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Monday, January 28, 2008

Environment - Section 303(d) List of Impaired Waters up for public comment through end of January [Updated]

Gitte Laasby of the Gary Post-Tribune reports today that:

Environmentalists are concerned about the lack of progress toward cleaning up Northwest Indiana's most contaminated waters.

They say the Indiana Department of Environmental Management has focused on completing studies of rivers and streams whose levels of E. coli bacteria are too high. Meanwhile, studies of Northwest Indiana waters that are impaired for mercury, polychlorinated biphenyls and other toxic pollutants are left unfinished, which means clean-up plans are delayed.

Tom Anderson, executive director of Save the Dunes Council, said the waters polluted by bioaccumulating chemicals should have priority.

"We drain into the largest collection of freshwater in this country. I understand you need to have TMDL (studies) on waters flowing out of this state. But these are waters that drain into people's drinking water and have a retention of 99 years," he said.

From later in the story:
The proposed impaired waters list for 2008 is up for public comment until Thursday. It contains 1,877 stretches -- 805 fewer than the last list from 2006. IDEM said contrary to the previous list, the new one is only intended to show pollution hotspots.

IDEM has proposed taking 900 stretches of Indiana waters off the list because the agency adopted a new method to determine what consists an impaired water body, not because sampling data shows the condition of the lake or river has improved.

Hoosier Environmental Council member Bryant Mitol questioned whether IDEM is trying to make the state's waters look better on paper than they really are. He said the change in methodology makes it hard to see whether Indiana's waters have actually improved.

"We have no score to say, are we better or worse?" Mitol said. "All of a sudden, I can slide up there in my canoe. I know that's not the case."

The IDEM webpage for information on "Indiana's Draft List of Impaired Waterbodies 2008" and information about submitting public comments is here

[Updated] The Alliance for the Great Lakes has posted a release that begins:

Indiana seeks to remove hundreds of mercury and PCB-tainted waterways from a statewide list of impaired waters -- including several Lake Michigan tributaries – in a move to free the state of a federal mandate to restore them.

Using new methodology, Indiana's Department of Environmental Management proposes to delete more than 800 stream and river segments from the list, even as state regulators warn the public that contamination makes fish from those waters unsafe to eat.

The proposed methodology would no longer determine a waterway's impairment based on the existence of fish consumption advisories, a measure the U.S. EPA has determined meets the intent of the federal Clean Water Act.

"The agency's decision to exclude water bodies that are impaired as a result of pollution from mercury or PCBs violates the Clean Water Act," said Lyman Welch, Alliance water quality manager.

The change leaves Indiana with no data on mercury and PCB contamination levels for many of the waters in question. As those waters would no longer be defined as impaired, the state wouldn't be required to develop plans to restore them.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on January 28, 2008 09:18 AM
Posted to Environment