United States Office of Volume 16, Number 6 Environmental Protection Communications and November/December 1990 Agency Public Affairs 20K-9006 ~EPA JOURNAL

Saving the Nation's Great Water Bodies United States Office of Communications &EPA JOURNAL Environmental Protection Agency and Public Affairs

Saving the Nation's Great Water Bodies

William K. Reilly Admi.nistrator Lew Crampton Associate Administrator for Communications and Public Affairs Charles Osolin Director of Publications

John Heritage Editor Karen Flagstad Associate Editor Ruth Barker Assistant Editor Jack Lewis Assistant Editor Nancy Starnes Assistant Editor Marilyn Rogers Circulation Manager

Design Credits Ron Farrah James R. lng r<1m reat American water bodies ran ging from San Fran cisco Bay in Robert Flanagan Gthe West to Long Island Sound in the eastern United States are endan gered in a number of ways. as articles in this issue of EPA Journal illustrate. The problems range from habitat destructi on to toxic contamination, from depleted oxygen levels to the diversion of tributa ry waters. How can these national treasures be saved? The predominant theme in this sp ecial report of the magazine is that there is no Front Cover: Lake Michigan on a sing le solutio n . The problems are too diverse; the personalities of cloudy day. Sec article on page 5 . the water bodies are too different. Photo by Mike Brisson. Instead , in a point introduced by Administrator Reilly and reinforced by other contributors, it is proving necessary to fashion strategies tailormad e to particular water bodies. This emerging approach reflects lessons learned over 20 years and new insights earned as the nation's water-qual ity efforts m ove into another decade of tough environmental challenges.

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EPA is charged by Congress to protect the nation's land, air, and water systems. Under a mandate of national environmental laws, the Agency strives to formula te and implement actions which lead to a compa ti ble balancl' between human activities and the ability of natural systems to support and nurture life. [PA /01m11i/ is publi hcd by the U.S. Environmt'ntal Protection Agency. The Admin is trator of EPA has determined that the publication of this periodical is necessary in thl' transactio n of thP public business required by law of this agency. Use of fu nds for p rinting this periodical has been approved by the Di rector of the O ffi ce of Management and Budget. Views expressed by authors do not necessaril y reflect EPA policy. No permission necessary to reproduce contents except copyrighted photos and other materials. Contributions and inquiries should be addressed to the Editor, EPA /011mal (A-107), Waterside Mall, 401 M Street, SW., Washington, O .C. 20460 VOLU ME 16 NUMBER 6 20K-9006 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1990

Contents 2 A Strategy to Save the Great Water Bodies 38 The Southern California Bight: Where -It's a big challenge, but there are ways to Traditional Approaches Won't Work­ meet it and im portant reasons to get the job Massive population pressures are forcing done. By William K. Reilly futuristic clean-up measures. By Wesley Marx 5 Toxics in the Great Lakes-The clean-up task 42 The Ogallala Aquifer, an Underground has gotten a lot more complicated, and in some Sea-This natural wonder is invisible to the People, boats, and the ways, more urgent. naked eye but not out of the reach of unwise water-ingredients in the By Theo Collmrn a11d l~ichard A. Liroff exploitation. By fa k Lewis mystique of our water bodies. g Citizens and the Gulf of Mexico-- 45 The Quetico-Superior Lakes: Tainted b y The story of a citizens' awakening, a critical step Surpris e--These wilderness lakes are removed fo r the fu ture of a water body. By Wesley Marx from most pollution, except what is coming from the air. By Denn Re/111ffo11i. 13 Runoff and the Chesapeake Bay-What happens on the la nd is determining the fa te of 48 Managing Nature in the Everglades-This this remarkable water resource. "river of grass" is now in humans' charge, and By William C. Baker a11d Tom Horton its fu ture depends on our wisdom. By /a111rs \Vcb/1 Pollution-Prevention Tactics in the Gulf of 17 51 The Eco-Invaders-The intrusions of the zebra Maine--Plans are afoot to pro/eel this water mussel, the sea lamprey, and some other aquatic body, instead o f waiting for damage that has n uisances are considered from the perspecti e of to be corrected. By Melissa Water111a11 geological history. By DaPid Yo1111 t 20 San Francisco Bay, Beset by Freshwater 54 An Independent Perspective-An outside Diversion-Can this resource survive observer presents his "biases" on how to ave California's thirst for water? By Harry Semydaria11 the nation's great wa ter bodies. By Willia m M . [ich/11111111 23 An Early Success for the Delaware Bay­ How a cooperative effort brought some major 57 Measuring Environmental Success-How pollution sources under control. By Brn ce Stutz do we know whether efforts to clean up the major bodies of water are really ucceeding? 26 Long Island Sound: Facing Tough Choices By Stel'<' G/0111/1 - The author argues that timing and the art of the possible are crucial elements in the clean-up 60 Looking Forward in the Office of Water­ effort. By j. R. Scl111/1el The Assistant Administrator of this EPA office spells out her vision for the nation's water 29 Financing the Cleanup of Puget Sound­ quali ty efforts. By Laj11a11a S. Wilcher This area is adopting innovative approaches to the dil emma of how to pay the pollution-control 64 Appointments-Profiles of key officials bill. By A1111elle Frahm recently named at EPA . 34 An Environmental Snapshot of the Mississippi- Human im prints have shaped the environmental character of the "Mighty Miss.," from the river's start in Min nesota to its fi ni sh in the Lo uisiana delta. By Reggie McLeod

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by William K. Reilly

heir v~ry names-Ogallala and About one-third of the nation's TOntario, Champlain and sewage. effluents in 1980, for example, C~es~peake, Mississippi and were d ischarged into coastal and M1ch1.gan-echo with the poetry of marine waters. Habitat destruction American legend and evoke the glories industrial and municipal dischar g ~s . o~ Amer~can history. Our heritage as a c1vil1zat1on is indelibly intertwined with the cadence of these, the names of the nation's great waters. We are a highly Yet despite their inestimable value, compl:!rtmentalized agency, both cultural and practical, the nation's wa.ters have been damaged by the organized to control and clean up pollution ... not to po1sonous by-products of 20th century Mike Bnsson photo soc1ety. Whatever their specific prevent it. designation-lake, estuary, or aquifer; s?und, bight, or gulf; bay, wetland, or river- our great water ecosystems are runoff, and atmospheric deposits (in more than 95 billion gallons a day. (See increasingly troubled. As these huge story on the Ogallala Aquife r on page bas111s accumulate contaminants, they the early 1980s I recall being surprised at learning that up to three-fourths of 42). In some places, ground water that lose their bounty and beauty. They remains is threatened by injection of become septic tanks and toxic sinks. the PCBs in the Great Lakes were thought to come from air waste and contaminated waters, The final verdict on our seeping pesticides, failing septic deposition) : the combined'burden is turn-of-th.e-millennium civilization may systems, landfills and surface clearly overwhelming some of our most well rest in substantial part on our impoundments, accidental spills, and valuable, productive ecosystems. ability to restore the vast productivity general nonpoint runoff. Water bodies such as the Chesapeake of our nation's great bodies of water. And finally, rare and criti cal aquatic Bay and the great ri vers of the Middle Obviously, the great water bodies are h abitats everywhere are threatened. West p rovide critical habitat for d irectly affected by the human Arctic tundra, subtropical mangrove migratory waterfowl and other species. activities that surround them; and, swamps, temperate prairie pot holes, perhaps less obviously, the fate of these Yet this valuable habitat has degraded wild rivers, pristine lakes: These are to the point of endangering many ecosystems w ill, in turn, d irectl y affect truly unique ecosystems. and they waterfowl species. Es tuaries and the li ves of the great majority of support a rich mix of wildlife, some Americans. Our coasts and estuaries are wetlands serve as nurseries or endangered. Indeed , we are only now spawning grounds for most suffering the effects of one of the great beginning to understand the important migrations of modern times: Jn 1987, commercially important species of fish role they play in the wider ecosystem. more than 125 mill ion people-over and shellfish. Yet valuable Yet they are all disappearing at an shetlfisheries have vanished completely half the total U.S. population- lived on astonishing rate-faster, in fact, than the 10 percent of the nation's land that from many estuaries. Oyster harvests in we are rescuing them. the Chesapeake, for instance, are at a fa lls within 50 miles of a coastline; by What is to be done? How can we historic low. One hundred years ago, the year 2000, three-quarters or more of address these vexing problems? our people w il l live on that narrow slice there were so many oysters in the bay Shortly after I became Administrator, of land along the coasts. that they fi ltered the entire volume of I asked EPA's Science Advisory Board Coastal waters, therefore, are bearing water every four or five days. Today, ii (SAB) to review the Agency's ability to an unsusta inable burden. They receive takes about a year to accomplish the iden tify and solve our most serious the pollution generated by millions of same task. Legendary fish species are in environmenta l issues. The SAB report, people who live and work nearby. and trouble , deep trouble: The striped bass, Reducing Risk: Setting Priorities and Maryland's beloved "rockfish" (a lso in they are loaded w ith the cumulative Strategies for En vironmental Proteclion, impacts over years of discharges from the Chesapeake), comes to mind. released this past September, thousands of upstream and watershed Meanwhile, ground-water spotlighted EPA's continui ng neglect of sources. withdrawals have tripled since 1950 to natural ecosystems-wetlands, estuaries, and forests. For years, the SAB noted, EPA and (Reilly is Administrator of EPA.) its statutes have fo cused the Agency's

2 EPA JOURNAL attention chiefly on risks to human health, less so on ecological degradation. The SAB found this balance to be insufficient. Natural ecosystems support all human activities, including, of course, economic enterprises. They also have intrinsic values independent of human use that are worthy of protection. Accordingly, the SAB urged EPA to attach as much importance to ecological values as to human health The c'hallenge posed by our great water bodies. protecting a resource risks. that benefits society 1n many ways. This recommendation comes as no surprise. [n fa ct, it calls attention once again to EPA's original mission-to see the world whole, to see it as di verse, productive. and interconnected . Unfortunately, time, turf, and the balkanized nature of environmental legislation have taken their tol I on the vision that initially was lo guide EPA. We are a highly compartmentali zed agency, organized to control and clean up pollution, medium-by-med ium, chemical-by-chemical- not to prevent it. As a result, we often have simply been cycling problems through our

In the Great Lakes, fortunately, a model approach based on ecological perspectives is taking shape.

system, seldom really solving them. We took toxics from smokestacks, turned them into sludge, dumped the sludge somewhere on the landscape, and then watched the inevitable runoff and leachate contaminate our water. Indeed, nowhere has this frustrating cycle been more apparent than in our efforts to deal with waler quality. Skip Brown photo. Maiyfand Sea Grant In response, in part, the 1987 Coastal waters are bearing an amendments to the Clean Water Act unsustainable burden due in part to the established the National Estuary large, continuing influx of-residents and vacationers to shoreline areas. Program to bring a collecti ve foc us to

