, should the human race survive the next century.

I wish I could recommend a good book general book on this subject, but I can't. I generate most of my knowledge in this area by reading primary scientific literature and contemplating the issue from my general scientific background.

Maybe other readers can suggest such a work.

[BeFree]

16. The Kids

Think of how many kids have become sickened by swimming in waters downstream from sewage treatment plants now, and how many more will be infected if * gets his way.

One of the greatest joys of chidhood is the old swimming hole. Now that joy will turn to death and disease.

[blindpig]

21. forward, into the past..........

Reminds me of my childhood. Back in the good old days when they had typhoid danger signs on the bridge over Herring Run. Makes me teary eyed.....................