The League of Conservation Voters has set up an action alert to notify your representatives over the negligence the EPA is exhibiting toward enforcing against
sewage dumping and blending as described in the "Clean Water Act". So now, in addition to mercury, carbon dioxide, perchlorate (rocket fuel), and pesticides, we now have to worry about being contaminated with our own waste due to relaxed regulations concerning its treatment. This could lead to yet more legal action against the EPA, but again, it leaves the public's health vulerable.
(More below)
Nancy Stoner, senior attorney for the National Resources Defense Council, recently
spelled it out before a House subcommittee:
EPA has a different approach. EPA proposes to authorize sewage to be routinely discharged without receiving any biological treatment during rain events. EPA would allow sewage treatment plants to rely solely on rudimentary solids removal during wet weather. Sewer operators would be authorized to use dilution and averaging to meet concentration limits instead of actual treatment.
NRDC believes that EPA's proposed policy will worsen water quality, expose the public to greater risk of waterborne illness, and adversely affect the economy, including the shellfish industry, commercial and recreational sportfishing, and coastal tourism related industries. In addition, the policy undermines the Clean Water Act's requirement that sewage treatment plants provide a minimum of secondary treatment and violates EPA's longstanding prohibition on bypassing, which is defined as the intentional diversion of waste streams from any portion of a treatment facility.
One of EPA's principal justifications for this weakening of treatment standards is the increasing cost of maintaining and upgrading sewer systems and treatment plants to provide full treatment. Yet, at the same time, EPA has cut by 40 percent over the past two years its proposed budget for "America's Clean Water Fund," the Clean Water State Revolving Fund, which assists communities to provide effective sewage treatment and meet other water quality needs. NRDC appreciates the leadership of the Chairman and Ranking Member in opposing these funding cuts to this program, which is so vital to the protection of public health and the environment.
We all have become familiar with the effect of budget cuts, but now they threaten not only our economic potential, but our public health. Stoner goes on:
EPA, through a grant to the Water Environment Research Foundation,
has just begun to do the research to answer many of these questions. The results are not expected to be available until spring of 2007. There is no justification for finalizing this policy before the public has the answers to each of these fundamental questions about the potentially increased exposure to, and risk from, inadequately treated sewage.
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It is important to keep in mind that this is a problem caused by faulty, leaking sewer lines, i.e., water leaking into a sewage system during wet weather. As you would expect, in some places, we are finding that the opposite is occurring in dry weather. That is, raw sewage is leaking out of the collection lines into our surface and ground waters during dry weather. The proposed EPA policy will aggravate this situation by reducing the incentives for communities to identify leaks and fix them.
The EPA has allowed greenhouse gases and mercury to fill the air. It was just recently forced to stop its disgusting pesticide study of children. Contact your representatives to question why the EPA no longer cares about your physical well-being.