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1990 3 federal. state, and local efforts to protect these magnificent waters. A resources, but they traditionally have protect the nation's most significant new generation of industrial leadership authority in many areas of land use and estuaries. The idea is to bring to bear is emerging, and we want to work with water planning critical to restoring the the best efforts of public entities and this group wherever we can to cut toxic lakes. private groups, to apply the range of emissions voluntarily, cut them Citizen groups, too, have an essential available tools and techniques to the sharply, cut them soon. We also are role. The mushrooming land trust unique problems of an estuary. strengthening our multi-media movement, public-private partnerships Regulatory tools that different enforcement capabilities so that, as such as the Des Plaines wetlands governments have at their disposal warranted, we look al the overall restoration project, which I recently include standards, permits, pollution problem at a facility-not visited, voluntary education and enforcement, local zoning ordinances, piecemeal, not medium-by-medium, not tree-planting programs: Government and building codes; nonregulatory air or water, but in its entirety. cannot do the job alone, and the Great techniques include education, technical Nonpoint runoff is another major Lakes benefit handsomely from the assistance, voluntary action, and problem with no easy answers. The energy and imagination of private negotiations. There are now 17 region around the Great Lakes suffers groups. Thus, outreach. consultation, designated estuaries. The estuary from all of the usual sources of runoff. and communication are increasingly program anticipates two distinct including farms and urban surfaces. important activities. phases: first, problem identification and Because the economy of the basin is Realizing our ambitious goals for the planning; and second, implementation. essentially industrial, the region Great Lakes will require the best efforts Most estuary programs are still in the also suffers significant runoff problems of our Great Lakes Program and our planning phase. If this approach is to from industrial sites and mining regional and program offices. It's worth meet its objectives and prove useful for operations. These sources continue to it. The potential payoff is enormous, targeting other water resources-such contribute pollutants that contaminate not just for the Great Lakes but in as lakes, rivers, and wetlands-then we bottom sediments and accumulate in fashioning a model for how we move need to speed the process along. fish and wildlife. And eutrophication forward, from planning to In the Great Lakes, fortunately. a from excess nutrients is still more than implementation, to protect and restore model approach based on ecological a nuisance in many areas. the nation's other great water bodies. perspectives is taking shape. Jn this Protecting critical habitat will require A decade ago one of the world's unsurpassed watershed, we are restoring habitat such as submerged leading naturalists, Jacques Cousteau, pursuing restoration through a variety aquatic vegetation and riparian zones. was walking with his son Jean-Michel of methods. The need for flexibility is And it will require implementing along a riverbank in the Amazon. After dictated by the immense variety and President Bush's "no-net-loss" goal for a while, Jacques turned to Jean-Michel complexity of the watershed itself: Lake wetlands as soon as possible in the and said, "If we want to save anything, Superior, for example, remote and Great Lakes. To achieve this goal, we we have to remember that people relatively underpopulated; or Lake Erie, must gain the public's cooperation and protect what they love." with vastly different problems, once improve its understanding of the Cousteau's words, so eloquent with choked by eutrophication, now sporting pivotal role of wetlands in the overall respect to the magnificent Amazon a variety of fish life, yet also plagued functioning of ecosystems-particularly rainforest, ring equally true with by new invaders such as the zebra those that are highly stressed, such as respect to the great water bodies and mussels, an exotic species with as yet some found in the Great Lakes system. other aquatic systems of the United no predator to check its numbers (see We may want to explore classification States. Whether it is Long Island Sound story on page 51). systems to assure that the fullest or Puget Sound, San Francisco Bay or EPA is trying an approach of protection is afforded to high-value the Chesapeake, the Gulf of Mexico or whole-systems environmentalism. We wetlands. This is not a new idea; it the Arctic tundra, it is time to get are trying to use the most advanced does require improving the state of serious about protecting what we love. technology available, including satellite wetlands science and crafting a Clearly we do love our great water imagery, to identify the hot spots in the protection scheme that respects the bodies: We flock to them to live, to Great Lakes ecosystem. Then, like the great diversity of wetlands. It needs to work, and to play. They are part of our estuary program, using a variety of overcome the perception that it is heritage, part of our consciousness. Let methods, we will craft solutions tantamount to writing off certain us vow not to let their glory pass from tailored to local circumstances. In wetlands. Its potential is to reconcile this good Earth. o developing the strategies, we will the engine of development-particularly address at least three persistent the highways and airports and other problems: the deposition of pollutants projects that bring local economic through the air; runoff from benefits-with the wetlands that agricultural, urban, and other nonpoint provide essential ecological benefits. sources; and restoration of critical In putting all these pieces together, habitat. we are seeking the support and We already know that air sources are involvement of the states and the major contributors of both toxic and national and provincial governments of acidic pollutants to the Great Lakes. Canada. The states in the region, with The new Clean Air Act will help to four new governors, have a crucial role. curb this problem. But we probably Not only do they bring additional need to do more. We intend to go beyond traditional enforcement, fashioning voluntary agreements with the major sources of air pollution to

4 EPA JOURNAL Toxics in the Great Lakes by Theo Colborn and Richard A. Liroff

CA ADA

he Great Lakes hold approximately T20 percent of the world's supply of fresh surface water. Because of their vast size and favorable habitat, the lakes and their environs serve as I nesting grounds to innumerable animal ' WISCO SIN species. The Great Lakes basin is home \ to 35 million Americans and ' Canadians. __ _j Superficially. the recovery of the lakes from their degraded condition of ~ £\· YORK ~ the l(lte 1960s, when the press \ \----- pronounced Lake Erie dead or dying ------~ and television viewers watched '' Cleveland's Cuyahoga River flaming up _,/ ILLINOIS PEN , SYLVANIA from its surface, suggests that the Great OHIO Lakes are an environmental success \ story. But a more thorough review of I the health of the Great Lakes ecosystem suggests another, more mid-1950s, and continuing to the sobering conclusion: Persistent toxic in the Great Lakes are of global present, numerous reports about substances continue to circulate within significance. unhealthy animals in the Great Lakes the system. basin have appeared in scientific Determining the source of these Weaving the Threads of literature and government reports. substances has led to even more the Toxics Story Populations of top predator animals in sobering conclusions. In some In 1987, World Wildlife Fund and The the basin suffered-and still instances, the major sources are Conservation Foundation in suffer-serious Iy. believed to be thousands of miles away. Washington, DC, and The Institute fo r The plight of the animals raised Airborne pesticides, such as DOT and Research and Public Policy in Ottawa, questions concerning the risks to toxaphene; industrial chemicals, such Ontario, launched a two-year project to humans who depend upon the same as PCBs; and metals, such as mercury produce a "State of the Environment" resources as the wildlife. In essence. and cadmium, are entering the Great report for the Great Lakes basin. We the Great Lakes lJasin became a natural Lakes on air currents from outside the found that the Great Lakes had been laboratory in which to test the lakes' basin. diligently researched by a community association between health problems Even worse, through their of wildlife biologists whose studies had and persistent toxic substances. At peak magnification in the food web, these driven wildlife toxicology to its cutting contamination levels in the late 1960s substances pose a threat to the wildlife edge. But the many sources of data still and early 1970s, numerous wildlife and human residents of the Great Lakes needed to be synthesized and made species were exhibiting severe basin who consume fish from the lakes. meaningful for policymakers. Not until population stress. The persistence and biomagnification of we completed our survey of the Prompted by concerns about human toxic substances in aquatic ecosystems existing scientific literature, making health, policymakers made grcnt strides new linkages, did we appreciate the in restricting the use of such mnjor true dimensions of the toxics problem. contaminants as DDT, dieldrin, and (Colborn is a Senior Fellow al. World The poisoning of the lakes' wil dlife PCBs. They instituted permit systems to Wi ldlife Fund and The Conservation has its roots in industrial and manage direct discharges of wastes into Foundation and a Fellow at th e W. agricultural development. Following the lakes. Concentrations of many Alton ]ones Foundation. Liroff directs World War rI, the Great Lakes basin chemicals declined strikingly in the Central and Eastern Europe attracted large chemical and sediments and fish and wildlife tissues Program at World Wildlife Fund and manufacturing complexes. Its in the late 1970s. However, reductions The Conservation Foundation. Both are agricultural sector boomed. The lakes in contamination tapered off around co-authors of Great Lakes, Great became convenient receptacles for the 1980-1981 , and concentrations are Legacy?, the report on which this wastes of these activities. It is not holding at levels serious enough to article is based.) surprising that beginning in the cause public health authorities to issue NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1990 5 Although big fish are fun to catch, people are being urged not to eat older, heavier trout a.nd salmon caugrt 1n the Great Lakes.

warnings about eating certain sizes and species of fish. Current concentrations of all the above chemicals still affect wildlife that use the lakes as their home or nesting ground, especially those that are dependent upon fish from the Jakes. Most importantly, the individ.ual animals suffering the most in wildlife populations are the young. Young birds, fish, mammals, and reptiles exhibit a suite of untoward health effects that eventually cause premature death or abnormal development. These include metabolic changes manifested in a condition called "wasting": animals appear lethargic, lose their appetites and weight, and die prematurely. More subtle changes include organ damage. These include: thyroid and heart problems; a liver condition called porphyria, or abnormal metabolism of iron; reduced levels of vitamin A in critical tissues; male birds growing ovarian tissue, and female birds growing excessive oviduct tissue; male fish not reaching full sexual maturity; and hermaphroditism in fish. In addition, there are such obvious Mike Bosson photo. effects as birth defects and behavioral changes. Cancer is not as prevalent a problem as these other effects. The problems in the offspring are the Toxic Substance Effects on Cells last stage in a sequence of events that begins with maternal exposure to one Almost all the toxic substances development. For example, as a or more toxicants and transfer of those discussed in this article affect result of specific enzyme toxicants to the egg or fetus. Jn most developing cells in two and activation, a developing organism cases, the adult animals show no sometimes three ways. First, they may fl ush fat-soluble hormones visible signs of ill health, except block communication between fro m the body that are essential abnormal behavior. cells. During early stages of for triggering normal endocrine The fate of bald eagles in the Great development, messages can be development. Third, the Lakes basin illustrates the association interrupted that tell immature chemicals can act as female of population effects and toxic cells how to migrate and hormones, interfering with the substances. It now appears that the differentiate as they produce differentiation of the endocrine lakes have become an ecological black tissue: nerves, brain, spinal cord, system. For example, they can hole for the eagle. Healthy, immigrant bones, appendages, gonads, heart, imprint a female message in the and so forth. brain (hypothalamus gland) Second, the chemicals activate regardless of the chromosomal sex enzyme systems that under determination of the individual. normal conditions would not be In all these cases, timing of activated. These enzyme systems exposure is critical. can interfere with normal ------6 EPA JOURNAL birds establish territories along the substances, such as PCBs and DOE, dieldrin, HCB (hexachlorobenzenej, shoreline, but after two years of feeding than inland populations. lindane, mirex, toxaphene, and on Great Lakes prey, they start losing Laboratory studies of toxic mercury, to mention a few. The same their ability to raise viable young. contaminants of concern in the Great chemicals found in wildlife induce the These shoreline populations have Lakes reinforce these conclusions. same suite of health effects in a number higher concentrations of toxic These include PCBs, dioxins, furans, of laboratory animals. For example, PCBs and dioxins have been associated in the laboratory with wasting, loss of vitamin A, immune suppression, A Misplaced Emphasis on Cancer? feminization, porphyria, organ damage, The evidence from the Great Lakes fish for at least six years and birth defects. A number of Lakes indicates that the current prior to their pregnancy do dose-response studies in the field and emphasis in national indeed experience subtle, but the laboratory support these environmental health policy on measurable and significant associations. cancer may be drawing attention deficits in intelligence, behavior, away from other health effects and motor coordination. Long-Range Atmospheric Transport that may be even more prevalent. The effects are truly subtle; of Pollutants The chemicals found in the Great they are apparent only to Some of the more troublesome Lakes ecosystem, and in almost scientists and in carefully pollutants are generated beyond the every other highly industrialized conceived experiments. These watersheds of the Great Lakes. and agrichemical area, can cause experiments reveal children For example, Lake Superior is generally . changes in body functions, such disadvantaged because their acknowledged to be the cleanest of the as the nervous, immune, and cognitive, social, and behavioral Great Lakes. Fewer humans inhabit its endocrine systems. They act as skills are less than might be watershed, and the watershed has functional teratogens. They do not expected under normal much less industrial and agricultural cause obvious gross birth defects circumstances. The long-term activity than the other Great Lakes or cancer at the doses to which social and economic effects of watersheds. Yet anglers fishing in Lake most human populations are this damage, from the individual Superior are warned not to consume exposed. to the national level, are not yet lake trout larger than 30 inches because The same chemicals found in fully understood. of PCB contamination. Scientists wildlife are found in human More resources must be made estimate that approximately 90 percent blood and fat. More importantly, available so that Great Lakes of the PCBs in Lake Superior enter the they are found in all tissues and environmental, wildlife, public lake from the atmosphere. organs associated with the human health, and medical professionals This long-range transport is not reproductive system-semen, can share their research findings unusual. The atmosphere is the primary testicles, follicular fluid in the to better assess the subtle effects source of mercury contamination in ovaries, placentae, and breast of toxic chemicals on wild and northern Minnesota. (See article on milk. human populations. We are page 45.l Sediment mercury There is an urgent need to learn certain that as this idea spreads, concentrations there have increased more about the effects of their public health agencies will two percent per year since 1938. As a presence in these tissues. The develop improved research result, the rate of fish-tissue mercury effects in human offspring protocols that include endocrine, uptake has increased. The fresh DDT in resulting from prenatal and neurological, and immunological the lakes is suspected to come from postnatal low-dose exposure to considerations. Central America. It comes as no lead, alcohol, and cigarette smoke As funds are redirected to these surprise, then, that elevated are now widely accepted, but endpoints, biologic markers of concentrations of contaminants are only after many years of denial by exposure and subsequent markers found in wildlife in remote areas skeptics. In a related vein, it has of abnormal development will be around the globe: for example, the been demonstrated that, almost 10 identified. Building upon this Arctic. These concentrations, years after their birth, those base, regulators can then give attributable to the phenomenon of offspring of women who ate one greater weight to the functional long-range atmospheric transport, or two meals a month of Great teratogenic effects of toxic remind us that the problems found in substances.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1990 7 Cleveland's Cuyahoga River has made a dramatic recovery since its notorious surface fire in the late 1960s.

