Water Agency Criticizes Environmental Groups' Lawsuits
The National Association for Clean Water Agencies (NACWA) is criticizing litigation spearheaded by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and other environmental activists seeking to force the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to establish controls on all wastewater treatment plants nationwide to address nutrient pollution in our waterways.
“NRDC and the environmental community know full well that simply forcing wastewater treatment plants to install costly treatment upgrades will not solve the nutrient pollution problem but will just lead to higher rates for already cash-strapped ratepayers and local governments. NACWA calls on these organizations to abandon this litigation and join with us to focus our efforts where the impact will be the greatest: on agricultural operations that account for up to 90% of the nutrient pollution problem in the Gulf of Mexico,” said Ken Kirk, executive director of NACWA.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey and the EPA’s water quality data, the majority of nutrient pollution impairing our waterways is generated by run-off and groundwater leaching from farm fields. Numerous studies have shown that the dominant source of nutrient pollution causing dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere is farms. While wastewater treatment plants are a source of nutrients, they account for less than 10% of the nutrients flowing to the Gulf of Mexico.
On March 13, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and several environmental activist groups filed a federal lawsuit challenging the EPA’s failure to respond to a 2007 petition requesting the Agency add nutrient removal to the current Clean Water Act (CWA) secondary treatment requirements. A similar group of activist organizations, including NRDC, filed a second lawsuit the same day challenging the EPA’s 2011 denial of a petition to establish numeric nutrient criteria for all waters nationwide where such criteria had not been developed but, at a minimum, to establish such criteria for all waters in the Mississippi River watershed and the Gulf of Mexico.
NACWA is analyzing both lawsuits and evaluating all possible legal options in response, including legal intervention in both cases. A technology-based treatment limit for every wastewater treatment plant in the nation—regardless of a demonstrated water quality need—could have astronomical financial costs, with conservative NACWA estimates showing an initial capital cost of more than $280 billion nationally. At a time of financial crisis, when consumers’ water and wastewater bills are rising at unprecedented rates, NACWA believes that there are more cost-effective approaches to controlling nutrient pollution.