Does EPA mean business when it comes to cleaning up urban waters?

I have heard EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson speak impressively about refocusing EPA on clean water in the U.S.  She organized a summit in Washington, D.C. this spring to seek input from a range of stakeholders.  She reacted forthrightly when the New York Times published an expose on a widespread pattern of EPA inaction in the face of serious violations of the nation’s primary water quality law, the Clean Water Act.  And she unveiled an Urban Waters Initiative, focused on revitalizing American’s urban waterways, which were often turned into sewers (or nearly that) in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  The Chicago and Los Angeles Rivers—which bisect two of the nation’s largest cities—are examples of the heavily polluted waters the Administrator wants to clean up. The LA River is a particularly stark example of the problem:  it has been channelized and transmogrified to a degree that Los Angeles has let movie companies film car chases within its (concrete) banks (e.g., “Terminator 2”). 

The Administrator knows that the benefits of urban water restoration are many. For a child growing up poor in a city, an urban waterway is often the only river he or she has ever seen in person. Improving urban waterways advances environmental justice. These waterways can support a range of birds and fish, providing much needed habitat in areas that are otherwise paved over or nearly so. And the successful restoration of urban rivers can revitalize neighborhoods and create significant economic activity. There’s nothing not to like about such “triple bottom line” outcomes.

A key to improving water quality in urban rivers is tackling one of the nation’s most stubborn and significant sources of water pollution, urban runoff. Runoff pollution is a toxic brew of pollutants that sweep into local waters when it rains (and because of inefficient water use, even when it’s not raining).   Rainwater and water used in urban settings, such as landscape sprinklers, spill over sidewalks and into streets, where the resulting flow transports a laundry list of pollutants ranging from pesticides, discarded trash, and metals, to oil and grease.  As a result, often data show that urban waters are acutely toxic to aquatic species and laden with fecal bacteria that can make people sick.

That is why EPA’s much-awaited regulatory blueprint for controlling polluted runoff in the nation’s capitol--billed by EPA, itself, as a new, twenty-first century effort--is so perplexing. Washington, D.C. area waters, such as the Anacostia, are heavily polluted and have been, until recently, neglected and overlooked. There can be no more fitting place to make an Urban Waters Initiative real by effectively controlling the pollution source that often makes such rivers foul.  

But EPA’s draft permit, released in late April, does not meet the mark. While it features some laudable efforts to use green infrastructure solutions --permeable pavement, infiltration, cisterns, green roofs, and other techniques to soak up rainwater and decrease unnatural runoff—that is about all it has going for it. (Here’s an earlier blog by me with information about green infrastructure solutions NRDC supports). I have reviewed a large number of these permits, and I was surprised at how many flaws this one now contains, particularly because EPA has called it new and improved.  New, yes.  Improved, not so much. 

I helped draft a long comment letter to EPA setting out necessary improvements with my NRDC colleagues.  Here are a few of the most critical areas that need revision and improvement to make the permit lawful and protect water quality in the nation’s capitol.  

First, the Permit does not require that discharges meet DC’s own water quality standards or those of neighboring states, which surround the District. Not requiring water quality results and ignoring the key Clean Water Act standards that create clean water accountability is bad policy and is unlawful.   Second, the Permit cedes most of the task of drafting its terms to the dischargers regulated by the Permit. That’s right:  many of the pollution control requirements are not specified in this regulatory document—the regulated party discharging the pollution gets to draft the rules. This is bad policy, and it’s illegal. (Does this remind you of something?  If you are thinking the Minerals Management Service’s relationship with the oil industry, that’s what I was thinking of too.  EPA can and should do better.) Third, the Permit does not provide clearly for EPA review and public comment on the key programs developed to stem pollution.   Fourth, the Permit does not adequately implement a key Clean Water Act program to improve the condition of polluted waterways, by measuring and requiring verifiable reductions in pollution discharges.

EPA staff should take a hard look at the draft and make these and other needed improvements.  NRDC and other organizations stand ready to work with EPA to help them do it, and give the nation’s capitol the effective program to control water pollution they deserve.   Doing so would be a critical step in advancing Administrator Jackson’s urban water restoration efforts—and would show that EPA means business when it comes to assuring that all Americans have access to clean rivers and streams.