Grearer Cleveland Growrh Assoc1ar1on pho!o the Great Lakes signal more widespread EPA is not organized to J eal with the A new approach, in which problems. toxic chemicals in the Great Lakes. The concentration limits in specific wildlife Great Lakes cannot be protected solely species are used as indicators of water New Policy and by a traditional water-pollution control quality, has been endorsed by the Research Directions program. If the Assistant International Joint Commission and a Administrators develop a successful number of environmental organizations. The Great Lakes experience reveals that program, it could be a model for other For example, a committee reporting to traditional environmental protection areas of contamination. the International Joint Commission has programs have been inadequate for Second, far-sighted officials are recommended that, because it sits at lowering persistent toxic substances to examining the science developed by the top of the Great Lakes food web and safe levels in the environment, and wildlife toxicologists and ecologists in is so sensitive, the bald eagle should public health programs have not been the basin and are exploring innovative "be used as an ecosystem objective to properly oriented to assess the human adaptations of their techniques for define the virtual elimination of health effects of these substances. assessing human health in areas of high persistent toxic substances from the Public health remains at risk. New contamination along the shorelines of Great Lakes Basin Ecosystem." The approaches are necessary. For example, the lakes. The International Joint objective would specify how many national public health programs should Commission of Canada and the United pairs of eagles live around the lakes, be redirected to account more fully for States have been bringing together how productive they are, and what the non-cancer. developmental impacts multidisciplinary experts to discuss should be the maximum concentrations of chemicals on human health. The toxics in wildlife and humans. In this of toxic substances in eagle eggs and subtle health effects manifested in way, the commissioners hope to brains. A flourishing bald eagle wildlife offspring and in the children of motivate regulators to move beyond population around the lakes would Lake Michigan fish-eaters (see box on conventional approaches to solving signal a truly meaningful improvement page 7) cannot be ignored. contaminant problems. in the integrity of the Great Lakes Several actions taken within the last Third, public officials are seeking ecosystem. o two years are steps in the right alternatives to control strategies based direction. First, EPA Administrator on standards that measure William K. Reilly announced earlier concentrations of pollutants in water this year that membership of the Great alone. Generally, the concentration in Lakes Advisory Committee would be lake water of any one of the chemicals expanded to include all of EPA 's mentioned above is below the detection Assistant Administrators; that limit and thereby meets present representatives of major EPA programs water-quality standards. However, would meet monthly to explore options because of biomagnification, the for attacking the Great Lakes' toxic chemicals can accumulate in fish tissue problems. This acknowledges, in effect, to levels that are harmful to wildlife that what worked for phosphates in the and humans. lakes won't work for toxic substances. EPA JOURNAL B Citizens and the Gulf of Mexico

by Wesley Marx

long the Gulf of Mexico's crescent • Toxic red tides are becoming more 1969, Louisiana has received 26 Ashore, stretching 1,631 miles from frequent and severe. In 1986, one red Presidential disaster relief designations, Brownsville, Texas, to the Florida Keys, tide in Texas killed some 22 million with all but two related to floods and more and more concerned citizens are fish. Nutrient-rich farm runoff and hurricanes. The state leads the nation joining the challenge to protect a urban sewage may help nurture the in repeat damage claims to the National remarkable marine heritage. The gulf noxious algal blooms. Flood Insurance Program. 40 sustains percent of the nation's • Texas spends $14 million a year to commercial fish catch by volume and prevent its beaches from being buried There are no easy solutions to such one-third of the nation's marine by trash. Padre Island National awesome problems. Take the problem sport-fishing activity. Over 90 percent Seashore absorbs up to 10 tons of trash of delta land loss. Over geologic time, of the fishing stocks, from shrimp to per mile each year! deltas gain and lose land as flounder, rely on bays and coastal sediment-bearing rivers change wetlands to spawn, nurse, and rear. • In Florida, urban development has channels. But manmade changes can Today, these estuarine and coastal areas destroyed 22,000 acres of another accelerate this process. are being overtaken by some of the critical coastal habitat, mangrove Levees protect delta cities from nation's worst extremes in pollution forests. Galveston Bay in Texas has lost floods. They also block the overflows of and habitat loss. 96 percent of its seagrass beds to river silt that form and sustain the delta dredge and fill operations. plain. Ergo, the delta retreats; the gulf • Nearly 60 percent of the region's advances. Oil company canals that slice shellfish growing areas are subject to • Loss of sand dunes and other natural through remaining wetlands permit permanent or periodic public-health storm buffers can contribute to the region's soaring disaster liability. Since more salt water to intrude. More closures. freshwater marsh and cypress forests die. The land that erodes also sinks as oil pumping reduces underground pressures. How do you convince a region to change the very activities that sustain its economy? Enter the citizen environmentalist.

Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana Rob Gorman is a Catholic Church social worker who wants to save marshes, swamp forests, and oyster beds: "If the delta drowns, we lose a land that has sustained thousands of families for generations. That is not just an environmental tragedy. That is a social tragedy." Gorman helped found the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana in 1986. The Coalition brings together over 100 clubs and businesses, including the Louisiana Wildlife Federation, the Terrebone Parish government. and the League of Women voters. The Coalition works for major policy initiatives that treat the delta as a dynamic ecosystem, (Marx is the author of The Frail Ocean not just a piecemeal resource. A task (1967; revised edition forthcoming in force has been created in the 1991} and The Oceans: Our Last Resource (1982).)

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1990 9 Governor's office to plan and is too early to tell. "We have "We collect data as well as garbage," coordinate wetland protection. ln 1988, established a citizen Coast Watch to explains Maraniss. Debris surveys help state voters, by a three-to-one majority, monitor wetland projects. We want to explain why the Texas shore is so created a wetland restoration fund en sure that funds are spent wisely," trash-prone. Up to 75 percent of the supported by gas and oil revenues that says Gorman. Tough policy decisions trash comes not from beachgoers but added up, in 1990, to $26 million. In lie ahead. Gates installed in levees can from offshore sources-cleaning bottles 1990, Congress passed a bill sponsored restore flows of fresh water and silt to from merchant vessels, egg cartons from by Louisiana Senator John Breaux that dying marshlands. However, such naval ships, fishing gear, hard hats provides $35 million a year for more projects can be opposed by delta from offshore oil crews. wetland projects. residents who don't want to be Instead of transporting such Old or abandoned canals are being relocated from revived floodways. throwaways out of the gulf, the looping backfilled or plugged to resist salt-water gulf currents move the garbage in intrusion. Sand dunes are being Texas Beach Party circles and eventually onto beaches. Nearly 70 percent of the trash items are restored. Freshwater flows are being In 1986, Linda Maraniss, after plastic, which can endure for a century returned to some marshlands. sidestepping trash on a Texas beach, Borrowing from a Dutch technique, the and more. Such long-lived litter can be decided to throw a new form of beach coalition will deploy 250,000 used lethal. Plastic netting can entangle party. Now the director of the Texas Christmas trees as silt-trapping brush seabirds. Plastic bags can clog the branch of the center for Marine digestive tract of endangered marine fences. Such fences dampen or reduce Conservation, she works with the Texas wave action. Silt can settle out and turtles. State Land Office to coordinate annual rebuild marshland. As the Texas surveys showed, beach cleanups that involve up to 8,700 Will such projects slow down or controlling marine debris can require a volunteers. eventually halt erosion of the delta? lt Wesley Marx photo

10 EPA JOURNAL regional and even international and Wildlife Department and with the two states formed a joint Water response. In 1987, Congress ratified an fishing groups like the Gulf Coast Management Council to better international treaty, Annex 5 of Conservation Association, convinced coordinate water quality programs. MARPOL, that bans marine dumping of the Army Corps of Engineers to modify Lane has noticed some gains. "The plastics. Annex 5 came into force in the project to eliminate unconfined water is no longer dark brown. But we 1988. Maraniss now uses the debris open-water dredge disposal. continue to have noxious blooms of surveys to monitor compliance. GBF recruitP.d 100 community scum algae. We are concerned about "Indicator trash items can tell us how volunteers to transplant cordgrass along nutrient loadings and dioxin emissions well certain marine activities are a section of eroding tidal shore. "The from the paper mill. Elevated levels of complying," she says. The annual cordgrass will retard erosion and dioxin have been found in speckled beach cleanup and debris survey is provide habitat for shrimp and other trout throughout the bay." now a gulfwide, and nationwide, event. marine life," says Shead. To restore more habitat. volunteers planted 5 ,000 National Estuary Program Galveston Bay Foundation young cypress trees in the Trinity River for Sarasota Bay Delta. The most productive bay in Texas is The dedication and talent of gulf also the most threatened. Galveston citizen groups are being tapped by Friends of Perdido Bay Bay, which provides nursery and EPA's National Estuary Program for spawning grounds for 30 percent of the Jackie Lane lives beside Perdido Bay, a Florida's Sarasota Bay. The EP fishing stocks harvested along the small estuary on the Alabama-Florida Sarasota Bay project has identified Texas coast, is flanked by the nation's border. A biologist who teaches at restoration of inter-tidal habitat as a key largest petrochemical complex and its Penascola Junior College, she first opportunity in the ongoing eighth largest metropolitan area. The became concerned about the bay in development of a comprehensive action Galveston Bay Foundation (GBF), 1985. The waters had turned dark plan. Under EPA's Early Action founded in 1987, is a coalition of brown and smelly. There were fish Program, a grant was awarded to help environmental and bay user groups that kills. A small clam species that Lane fund a demonstration restorat ion serves as an advocate for the bay. was studying disappeared. "You felt project. The Florida Department of "We are actively opposing a proposed filthy after swimming in the bay. I was Natural Resources provided matching water storage dam, Wallisville, which disgusted," recalls Lane. With other funds and design expertise to transform would reduce freshwater inflows to the concerned residents, she formed a bayfront parking Jot into inter-tidal bay," explains Linda Shead, executive Friends of Perdido Bay. habitat. The City of Sarasota, which director of GBF. Freshwater inflows Today, under a pilot project with owns the site, acted as lead agency in supply nutrients and sustain lower EPA's Near Coastal Waters Program, the doing the actual excavation and salinity levels vital to the bay's most Friends help operate a volunteer restoration work. valuable crop, oysters. A major monitoring project. "We collect data on The work required the planting of channel-dredging project would have such things as dissolved oxygen levels, 19,000 plugs of cordgrass as well as dumped dredge spoil in the bay, nutrient levels, and rainfall." The numerous young mangrove trees. The endangering valuable oyster grounds. project uses eight stations in the bay, city asked for volunteers. Groups like GBF, teaming up with the Texas Parks eight dock sampling stations, three the Florida Conservation Association, remote weather stations, and three the Sarasota Sport Fishing Club, and rainfall stations. "We use hand-held the Sarasota County Drop-Out computer systems to record and Prevention Program responded. In the transfer data to a computer system in first week of December 1990, over 100 an EPA laboratory at Gulf Breeze." volunteers materialized to undertake Such data help record trends in bay the greening of the former parking lot. conditions. The major discharger into Next on the restoration list: an the bay is a paper mill located on a bay eight-acre site on Leffis Key in Manatee tributary, Twelvemile Creek. "We County that will become more operate a station in the creek to help inter-tidal habitat. monitor the mill discharge." In another Early Action Program, Advertising riches from the Gulf Initial efforts to clean up discharges some 325 feet of seawall will give way of Mexico, sea-food stands like into the bay were hampered by split to another inter-tidal area on the this one in Aransas Pass, Texas, are part of the local culture. jurisdiction between Alabama and bayfront campus of New College in Florida. With support from the Friends, Sarasota. The NEP Program has

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1990 11 EPA phoro

contracted witb the College to accomplish this. "The lawn behind the seawall will become a seagrass meadows. Seawall rubble will go to a facility that recycles old cement," says Judith Morris, who coordinates the college's Environmental Studies Program with her husband, Jona Miller.

