News
Page 4
S tre e t R oots • February 20-26, 2015
Underwater
The agency responsible fo r m onitoring
polluters o f Oregon’s waterways is the m ost
backlogged in the country {
BY EMILY GREEN
S T A F F W R IT E R
regon has the stiffest water pollution
regulations of any state in the U.S.
■
Sounds impressive, right?
Think again.
Oregon is dead last nationwide when it
comes to keeping wastewater permits
current with state regulations. According to
the EPA’s most recent data on the status of
each state’s stormwater and wastewater
permits, Oregon has the highest percentage
of expired state-issued permits nationwide.
Most of the state-issued permits polluters
operate under have long-passed their
original expiration dates — in some cases by
20 years or more.
This means these permit holders have to
be in compliance only with laws that existed
when their permits were written, not with
current laws. In the past two decades,
numerous changes to state regulations have
reduced permissible levels of toxics and
temperature in wastewater.
U nder th e Clean Water Act of 1972,
facilities and municipalities releasing'
wastewater directly into U.S. waterways
must adhere to limits outlined in EPA or
state-issued wastewater and stormwater
permits. The Oregon Department of
Environmental Quality issues these permits
in Oregon, under the oversight of the EPA.
Under the Clean Water Act, DEQ is
supposed to revise water-quality standards
every three years and renew each permit
every five years.
But according to DEQ’s current backlog
count, 63 percent of existing state-issued
permits for releasing stormwater and
treated wastewater directly into streams and
rivers are expired. An alarming 76 percent
of major wastewater permits - issued to
facilities with more than 1 million gallons of
wastewater flowing through their treatment
plants every day - also are operating on
administrative extensions. Because permits
are written five years before they expire,
there are many municipal sewage facilities
and several large industrial facilities
operating under permits written in the late
1980s and early 1990s, when regulations
were much less stringent than they are
today.
For example, TDY Industries in Albany -
a metals manufacturer that is one of the
state’s top polluters according to the EPA -
is operating under the parameters of a
wastewater permit that was written in 1988.
Most of the state’s municipal sewage
treatment plants are operating under
expired permits as well. Klamath Falls’ is
the oldest, written in 1990.
The amount of pollution a permit allows
is based on many factors, including the
number and size of other facilities
contributing to the pollution of a waterway,
the temperature of the water and the
condition of wildlife living in the area.
“It’s very circumstantial, and those
circumstances can change, and they do
change, as well as the scientific knowledge,”
says Nina Bell, an attorney who specializes
in the implementation of Clean Water Act
programs as the executive director of
Northwest Environmental Advocates. She
says when the Clean Water Act was written,
Congress understood that science was going
to be changing rapidly and that permits
needed to keep up with it - that’s why
permits are supposed to be rewritten every
five years.
“We have a much better idèa of the
science behind what pollution does to
people, fish and wildlife. And that change in
our scientific understanding is supposed to
be reflected in our water quality standards,”
says Bell. “In that course of time you could
also have species that have come to the
brink of extinction and are listed as
threatened or endangered and need the
protection a new permit might afford. There
could be studies that show there’s
contamination in fish or water that we didn’t
know about the last time the permit was
issued. The amount of water in the stream
that dilutes the pollution could change over
that period of time as well - whether
because there are more withdrawals or from
the effects of climate change,” she says.
In 2012, Oregon’s waterways were ranked
the 33rd most polluted in the nation,
according to the Environmental Protection
Agency’s Toxics Release Inventory.
o why is DEQ allowing polluters to
operate under such outdated
parameters? It’s not because polluters
are fading to reapply for new permits. They
are applying on time, which removes their
liability. According to DEQ, it just doesn’t
have the resources it needs to do its job.
Greg Aldrich has worked for DEQ for 15
years and is the former head of its water
quality program. He’s seen backlogs like the
one DEQ is experiencing before. He says
the program was the most backlogged in the
nation in the early 2000s as well, but then
DEQ ramped the water program’s funding,
creating more positions, and it started to
catch up.
Then the recession h it
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See UNDERWATER, page 5