Gulf of Mexico Program Since marine life throughout the gulf is so dependent on coastal habitat, protecting this habitat in one state benefits the other four gulf states. Conversely, one state's effort to conserve can be offset by another state's inaction. Recognizing the need for a regional focus, EPA in 1988 established the Gulf of Mexico Program. Located in the Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, GMP receives active GMP worked on a technical document EPA employees and other interested support from 15 federal and state to support this designation for the Gulf citizens helped in a recent Gulf of Mexico resource agencies. Technical of Mexico. In November 1990, the IMO clean-up drive. committees are working on action plans set in motion the process to approve to address habitat loss, nutrient this. The throwaway trash ban will enrichment, and otber key issues on a extend to the Ca rribean. Nations like regional, intergovernmental level. Mexico and Cuba don't want marine "We have established a Citizens dumpers to substitute their shores for Advisory Committee to insure greater U.S. shores. public participation and information Dr. Larry McKinney, director of the exchange in such planning," says Texas Parks and Wi ldlife Department, Program Director Doug Lipka. In nominates another issue for more December 1990, GMP held its first regional allention-"the region's almost biennial symposium on the total inability lo adequately address environmental and economic status of major oil and chemical spills. " the gu lf in New Orl eans, bringi ng According to McKinney, "The rotential together citi zen groups, regulatory for an environmental disaster v ill officials. and policymakers. grow, especially in the confined Building on efforts of the Center for estuaries of the region that also contain Marine Conservation and the Oceanic concentrations of petroleum-refining Society, GMP has worked to secure capacity." more protection fo r the Gulf from As public concern over the gulf's marine debris. Under international law, future grows, the GMP is becoming a semi-enclosed seas vulnerable to debris key catalyst in developing long-term washups can be designated Special solutions. As McKinney has noted, Areas; marine dumping of most trash. "The Gulf Program can provide the not just plastics. is banned. The weave to knit the fabric of an effective Mediterranean. Baltic, Black, and Red gulf-wide entity to accomplish the goal seas, along w ith the Persian and Oman of maintaining a healthy and gulfs, have been so designated by the productive Gulf of Mexico: America's International Maritime Organization. Sea." o

12 EPA JOURNAL Runoff and the Chesapeake Bay

by William C. Baker and Tom Horton

he Chesapeake Bay is North long and up to 25 miles wide, TAmerica's greatest estuary. ln the stretching from Norfolk on its southern Chesapeake, fresh water flowing end to near the Pennsylvania border on seaward from nearly 50 rivers mixes its northern end. Its broad waters are with sea water from the Atlantic ocean fringed with the shoreli ne counties of pushing inland as far as 200 miles. The Maryland and Virginia. At the top of Chesapeake still supports several the map a thin line intrudes: the bay's I I thousand fu ll-time commercial seafood major tributary, the Susquehanna River. harvesters and produces half the In fact, the bay in proper perspective I nation's catch of blue crabs and a fifth is about fourteen-fifteenths dry land. If ~ of its oysters. Well over two mH!ion we follow the upstream, branching < people still fish and hunt for sport 3: paths of the Susquehanna and the \ :s there each year. dozens of other tributary rivers, I However, in the last quarter century I 0 including the Potomac and the James, the great bay of Maryland and Virginia they extend through nearl y a sixth of has lost to pollution 80 to 90 percent of Washington \ the Eastern Seaboard: from near its underwater grass beds that are Vermont's southern border down close • critical habitat for a multitude of birds to North Carolina, from coal fields in and fish, and a key means by which the estuary cleans itself from sediment and other pollutants. In the same period, dramatic downturns have occurred in There are methods that will its populations of striped bass, or rockfish , its American and hickory control the runoff of shad, yellow perch, alewife and nutrients from farmlands. blueback herring, white perch, and other species. Oyster populations, hit by a combination of disease, overfishing, and pollution, are West Virginia almost to Delaware's estimated to be about one percent of seacoast. This, the true scope of the what they were a century ago. Chesapeake system, comprises a ln 1975, Congressional concern about 64,000-square-mile drainage basin, or environmental trends in the watershed, sloping through all or part Chesapeake led to a major, multi-year of five states, carrying in its runoff the study by EPA, the states surrounding byproducts of everything humans do on the bay, and the District of Columbia. the land toward 4,400 square miles of This resulted in 1983 in an water, including tributaries, at the unprecedented commitment on the part bottom of the watershed. of these jurisdictions to restore the Yet another, even less obvious estuary to health, a task that would take relation between the Chesapeake's years, and probably decades. lands and its waters reinforces its The restoration effort has proceeded vulnerability to pollution. The bay, on several fronts, ranging from the though long and broad, has very little control of toxic chemicals to better water to absorb and dilute pollutants. rt fisheries management, to ambitious is incredibly shall ow; its average depth programs that place a permanent cap less than 22 feet. In contrast to the size on pollution from human sewage, even of the lands that drain to it, the as human population continues to Chesapeake has less than a tenth the increase. volume of water of most of the world's This article examines nearly a decade great coastal and inland water bodies. of attempts to control poll ution In such a context. we can begin to affecting the Chesapeake in one of the understand why land runoff has most challenging of those arenas- the become such a factor in the quality of (Baker is President of the Chesapeake diffuse runoff of pollutants from land. Chesapeake Bay. It is now generall y Bay Foundation and Horton is senior On most maps the Chesapeake Bay is acknowledged that the estuary cannot writer for the Foundation.) a large body of water, some 200 miles be restored to health without dramatic

NOVEMBER/DECE MBER 1990 13 reductions in pollution from the land. Nevertheless, in an average rainfall Accounting for progress in Control of the more traditional sources, year roughly 60 percent of the nitrogen controlling pollution that seeps from like sewage and industrial discharge and 40 percent of the phosphorus that millions of acres of land, rather than pipes, is not enough. does reach the bay are estimated to from a relative handful of discharge come from land runoff, and farms are pipes, has proven difficult in itself. Agricultural Runoff the largest source. In dry years land EPA has estimated that between 1985 Agriculture, principally in Virginia, runoff comprises a smaller proportion and 1990 agricultural phosphorus Maryland, and Pennsylvania, involves of the totals; in wet years, a larger runoff has been reduced by 10.5 more than a quarter of the bay's proportion. These overall bay percent and nitrogen by 9.5 percent. watershed. The runoff of "nutrients," percentages vary widely among This would appear to be a reasonably the nitrogen and phosphorus that are sub-drainage basins. The James, for good start toward the goal of 40-percent prime culprits in the bay's decline, is example, the bay's third largest reduction by the year 2000. several limes as great from farmlands as tributary, is overwhelmingly dominated However, a recent study by the it is from any other source. by nutrients from sewage treatment Metropolitan Washington Council of Excessive nitrogen and phosphorus plants. Governments estimated nutrient cause excessive growth of microscopic A primary goal of the Chesapeake reductions from agriculture in counties floating plant life, or phytoplankton. Bay clean-up effort since 1987 has been drained by the Potomac to be 10 times This helps shade out light needed for to reduce the amount of nutrients that less than reductions projected by using growth by the estuary's underwater get into the water. For sewage, the goal current federal and state accounting grass beds. Overenrichment with is to reduce nutrients by 40 percent methods. plankton also contributes to frequent from 1985 levels; for agricultural Officials have assumed that much of occurrences of low oxygen in the bay's runoff, the goal is reduction by 40 the task of nutrient control could be bottom waters when the plankton percent from an average rainfall year. piggy-backed onto the traditional decomposes. The reductions are supposed to be erosion control programs that have Farming occupies less acreage in the permanent. They are supposed to "cap" been administered for decades under watershed now than it did in 1950, any further growth of nutrients agencies like the Soil Conservation before the bulk of the bay's decline in polluting the bay, even as their sources Service (SCS). Accounting often has water quality began. But the tonnage of continue to grow. involved simply adding up the acres of commercial fe rtilizers per acre has in Such reductions from agriculture farmland that have, in SCS jargon, been many areas doubled or tripled since appear to be achievable and have been "benefitted" by such programs, and that time. Jn addition, modern animal the focus of intensive efforts in all three multiplying their number by a fixed agriculture during the same period has principal bay states for several years tonnage of nitrogen and phosphorus per concentrated cows, hogs, and poultry in now. However, the minimal results acre. densities 5 to 100 times greater than in seen in water quality to date However, it turns out that controlling the 1950s, making it much more underscore the magnitude of the the movement of soil does not difficult to contain runoff of problem of runoff. necessarily control the runoff of nutrient-laden manure. An extreme nutrients placed on the soil. In some case, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, Alice Jane Ltppson drawing Reproduced wnh permission cases, particularly with water-soluble in the Susquehanna river portion of the nitrogen, retarding soil runoff only watershed, generates more than 1 O redirects the nutrient, concentrating billion pounds of manure annually. pollution in ground water where it Farmers in such areas often spread eventually makes its way into streams, more manure on their land than the rivers, and the bay. Worse yet, drain soil can use for growing crops. systems incorporated in some control Frequently they apply commercial methods actually hasten the passage of fe rtilizers as well. The result is soil that nutrients toward waterways. is saturated with excess nutrients. In dry weather, ground water seeping Attached to the soil, the nutrients wash into waterways is the source of toward the bay in overland runoff. virtually all the water flowing to the They can also dissolve in water that bay. This "invisible river" has been percolates below the surface into calculated to approximate roughly the streams and rivers flowing to the magnitude of the James. estuary. Polluted land equals polluted It is not surprising, then, that more water. than a decade of monitoring of A rough idea of agriculture's nutrients flowing down the pollution potential is indicated by Susquehanna into the bay shows only a estimates that humans in the watershed slight drop in phosphorus levels, and a each year generate by their wastes modest increase in nitrogen levels. about 165 million pounds of nitrogen There are methods that will control and phosphorus. Animal wastes and the runoff of nutrients from farmlands. commercial fertil izers account for about Manure can be stored in concrete or a billion pounds. By no means do all steel pits. Winter "cover crops," like these nutrients get into the bay. Sewage rye or winter wheat, will hold soil in treatment removes some nitrogen and place, take up excess nutrients left in substantial quantities of phosphorus the soil, and fix nitrogen from the air. Underwater plants, which are essential After they've been plowed back into the from human wastes; plants and crops for aquatic life, can be suffocated by the remove large quantities of nutrients excessive growth of phytoplankton soil the following spring, the farmer from farmlands. caused by runoff of nutrients such as needs to add less fertilizer. The animal wastes and fertilizers. planting of forested buffer strips

14 EPA JOURNAL A typical scene on the Chesapeake. Runoff from development as well as farming activities disturbs the bay's fragile ecosystem.

Skip Brown phoro. Maryland Sea Grant College. between farm fields and waterways waterways as a well-managed farmland it by as much as 90 percent by weight. appears a good bet to control both can, and up to a thousand times as However, the finer, lighter particles of phosphorus and nitrogen. Providing much as a forest. The abrupt inflow of sediment escape the controls, and it is farmers with more sophisticated soil thousands of tons of soil into a stream these particles that stay suspended in analyses, so that they can apply only as can be as deadly as a spill of oil or raw the water the longest. Water clarity may much fertilizer as their crops require, sewage, more so perhaps, since be degraded despite efficient sediment has shown real success in places like sediment never degrades but keeps trapping. Pennsylvania. getting resuspended by tide and wind How are the states doing? The The problem is that these, like to cloud the water. Chesapeake Bay Foundation recently virtually all agricultural Sediment pollutes by smothering fish conducted random appraisals of pollution-control programs, remain eggs, by tearing at the fragile gills of sediment and stormwater controls in 31 largely voluntary. The results have been just-born fish, and by covering gravel counties and townships from Scranton, that much of the bay states' spending bottoms that are prime habitats for fish Pennsylvania, to Norfolk, Virginia. The on farm runoff control has been skewed spawning and for aquatic insects. survey was not intended to be a to what farmers want, and this is often Farther downriver it may cover oyster statistically precise representation of not what is most cost effective. beds, thereby preventing the the entire watershed. However. it is In sum, it appears that while meeting free-floating young of oysters from probably the most in-depth, the ambitious reduction goals for attaching to clean shells and then independent check in recent years on agricultural runoff to the bay are forming their own. Sediment also what progress state and local possible, they are not likely to be clouds the water, along with the governments are making in controlling achieved without substantial changes in polluted runoff. current programs. Overall, 26 percent of the construction sites were judged to be in Runoff From Development Rainwater washing off full accordance with all requirements Although agricultural use of the urban pavement and other for sediment control by the applicable watershed is the largest contributor to state. By state. Maryland had 42 impervious surfaces can be percent of sites adequate, with Virginia polluted land runoff, by far the fastest shockingly polluted .... growing part of the problem is from the at 19 percent and Pennsylvania, 13 development of open space for percent. Pennsylvania's specifications residences and commerce. were somewhat tougher than those of the other two states. Applying During the next 30 years the plankton blooms fu eled by excess Maryland standards would have raised watershed will go from 11 percent nutrients, and cuts off sunlight to the Pennsylvania to 26 percent adequate. urban and suburban to about 15 bottom. The sunlight is necessary to the Another 66 percent of all sites were percent, an alteration of 1.6 million growth of the submerged grasses that rated inadequate, and five percent, all acres of fields and forest. In Maryland, are critical habitat in streams and in the in Pennsylvania, showed no sign of the most rapidly suburbanizing of the Chesapeake proper. using required sediment controls. three principal bay states, acreage of During the 1970s all three bay states developed land will nearly double. enacted laws designed lo control All three states are upgrading their sediment control programs, but if the Such development creates runoff sediment from developing lands. The results of the survey are typical, large problems that fall into two broad "filter fences" of straw bales and black improvements could be made simply categories: sediment from lands bared cloth that one sees staked into the by enforcing what is already in place. for development, and stormwater ground around roadbuilding and other However, it appears that there are carrying a host of pollutants off the construction sites is one technique. limits to what sediment-control impervious surfaces that have replaced Another is the building of settling structures can contain. Some huge the natural vegetation. ponds to catch and filter water draining highway projects around Annapolis, for Whenever it rains, an acre of land from the sites. example, which were not part of the cleared for construction can flush a These controls cannot eliminate hundred times the sediment into sediment pollution, but they can reduce

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1990 15 survey, have literally wiped out or sidewalks, patios, even car tops. rt does basin, vegetated buffer strips, or other jeopardized whole stream systems not take extreme urbanization to device designed to detain, slow, and despite what is considered "harden" as much as half of a even out the surges of stormwater. state-of-the-art attention to sediment developed piece of land. However, there have been no state control. Once that happens, rain that used to requirements that address the pollution There also appears to be too much soak into the soil flows quickly and carried by stormwater runoff and, not reliance on the use of structural directly down gutters and drains and surprisingly, the 31 counties and controls like filter fences and sediment into streams. The stream is subject to townships in the Bay Foundation basins to keep pollution from the water. fierce flooding for a few hours; then, survey were found to be doing very Requiring that natural vegetation be left when it is dry, it is no longer fed by little to check such pollution. between development and waterways, slow seepage through its bed and All told, the survey took in 90 sites thereby preventing pollution from banks. The water that used to seep in the three states. Information was occurring in the first place, may be underground, replenishing the water available to assess 78 for stormwater more effective. table, has run off from the new, paved controls. A quarter of these were Damage to the environment doesn't environment. exempt from using controls because of end once a development is complete their small size, or because it seemed even though sediment loads drop the controls would do more damage dramatically once a site has been paved Pets are estimated to deposit than not building them. and landscaped. Rainwater washing off Nearly half of the 78 employ controls urban pavement and other impervious more than seven million which do little to protect bay tributaries surfaces can be shockingly polluted, pounds of feces annually on beyond minimizing flooding. Only especially the "first flush ," in which streets in the District of eight percent employ measures that dry-weather accumulations of Columbia alone. address the wider range of impacts pollutants that have fallen from the air, associated with stormwater runoff. from car exhausts, and from As with sediment, all three states are accumulations of oxygen-demanding This feast-or-famine flow wreaks upgrading their stormwater controls to organic matter like grass clippings, all havoc on the stream's habitat. It is easy improve the quality as well as reduce wash into storm drains and creeks. Pets to see if one compares an urban to a the quantity of runoff from lands under are estimated to deposit more than rural creek. The channel will be development. It has been calculated seven million pounds of feces annually widened and the banks eroded in the that stormwater pollution from the 78 on streets in the District of Columbia former setting. After a rain, it will surge sites is two to five times higher than it alone. wildly with water, then run almost dry was prior to development. If the bay In some urban areas, stormwater within 24 hours. The country creek will watershed is to accommodate the huge channeled through the sewage­ be more stable, rising less in projected increases in land treatment plant may so exceed the rainstorms, falling less in droughts. It development, and at the same time bay plant's capacity that it carries with it will be, in short, a better place for fish water quality is going to be restored, raw or poorly treated sewage as well as to live. then new development should aim, at a polluted runoff. This "combined sewer Studies in various parts of the bay minimum, for a zero increase in overflow" plagues Richmond and area have found that as the amount of polluted runoff from stormwater. The Washington. In a city like Baltimore. paving in a stream's watershed goes up, survey indicates that the region is a where the stormwater is not channeled aquatic life in the stream declines, even long way from this goal. through the treatment plant, it may just if there are no specific pollution A thorough study of stormwater and dump directly into waterways. sources present. Such degradation can sediment controls in the Washington Stormwater can also severely degrade start by the time 12 percent of the Metropolitan Area concluded that even smaller waterways physically. Most watershed is paved. That's equivalent the best controls would merely slow people think of paved or impervious to developing the entire watershed with the growth of pollution, not reduce it, surfaces as roads and parking lots. But suburban homes on two-acre lots. By or even hold the line. The best hope, they also include roofs, driveways, the time imperviousness reaches 25 the study said, lay in reducing the percent, equivalent to two homes per pollutants coming from existing acre, degradation can be severe. development as well as new All three principal bay states have development. When sediment covers oyster beds, developed laws in the last decade or so Such urban "retrofit" may involve a free-floating oyster young have trouble aimed at controlling stormwater runoff range of techniques: frequent street attaching themselves to clean shells from new development. Most sweeping and scooping up after pets, as before forming their own. developments affected by these new practiced successfully in New York laws must include some sort of pond, City; placing gravel-filled "infiltration trenches" on the edges of developments to let the "first flush" of stormwater soak into the ground; or trapping the super-polluted first flush, and sending only that portion of the stormwater runoff through sewage treatment plants. In sum, the Chesapeake Bay's restoration depends fully as much on controlling pollution running off the lands of its vast watershed as it does on controlling the more traditional

.- :t l. -~. sources, such as discharges from . .1 -"-·· -· sewage and industrial pipes. o Af1ce Jene L1ppson drnwing Repnn red with permission

16 EPA JOURNAL Pollution-Prevention Tactics in the Gulf of Maine

by Melissa Waterman

powered by 250 billion gallons of fresh water that enter the gulf each year from the region's rivers. The vertical mixing brings critical MAINE nutrients into warmer, sunlit waters. where phytoplankton are able to grow, or "bloom." Ph ytoplankton are critical to the ecology of the gulf because they serve as the base of its diverse marine food chain. Over 100 species of birds, 73 species of fish, and 26 different species of whales, porpoises, and seals GULF OF MAINE reside in the gulf.

In New England, an old proverb is being used as the philosophical foundation upon which to build a different kind of marine ATLANT JC OCEAN protection program.

Although the Gulf of Maine remains a fertile body of water, there are signs e've all heard a relative or friend bottom contours of the gulf make it a of changes occurring in its system. The W admonish in a cautionary tone: semi-enclosed sea, almost entirely effects of the states' and provinces' "Remember, an ounce of prevention is separated from the Atlantic by increasing populations are apparent not worth a pound of cure." While trite, underwater banks, of which Georges only on crowded highways and in this proverb may well hold true both Bank is the best known. The major coastal parks, but within the gulf itself. for personal behavior and for the avenue through which cold ocean In the years between 1950 and 1980, management of marine water bodies. waters enter the gulf is the 761-foot huge swaths of agricultural and forested Around the nation we see strong deep Northeast Channel. lands disappeared from the gulf coast. environmental protection programs The gulf. is surrounded by the states In Rockport, Maine, for example, emerging only after evidence of of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and developed land within the town degradation of land, air, and water Maine and the provinces of New borders increased by 300 percent. As becomes inescapable. Millions of Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Recently, more land is developed, less land is dollars are poured into the laudable the states and provinces came together available to act as a natural filter for task of "cleaning up" the Chesapeake or to create a program to protect the Gulf runoff. As a result, more potentially the Great Lakes. However, in New of Maine and its abundant natural harmful substances are swept into the England the old proverb is being used resources before harm occurs. gulf. as the philosophical foundation upon The gulf's reputation as a rich fishing Large tracts of land developed for which to build a different kind of ground stems from a seasonal housing create a problem of sewage marine protection program. abundance of phytoplankton. To grow, treatment. Much of the gulf coast is The Gulf of Maine is one of the these microscopic, free-floating plants either rocky, and hence unsuitable for a world's most productive water bodies. depend upon available nutrients and standard tank and field septic system, Its plentiful resources supported Native sunlight. In th e Gulf of Maine, or composed of sandy glacial outwash American populations and drew bevies phytoplankton are abundant because soils, which can only marginally filter of European settlers to its shores. The the surface and bottom waters mix the effluent of individual septic vigorously. This vertical mixing is systems. In addition, as cities such as driven by the strong tides and currents Portland and St. John grow, their (Waterman is a Program Planner the for that flow through the gulf. The gulf's antiquated sewage treatment systems Gulf of Maine at the Maine State counterclockwise current, in turn, is provide only minimal treatment of Planning Agency.)

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1990 17 Bob Bowman photo Allied Whale urban sewage. Combined sewer many acres of coastal wetlands and not yet been devised are discharged by overflows in many cities allow nearly mudflats by diking and filling. industries into rivers that enter the gulf. untreated sewage to enter the bays and Estimates indicate that in the four Elevated levels of specific heavy metals harbors of the gulf. The result has been Canadian maritime provinces, have been found in the sediments that ever-increasing closures of productive approximately 65 percent of tidal lie in the gulf's deep offshore basins, shellfish flats due to contamination by marshes and flats have been altered or indicating that toxic contamination fecal coliform bacteria. lost entirely. An indeterminate number does not remain isolated to near-shore The effects of population growth are of acres of coastal wetlands have been waters. most acute during the summer months. filled along the coast of the three states. To date, instances of pollution have During recent decades, the gulf region been relatively specific. Yet a growing has grown in status as a summer tourist sense of concern for the overall future destination. Acadia National Park in The study concluded that of the gulf prompted environmental Maine and Ca nada's Fundy National exhaust and oil drippings officials from the states and provinces Park in New Brunswick draw huge 5,000 to meet to discuss common issues. numbers of people each summer; in from the cars that pass Although both the United States and 1988 Acadia alone had over 4.5 million through Boothbay Harbor Canada recognized intense harvesting visitors. Many visitors travel along the daily during the summer of fish stocks as a profound problem, scenic coastal routes, such as U.S. months could account for the water quality and habitat protection Route 1, contributing to lead levels. were considered the paramount issues. nonpoint-source runoff from the roads In late 1989, a working group from to the Gulf of Maine and degrading the the states and provinces published a region's air quality. Some say the loss has affected gulf report, The Gulf of Moine: Sustaining A National Marine Fisheries Service fisheries, since estuaries and associated our Common Heritage. The report study in 1982 in Boothbay Harbor, wetlands serve as nurseries for a variety detailed the environmental Maine, revealed lead levels in crabs as of commercially valuable species. The characteristics .... ' the gulf, the human high as those found in animals from plummeting populations of black duck values drawn from it, and the growing New York City and Philadelphia and other migratory bird species are stresses placed upon it. The group then harbors. Research into the history of further clues that critical coastal hosted a Gulf of Maine conference in Boothbay Harbor unearthed no habitats along the entire eastern Portland, MainP., which was attended industrial activities that might account seaboard are disappearing. by over 250 scientists, fishermen, for the lead. Nor were the products of Then there are the multiple toxic bureaucrats, academicians, and citizens. the municipal sewage treatment plant elements entering the Gulf of Maine At the close of the conference, the found lo be the culprit. The study system. Everyone is familiar with the Agreement on the Conservation of the concluded that exhaust and oil highly degraded environment of Boston Marine Environment of the Gulf of drippings from the 5,000 cars that pass or Salem harbors. With varying degrees Maine was signed by the Governors and through Boothbay Harbor daily during of severity. all the major ports along the Premiers of the five states and the summer months could account for gulf suffer from the effects of years of provinces. the lead levels. Studies such as this pollution. However, a less visible The agreement makes clear the intent indicate that the steady increase in problem is posed by the numerous of the states and provinces concerning seasonal tourists, while beneficial for rivers that enter the gu lf. Although the fu ture use of the gulf: "The Parties to the immediate economy, may have a U.S. and Canadian federal governments this agreement recognize a shared duty long-term effect on the gu lf. regulate a limited number of identified to protect and conserve the renewable Over the centuries, both the toxic elements, a multitude of other and non-renewable resources of the gulf provinces and states have converted substances for which standards have for the use, benefit and enjoyment of all

18 EPA JOURNAL A finback whale surfaces off the Maine Coast. In the background is the Mt Desert Rock Marine Research Station of the College of the Atlantic.

With a little help from the National Audubon Society Atlantic puffms are rerurnirig to forrner nesting 1s ands 111 Maine The Gulf of Main is stil l relatively h althy as an ecosystem. Ad1oining states and provinces are working together to keep it that way

• Establishing a Gulf of Maine Environmental Award program to give recognition to the pollution prevention activities of industry, organizations, and individuals. It is anticipated that the council will adopt the draft action plan in June 1991. However, the plan will always be considered a blueprint and will be reviewed and revised within five years of adoption. With commitment and support over the next decade from the public, the state and provincial governments, and the two federal governments, the blueprint will grow

Bob Bowman p/Joto. Allied Whale. into a sound and long-lived environmental protection program. their citizens, including ge nerations yet environmental protection activities by to come .. . . "With this language, the members of the council. Highlights The Council on the Marine Governors and Premiers echoed the from the action plan include: Environment, although still young, may principles stated in the United Nations' turn out to be the best avenue for report Our Common Future (1987), • Reviewing state and provincial oil-spill contingency plans to identify ongoing cooperation among the states which called for sustainable and provinces on a spectrum of marine development of the world's resources. methods for improved cooperation in the event of a major spill issues. Development of the action plan The findings of the agreement and initiation of a regional Monitoring acknowledged that the gulf in its • Developing a regional database of Program are just two examples of the present state is, for the most part, current and historic environmental data council's initiatives within the Gulf healthy. The fear was that without in a format accessible throughout the Program. Efforts to develop a regional prompt protection efforts by the states region environmental consciousness around and provinces, the long-term health of • Identifying additional sites within the gulf find expression in a variety of the gulf would be jeopardized. public education materials, The 1989 agreement established a the gulf region that will provide habitat for migratory birds and devising a collaborative data-management projects, Council on the Marine Environment as and professional workshops. a new international organization. regional plan to support protection of the sites Historically, the Gulf of Maine has Composed of appointed members from served as the physical and economic the five jurisdictions, the council's • Evaluating the need for a common link between the three states and two responsibilities include developing a critical habitat mapping system provinces. In practice, this geo-political program for monitoring the quality of • Supporting a regional study and link has proved to be strong and the region's marine environment and productive, as the Gulf Working Group writing a 10-year Gulf of Maine Action evaluation of restoration and mitigation techniques used in gulf coastal has shown. Clearly, the strength of the Plan. Gulf Program comes from its genesis as An initial draft of the action plan was wetlands and other coastal habitats of regional concern an indigenous effort of the states and released by the council in December provinces. Although it is too early to 1990. Its thrust is prevention; its theme • Developing a Gulf of Maine Marine predict the outcome of the program, the is cooperation. By fostering Mammals Protection Plan in order to congenial relations among the Working communication among the states and set priorities for protection of critical Group, the Gulf Council, and the provinces, by improving availability of habitats governors and premiers hol d great information throughout the region, by • Initiating an agency personnel promise for improved stewardship of augmenting existing monitoring this fertile, but fragile water programs- by these and a multitude of exchange program that will promote the exchange of ideas and information body. In this case, an ounce of other cooperative ventures, the plan prevention might eliminate the need for paves the way for future compatible a cure. o

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1990 19 San Francisco Bay: Beset by Freshvvater Diversion by Harry Seraydarian

ater is the lifeblood of California. Francisco Estuary is considered one of its mix of fresh water from the river WIt fuels a multibillion dollar the most modified estuaries in the and salt water from the ocean, is agricultural economy and quenches the United States due to major changes to brimming with life. It provides habitat thirst of increasing masses of people. its waterways for,.,purposes of for millions of creatures. It supports The problem for California, however, is navigation, water export, and flood over 150 species of fish, including a that water is not found in the same control and the diversion of fresh water commercial fishing industry of herring place it is needed and used. About 70 that historically flowed through the and anchovies, and large recreational percent of the state's annual runoff estuary. fisheries for salmon, striped bass, occurs north of Sacramento, the capital The estuary is many things to many steelhead trout, shad, and sturgeon. that lies in the center of the state: 80 people. It is home for seven million lt contains the largest wetland habitat percent of the water consumption Bay Area residents, a biological in the western United States and is an occurs south of this city. In order to resource of enormous importance, a internationally significant shorebird compensate for this uneven distribution productive nursery for marine fish and area. Hundreds of thousands of and ensure a more reliable water crabs, an important wintering habitat shorebirds migrating along the coast supply statewide, the state built the for migratory birds, a beautiful harbor route of the Pacific Flyway find their world's largest manmade water system of international significance, a boater's way to the estuary's wetlands to feed to convey water from the north to the paradise, and the source of drinking and rest. Loons, grebes, pelicans, south. water for 40 percent of the state and cormorants, herons, swans, egrets, irrigation water for much of the state's ducks, geese, rails, plovers, curlews, agricultural lands. willets, and sandpipers congregate on Since the discovery of gold Like estuaries everywhere, the San the estuary's waters and shoreline. in 1849, the estuary has Francisco Estuary is one of the most Many of the estuary's rare or undergone tremendous biologically productive environments endangered species, including the change. on Earth. This unique ecosystem, with California clapper rail, California black

Rob Walker photo. California's ongoing struggle for water centers largely on the San Francisco Bay-Delta Es tuary as the major supplier of water for the entire state. Located at the mouth of the Sacramento-San Joaquin river system, it is the largest and most important estuary on the west coast of North and South America. It supports a complex ecosystem- including the state's largest anadromous fishery, provides fresh water for much of California's population, and supports its agricultural interests. Since the discovery of gold in 1849, the estuary has undergone tremendous change. A huge increase in population, industrial development, the establishment of agricultural interests, and water diversions have altered the estuary forever. Today, the San

(Seraydarian is Director of the Water Management Division in EPA's Region 9 and Chair of the Son Francisco Estuary Project's Management Committee.)

20 EPA JOURNAL CALIFORNIA

the astronomical rate of 350,000 deeper river channels resulting in a loss persons a year. of food abundance. Until recently, the illusion has To make matters worse, millions of prevailed that there was enough water juvenile salmon and striped bass are to serve all of these diverse uses; sucked into the diversion pumps at the however, it is now apparent that some south end of the delta each year needs have been met at the expense of because of a peculiar reverse river flow others. The symptoms and danger signs created by the powerful pumps during are everywhere. the dry season. This reverse flow Fish populations in the estuary have confuses migrating fish , and in spite of plummeted. Natural salmon protective devices, the pumps destroy populations have declined 75 percent hundreds of millions of juvenile fi sh from historic levels. The number of and fish eggs each year. Various striped bass, an indicator species used mitigation measures continue to be lo gauge the health of aquatic life in the tested to reduce this critical loss of fish estuary, has decreased 70 percent since to the pumps. 1960. Fishery agencies attribute these Low flows also increase salinity and declines lo a number of factors related temperature levels affecting the rail, and salt marsh song sparrow, are to waler diversions. distribution and abundance of many dependent upon its wetland habitats. Historically, the average annual fresh organisms. A complex community of In addition to sustaining this water flow to the bay and Delta in interdependent plant and animal life important ecosystem, the San Francisco nondrought years has ranged from 19 lo thrives in the estuary and is dependent Estuary also attempts to meet the needs 27 .5 million acre-feet. Today, nearly 40 for its survival on a consistent and of an $18 billion agricultural industry. percent of the historic flow is removed adequate supply of fresh water. Eighty-five percent of the state's for local consumption upf: fream and Water quantity has a direct impact on managed water supply is used for farm within the Delta. Another 24 percent is water quality. Water quality in the irrigation. California produces over 200 diverted from the delta through the estuary cannot be sustained without crops, including 45 percent of all the state and federal water projects for sufficient fresh water flows. As more fruits and vegetables consumed in the agricultural and municipal use in fresh water is diverted and ocean water United States. The introduction of central and southern California. intrudes further upstream, salinity irrigation (using fresh water diverted Low flows interfere with the becomes a problem affecting the quality from the estuary) has transformed the migration and spawning of anadromous of water used for human consumption arid, 500-mile long Central Valley from fish such as salmon and striped bass. and crop irriga tion. And the di version a near-desert into a lush garden land. These fish spend their juvenile lives in of fresh water has exacerbated problems The estuary also supplies 40 percent the fresh water of the river, move including drastic losses of tidal of the state's drinking water. As more downstream into the saltier ocean wetlands and wildlife habitat, and more people migrate lo California, waters to feed and grow, and ultimately intensified land-use pressure, and attracted by the mild, Mediterranean return upstream years later lo spawn increased pollutants. climate-wet winters and dry and die. As juveniles, they seek out a But not just the biological resources summers-the demand for waler will particularly rich feeding area fo und of the San Francisco Estuary are at risk: continue to escalate. Southern immediately downstream from the The survival of southern California's California, which receives most of the freshwater-saltwater interchange. economy and way of life are also at population increase, is now growing at This region, known as the stake. Southern California's lifeline is entrapment zone, is a highly productive directly connected to the waters of the area that serves as the basis of the food estuary. Faced with a burgeoning chain upon which the estuary's shrimp, population and reduced allocations clams, fish, and waterfowl depend. The from their Mono Lake and Colorado location of the entrapment zone, which River water supplies, southern moves depending on whether water Californians view with alarm any flows are heavy or light, is most suggestions to cut their water important during the crucial spring allotments from the north. California has constructed an elaborate months when newly hatched fish move California's agricultural industry is system to carry water from north to downstream to feed. When the river even more reliant upon the water . south, diverting much fresh water from flows are low, the entrapment zone is diverted from the estuary than the San Francisco estuary in the process. pushed upstream into the narrower, California's proliferating population. This aqueduct crosses the state's Central Agriculture currently uses about five Valley.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1990 21 times the amount of water consumed for the protection and restoration of the use it efficiently. Agricultural users by households and industry in the estuary in its Comprehensive currently pay from $3 to $15 per state. Conservation and Management Plan acre-foot for federally subsidized water Unfortunately, the prospect of finding due out in late 1992. and $50 per acre foot for state water, untapped water supplies for the state is The estuary is in distress. That reality while urban users generally pay from slim. Meanwhile, the health of the can no longer be ignored. Fresh water $150 to $300 for an acre-foot. Four estuary continues to deteriorate. is critical to protecting this valuable water-intensive crops-cotton, rice, Who has responsibility for resolving resource. But exactly how much is alfalfa, and irrigated pasture-use over California's water conflicts? needed to protect the estuary is half of agriculture's water supplies in The State Water Resources Control unknown. Estimates range widely from California but return less than a tenth Board (State Board) plays a key role in of the value of other crops. If water decisions in California as it has California's farmers conserved 10 authority both to set water quality p~rcent of their normal water use, three standards and to allocate water rights. Fresh water is critical to million acre feet of water would be Its mandate is to balance the needs of protecting this valuable available for other purposes. the environment, agriculture, and urban resource. Water marketing is also being tried. users. It is now conducting hearings to Farmers have the option of selling determine how to balance water which they do not use. The environmental protection for the potential profit from this unused water estuary with other statewide water 1.5 to 5 or 6 million acre feet of water. provides an incentive to conserve. needs. The State Board must develop (For comparison, one acre foot-or Urban water users and other potential water-quality standards to protect the roughly 326,000 gallons of water-will buyers are the beneficiaries. Although estuary and may, consequently, revise support a family of five for one year.} water marketing is controversial and water allocations. Such revision powers One thing is certain. The estuary there are significant institutional place the State Board under cannot meet all of California's projected barriers to overcome, Southern tremendous pressure from the increasing water needs. California's Metropolitan Water District, environmental community on the one In a recent draft Bay-Delta report, the assisted by the Environmental Defense side and on the other from central and State Board acknowledged that "full Fund, is experimenting with this southern California water contractors, protection of all beneficial uses in all concept and has contracted for water who are jealously protective of their water years is impossible. There simply conserved by Imperial Valley farmers. water rights. is not enough water .... Some California has been in the forefront of If the State Board fails to set water accommodation has to occur." reclamation research and has quality standards which provide Given the unlikely prospect of new encouraged local and regional adequate protections for the estuary, water supplies, it is essential that programs. Reclamation programs now under the· Clean Water Act, EPA can Californians learn to use the water they being developed will reuse treated disapprove the state's standards and already have more efficiently. While wastewater. Treated sewage can be promulgate its own. EPA prefers to water conservation and reclamation are used for landscape or agricultural defer to the State Board's process to not the sole answers to a limited water irrigation or pumped underground to develop standards. However, if the supply, they are both an integral part of replenish ground-water supplies for State Board is too slow in adopting any solution. California's past four future use. standards that meet federal years of drought conditions have But time is running out for the requirements, EPA may have to provided some valuable examples. estuary. Only a major shift in the way intervene. Many communities have dramatically Californians think about and use water The 1987 amendments to the Clean reduced water consumption by will save it. If all Californians take Water Act established the National installing low-flow shower heads, responsibility for using water Estuary Program to restore and protect toilets, and faucets; fixing leaky responsibly, the estuary may have a important coastal resources, including fixtures; converting landscape to chance. Then, future generations will the San Francisco Bay-Delta Estuary. drought-tolerant plants; and installing know an estuary which is vital, The San Francisco Estuary Project, a drip irrigation systems. beautiful. and teeming with life. o cooperative effort involving EPA and Agriculture, as the state's primary the State Board, is also looking at the water user, is a prime candidate for subject of fresh water flows and will conservation. Water is a highly make management recommendations subsidized commodity for many farmers, and there is little incentive to

22 EPA JOURNAL An Early Success for the Delavvare Bay a by Bruce Stutz

- y 1945, after three centuries of mountains of the upper Delaware River PENNSYLVANIA Bhard use, the Delaware Bay was also had its effect, causing soil to run almost used up. Its shellfisheries were off into streams, the silt eventually in decline, its shad and sturgeon reaching the bay. fisheries decimated, its shorelines often Nevertheless, well into the 19th awash with human and industrial century the fisheries seemed to waste. flourish. Railcars full of oysters were It once had a more pleasing aspect. shipped daily from Port Norris. Historically, its shores were lined with Sturgeon were so plentiful that once great stands of oak, hickory, and pine; the fish were stripped of their roe, their its tidewater swamps full of cedar, its carcasses were dumped back into the NEW JERSEY marshes full of roosting seabirds or bay. Between 1896 and 1901 , the flocks of migrating waterfowl. "I have nowhere seen so many ducks together," a 17th century journalist By 1945, after three wrote of a Delaware wetland. "The water was so black with them that it centuries of hard use, the seemed when you looked from the land Delaware Bay was almost below upon the water, as if it were a used up. mass of filth or turf, and when they flew up there was a rushing and vibration of the air like a great storm catches of shad in the Delaware River coming through the trees, and even like alone were greater than in any other the rumbling of distant thunder .... " river along the Atlantic coast. Such Shoreline towns with names like catches almost made both fishermen Caviar, Shellpile, and Bivalve boasted and scientists forget the sudden decline of the productivity of the bay's waters. in the number of fish caught only a few Schooners from as far north as years before, including sturgeon Philadelphia worked the seemingly catches, which dropped precipitously. limitless oyster beds. Travelers in the According to the 1895 report of the upper Delaware Bay wrote of schools of Pennsylvania Fish Commission, "The leaping sturgeon that tipped small general impression among the vessels. Shad made spring runs to the fishermen is that the decrease in the freshwater reaches of all the bay's catch during the past four springs is tributaries. Even dolphins once due to the increase of coal oil, gas, and schooled up the bay as far as bone factories along the Delaware Philadelphia. River. The obnoxious poisons and But as elsewhere, settlers along the gasses are al l turned into the river, bay and Delaware River - the Swedes, killing the young fry; at least we Dutch, and English- began changing believe that to be the main cause of the land. To gain pasture and grazing destruction of millions of young land, farmers built earthen banks 5 to shad . .. . " 10 feet high around the marshes, As early as the 18th century, dams dammed the streams that ran through along the Susquehanna and other rivers them. and then dug a grid of ditches to blocked the movement of shad drain them dry. The damming and upstream to their spawning grounds. draining very soon became The Delaware remained mostly free of institutionalized on both shores of the such obstructions, and shad made bay as companies formed to build and spring runs as far north as Deposit, maintain the banks, sluices, ditches, New York, some 350 miles from the (Stutz, who writes on science, natural and dams. Waterfowl had fewer feeding mouth of the bay. But while the history, and the environment, is writing grounds; fish had fewer streams in Delaware fish had no concrete a book on the Delaware River.) which to spawn. The clearing of forests impediments to their progress, they had along the bay tributaries and in the another that eventually proved just as

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1990 23 the nutrients, used up the oxygen. Shad "Penn's Voyage up and herring attempting spring runs the Delaware," upriver were found dead by the undated drawing by thousands along the river shores of F. 0 . C. Darley. Penn Philadelphia and Camden. sailed up the The severity of the problem made it Delaware in 1682 impossible to ignore. The smell of and saw his hydrogen sulfide gas felled dock namesake colony for the first time. workers. Wastes clogged ships' cooling systems. The waters, slick with greases and oils, corroded the metal of ships. (Navy fliers landing in Philadelphia were reportedly told not to worry about the smell at 5,000 feet: It was wafting Courtesy of the His torical Society of Delaware up from the river below.) impassable. The following is from the and animal waste flowing out of the In 1946, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife 1895 report quoted above: sewers into the river and bay. Service found 20 miles of the upper (Currently the population around the estuary to be anoxic (oxygen-deficient) Regarding the pollution of the estuary, which covers a relatively small from the surface to the bottom. Delaware, the writer was told that area, is some 6 million.) Philadelphia, which took half of its the river below Philadelphia is so The waters between Wilmington and drinking water from the Delaware, had impregnated with coal oil that its Trenton had been the major spawning already begun treating the water but peculiar flavor can be detected in grounds for the shad. Unable to deal was still concerned over its further the shad if they are detained long with the pollution, both state and deterioration. in the vicinity where the refuse federal fish commissions attempted to The fish could not wait. The lack of from the coal oi l factories is spawn and raise shad for release into dissolved oxygen in the stretch of river emptied into the water. Whether the river. These efforts were fruitless, between Wilmington and Philadelphia this is true or not, no one will however. The catch- up to 15 million literally choked the adult fish returning deny that the discharge of waste pounds for the bay and tidal rivers in to spawn in the spring. Those that into the river from the 1896-dropped to 5 million pounds in made it through what became known as numerous refineries that are 1904. In 1921, the catch was barely a the "pollution blOck" to spawn in the located only a short distance quarter of a million pounds and cleaner upriver waters more often than below Philadelphia fills the water remained at that level as the not died on their return. And the young with poisonous substances commercial fisheries became losing of the year, struggling downstream in which would probably prevent propositions, declined, and nearly died the late summer to head to sea for the shad from attempting the ascent out. first time, often didn't make it. of this stream except for the The waters had become deadly. By In the early years of the century, New combined instincts of nativity and the 1940s, some 500 million gallons of York City had announced a plan to procreation- impulses so raw sewage and untreated industrial dam the upper reaches of the Delaware overmastering that nothing waste were being dumped into the and create a water supply system for but death or impassible barriers Delaware. Bacteria in the river, fed by the growing city. Concern rose in all will restrain them.

In fact, this 19th century writer underestimated the pollution and its Philadelphia Water Department phoro. cumulative effect. Within a few years of Philadelphia's founding in the late 17th century, the nearby forests had been denuded, the streams and shoreline silting in; the Dock Creek, into which William Penn first sailed, had become fouled with garbage and the waste of shoreside tanneries. By 1750 the creek had to be filled in and paved over. Trenton, Philadelphia, Camden, and Wilmington waterfronts all suffered from the concentration of iron foundries and tanneries. From the founding of the first mills below the falls of the Delaware at Trenton, industry crowded along the waterfront for the next 50 miles. With the discovery of oil in Pennsylvania in the 1850s, refineries were established along the river at Philadelphia and Wilmington. Shipyards, coalyards, and factories lined both banks of the Delaware. The populations of the citi es In recent decades, wastewater tre<.1tment "as been vastly improved grew, and so did the amounts of human along the Delaware. Th s 1s the Northeast Water Pollution Control Plant serving the Phdadelph a area.

24 EPA JOURNAL on the commission; in this way, a more secure legislative mandate was formed to regulate not only the pollution that went into the river and estuary, but also to control water diversion. With its legislative mandate, the DRBC could ask for and get compliance with the more exacting standards. Higher standards were set to keep the water quality from getting worse and to begin improving it. DRBC standards soon became state standards, and the state standards were accepted by the Federal Water Pollution Control Administration, a forerunner of EPA. The 1972 passage of the Federal A s.icc ss story 1n the making l=1shiny guide Edward M MarKS is happy thnt Water Pollution Control Act sh d catches n the De ;iw:m'l R ver arc tr creasinQ every v ar amendments enhanced the DRBC cleanup already under way by adding three downstream states about the nearest stream. Nonetheless, both federal enforcement and funding effects of such water withdrawals on INCODEL- which had no legal for construction of new treatment the river. New York, New Jersey, and power-got each state to push through plants. As a result, the depletion of Pennsylvania had already tried to work legislation on water pollution and begin oxygen in the water was cut in half together on water supply problems building sewage treatment plants. between 1958 and 1983. This reduced through a Delaware River Treaty World War II interrupted these the area and length of time that Commission, created in 1923. This efforts. However, research done by pollution blocked the shad. Even if the commission developed a Delaware Richard Albert, who is on the fish couldn't spawn in their old River compact to govern water use. The water-quality staff of the present grounds, they might make it upstream compact was rejected, but following Delaware River Basin Commission, to others. New- York's announcement, the states shows that by the end of the 1950s. 75 And the number and kinds of fish in still insisted that no single state could percent of the Delaware Basin the upper estuary increased. This year control the flow of the river. communities had what was considered the DRBC recommended further efforts The case over New York's dams went adequate sewage treatment, as opposed to increase the level of dissolved to the Supreme Court. The court to only 20 percent before INCODEL's oxygen in the river areas where fish allowed the withdrawals but agreed founding. INCODEL also took on the still cannot spawn. The change ought to there must be sufficient water to share cleanup of some 30 million tons of coal bring more shad, striped bass. and downstream. silt that had run downstream from the herring to areas of the upper estuary By 1936, only five years after the coal regions in the Pennsylvania where a 1973 EPA study said there Supreme Court decision, the states of mountains and lay in the river would be no chance for recovery. as New Jersey, New York, and sediments. Albert points out. Pennsylvania had formed Commissions INCODEL, according to Albert, also The Delaware still has problems, of Interstate Cooperation. And out of promoted studies which found that the however. Basin states are concerned the states' awareness of the need to freshwater aquifer from which Camden about toxic wastes in the river-more work together on both the use and the and southern New Jersey communities than 100 chemical manufacturing problems of the Delaware (if only out of drew their water was recharged by the plants and oil refineries line the banks concern for their own piece of the water of the Delaware estuary-another of the bay-and the threats, posed by river), they created the Interstate reason why the quality of the waters development, to the remaining natural Commission on the Delaware River had to be protected. habitats along the bay and its Basin (INCODEL). This was in the All these early efforts had some tributaries. The problems these cause midst of the Depression; although effect. The water quality-especially as are not nearly as vivid and immediate money might be available for dams, the measured by oxygen content-had as those of sewage waste, and so they states, anxious about their autonomy, nowhere to go but up, and dissolved are too often set aside. were concerned about the federal oxygen began to improve measurably. It took a half century to comprehend government coming in to build them. A After the summer flood of 1955, and begin to cope with the problems of cleanup, however, was one thing the inquiries into water use and flood human waste in the river and some states could agree on, and they prevention on the Delaware heightened $1.5 billion to increase the dissolved proceeded to plan ways to reduce the concern about water quality. A U.S. oxygen level in the Delaware at load of waste entering their Delaware Army Corps of Engineers study gave Philadelphia by barely 2 milligrams per waters. rise to a Delaware Estuary liter. In the meantime, some species They began by developing and Comprehensive Study, which were nearly lost along with most of the adopting interstate water- quality developed a model for raising water fisheries. The remaining shad standards which demanded at least quality standards. Based on fishermen on the bay report their primary, and in some cases secondary, recommendations from the Engineers catches increasing each year. The hope treatment of sewage discharge into the Corps study, INCODEL was replaced by is that with a continued cooperative river and estuary. This would be a the Delaware River Basin Commission working method- including the EPA's major effort since the sewers of (ORBC) in 1961. The DRBC came into estuarine research program-the next Philadelphia and other towns and cities being under a Delaware River Basin improvements won't be quite so long in around the estuary had grown along Compact entered into by the states and coming. o with the population, with little design the federal government. Each of these except to get the discharge out to the had a representative with equal power

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1990 25 Long Island Sound: Facing Tough Choices

by J. R. Schubel

ong Island Sound is unusual not New York-New Jersey Harbor. Although The estuarine circulation converts the Lonly in its natural features but also the net flow through the East River is entire sound into a trap for suspended in the range and intensity of uses small-only a few hundred cubic particles and associated contaminants. society makes of it. For these reasons, meters per second- the East River has The trap is particularly effective in the the sound deserves special attention. lf major influences on the sound. Flow sluggish reaches of the western sound, management strategies are to be through the East River is divided into where suspended particles are retained effective, they must be carefully two layers: an upper layer and a lower and sink into the lower layer. In tailored to the special features of the layer. The direction of the long-term addition, fine suspended matter from system. net flow through the entire cross throughout the sound that sinks into Long Island Sound lies in the most section of the East River is toward New the lower layer is carried to the west, densely populated region of the United York Harbor, but the direction of net where it accumulates. States, a distinction the region has held flow of the upper layer is toward the At the head of the sound- the since before European settlement. The sound. Most of the wastewater western end-is the largest city in the greatest population growth occurred introduced into the East River becomes United States, one of the largest in the between 1940 and 1970, when the concentrated in the upper layer because world: a city with more than 400 population of the region grew by a it is fresher and less dense than the combined sewer outfalls which whopping 78 percent. Since 1970, the receiving waters. Because of this, the discharge raw sewage and untreated rate of growth has been less than East River carries large amounts of stormwater runoff with every rainfall one-tenth the national average and is wastes into the sound. It also drives the that exceeds a few tenths of an inch projected to remain low for the next estuarine circulation in the western over a few hours. But New York City is several decades; for the next two sound which is superimposed on the not the only source of pollutants to decades (1990-2010), it is projected to oscillatory tidal currents, leading to a Long Island Sound. Much pollution average less than 0.3 percent per year. slow net flow of the upper layer to the comes from point and nonpoint sources Nevertheless, the region will remain the east (toward Block Island Sound) and along the sound's coast and throughout most densely populated in the nation, of the lower layer to the west (toward its drainage basin. In fact, the impacts exceeding the national average by the East River). of New York City on the sound may be nearly 40-fold. Today, more than 14.6 million people live in counties directly bordering Long Island Sound. Besides being home to millions of people, the sound provides opportunities for shipping and transportation, for recreation, and for waste disposal for more people than any other estuary in the nation. Long Island Sound has two connections to the ocean- one at each end. (Most estuaries have only one.) The major source of fresh water, the Connecticut River, enters near the mouth. Jn most estuaries, the major source of fresh water enters at the head. At its "head," the sound has the East River, not really a river at all, but a tidal strait connecting the sound to the

(Dr. Schube/ is Dean and Director of the Marine Sciences Research Center at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He co-chairs the Technical Advisory Committee for th e Long Island Sound Study being conducted under the National Estuary Program and also serves on th e Management Committee.)

26 EPA JOURNAL CONNECTICUT

challenge to decisionmakers, scientists and engineers. and public interest groups to work together to select the strategies that will have the greatest environmental benefits, particularly long-term benefits, al the lowest cost. ATLANTIC OCEAN While ew York City's population is not growing, the population of the counties bordering the sound is increasing slowly. The net result of these demographic shifts is that the inputs of nutrients from declining while impacts from the east have an estuary that typically sewage-treatment plants in ew York are increasing. experiences hypoxia in summer. City are stable or declining. while point Most of Long Island Sound's The problem is concentrated in the and nonpoint inputs from the east are important water-quality parameters western third of the sound, but the increasing. Continued upgrading of (nutrients, pathogens, and toxics) show concern is that oxygen deficiency may New York City's sewage-treatment steep gradients along the axis of the occur earlier in the summer, last longer, plants to full secondary status is sound, falling rapidly from high levels and stretch over a larger region of the contributing to these declines. So is in the East River and western sound to sound than in the past. While the implementation of the combined sewer relatively low values in the open waters scientific documentation of these trends overflow abatement program. of the central and eastern sound. These is sketchy, there is reason for concern. Meanwhile, the inputs of nutrients gradients in water quality reflect the The summers of 198 7 and 1989 were from sewage-treatment plants outside large inputs of wastes from the particularly bad, and the change from the city-from Westchester County, metropolitan area as well as the natural an oxygenated system to an anoxic, Long Island, and coastal estuarine circulation. Many of the sulphide system can occur quickly, Connecticut-and from nonpoint tributary embayments throughout the with little warning, causing sources in these areas are increasing. sound system have been impacted by catastrophic effects. Once it happens, The impacts are experienced largely in loadings of nutrients, pathogens, and remediation is costly and uncertain. embayments which receive the bulk of contaminants and deserve special Prevention is a far better strategy. the inputs. attention. Most of the problems of the Roughly 50 percent of the total The direct loadings of contaminants, central and eastern sound are in the nitrogen input to the sound comes from such as metals and chlorinated organic harborf.. point sources-mostl y treatment compounds, are decreasing throughout The combination of natural and plants-and the remaining 50 percent the region because of industrial human factors (the natural circulation from nonpoint sources. Point sources pre-treatment programs and the flight of and the large inputs of waste materials) are easier to identify and to quantify. industry from the area. Because of these conspires to produce high They also are easier to control trends, I believe the first step should be concentrations of organic-rich, technologically; all it takes is to cap nutrient inputs from Connecticut contaminant-laden particles in the money-lots of it. The cost estimates and Long Is land treatment plants. The waters and on the bottom of the for removing nitrogen at about 20 next steps should be to reduce the western sound. The sediments of the coastal publicly owned treatment plants aggregate nutrient inputs from these western sound are highly reactive in the western sound range from $6 to plants, from New York City plants, and chemically and exert considerable 10 billion in one-time capital costs and from nonpoint sources. Public influence on the quality of the from $50 to 100 million per year in education must play a major role in overlying waters. Summertime hypoxia additional operating costs. nonpoint-source reduction by (low dissolved oxygen) is one While it's clear that the inputs of communicating how individual consequence of the high concentrations nutrients to the sound need to be activities-the use of fertilizers, of nutrients and organic matter. reduced, the best way to accomplish pesticides, and thoughtless discarding The phenomenon is not new. Even this goal is less clear. In selecting the of wastes-<:onspire to degrade the before European settlers arrived, most appropriate strategy, a variety of sound. People can make a difference. summertime levels of dissolved oxygen environmental, technological, Long Island Sound is a magnet for in the waters of the western sound institutional, demographic, and recreational use, and the strength of often were low- low relative to the rest economic factors need to be considered. that attraction remains strong, making it of the sound and sometimes perhaps Cost is a factor. The public made a one of the most valuable estuaries in even low relative to present New York clear and unequivocal statement about the world. The major recreational State water-quality standards. To this balancing environmental protection and activities of the sound are boating, natural situation, add excess nutrients economics in the last election swimming, and fishing. The sound is from waste disposal and land-use (November 6, 1990). home to one of the largest fleets of practices from a large fraction of the Given the prospects for the nation's, recreational boats of any coastal body 14.6 million people who live in the and particularly for the region's, in the world. On a summer weekend counties bordering the sound, and you economy over the next few years, day, the number of sunbathers, short-term economi c considerations swimmers, and boaters around the Long Island Sound, famed for will be even more important than in · sound often is greater than the recreational boating . the past. This will pose an even greater combined populations of Delaware and

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1990 27 In addition to ambitious, visionary goals, more specific objectives should be spelled out. Progress in meeting those objectives should be monitored and the results reported widely. Specific waler-quality objectives should be consistent with evolving technology, and the strategies adopted should be flexible enough to exploit advances in understanding and technology. Indeed, environmental objectives and goals should encourage development of new technologies. When expenditures of billions of dollars are called for, they should be invested in those management actions that will have the greatest benefit to the environment and to society, now and Alaska. The value of the sound's environmental problems, often we have for the future. There should be recreational fisheries exceeds those of resorted to the "two-by-four" strategy c accountability as to how well the the Chesapeake Bay. that works so well with mules, and investments pay off in conserving, or The major impediments to these humans. The strategy gels attention, but restoring, resources that are valued by recreational activities are: it may have created some unfortunate the public. Protection of these human consequences, particularly among values and uses will ensure the • Pathogens, which lead to the closing young people. There is a sense of integrity of the ecosystem. of beaches and shellfishing areas despair, of helplessness; a sense of a The management of Long Island • Floatablcs. which are repulsive to lack of empowerment. Sound illustrates some important swimmers, beachcombers, and boaters, We need a different approach, a environmental management principles. and sometimes lead to the closing of different strategy to conserve and when The first priority should be preventive beaches necessary-as in the case of Long environmental medicine: conservation Island Sound- to rehabilitate our of those parts of the environment • Nutrients, which lead to hypoxia and estuaries. With 6 percent of the nation's which are in good condition and which associated loss of habitat and of living population living in the counties that directly and indirectly support marine resources border it, Long Island Sound cannot be important uses. We must not focus our • Contaminants, which lead to restored to the natural. pristine attention so closely on the problems of restrictions or warnings on the conditions that European settlers found the western sound that we neglect lo consumption of fish and which may upon arriving more than 300 years ago, provide adequate protection of the lead to declines of living resources. any more than Connecticut, Long values and uses sustained by the Access. of course, is also a limiting Island, and Manhattan can be restored central and eastern Sound. factor. to their conditions at that time. Perhaps Because of the estuarine circulation society's expectations for estuaries like pattern, water quality in the western But there is also a perceptual Long Island Sound, New York-New sound reflects contaminant inputs from problem concerning the sound. Several Jersey Harbor, Boston Harbor, and throughout the whole system: This is years ago. we asked a Third Grade class others in heavily urbanized and importanlto keep in mind. It means to draw posters to illustra te their views suburbanized areas should be different that better management of contaminant of the condition of the Long Island from those for estuaries in much less inputs'from Long Island and Sound. Most expressed gloom and populous regions. Not lower-different. Connecticut will not only protect the doom: "The Sound is dead" or "dying"; Our environmental goals for the central and eastern sound but also "no fish live there anymore." The sound should be ambitious, visionary, contribute lo better environmental reality is quite different. and long-term. They should be framed quality in the western sound. Certainly the large population in terms of the uses and values that are lf our efforts are concentrated on surrounding the sound makes intensive. important to and cherished by society; New York City, only marginal varied, and sometimes conflicting uses they should be expressed in terms that improvements may result in the of the sound- uses that have affected have meaning to the public. western sound while the remainder of the system and its living resources. Environmental goals should reflect not the system-incl ding the tributary Moreover, land-use practices only the desires of present society, but embayments- may experience throughout the drainage basin affect the our responsibility to future generations. increasing impacts. A gain in the quality of the sound and its living In addition, water-quality standards average quality of the sound as a whole resources. Although there are problems should have defensible scientific and that is achieved by gains in the west that require attention, much of the technical bases to ensure that they are offsetting losses in the central and main body of the sound is in consistent with natural environmental eastern sound may, in fact , not be a remarkably good condition. The most processes. For example, proposing a gain either fo r society or for the Long serious problems are localized in the goal for dissolved oxygen in the Island Sound ecosystem. western sound and in the embayments. western sound that is higher than the As the late H.L. Mencken once Only recently has the sound begun to levels Giovanni Verrazano or Adrian observed, "Every human situation has a receive the kind of attenti on it deserves Block found upon their arrival more simple solution-neat, plausible, and from scientists, environmental than 300 years ago is not visionary; it is wrong." If we want to create a better advocates, environmental managers, de! usionary. future for Long Island Sound, we can't and elected officials. Jn our efforts to afford to be wrong. o gain the attention of the public about

28 EPA JOURNAL Financing the Cleanup of Puget Sound

by Annette Frahm

rotecting the water quality in Puget PSound is a Mom-and-apple-pie issue. According to a recent survey, more than half of Washington state residents thought water pollution in the estuary was a serious problem, and two-thirds were willing to pay an extra dollar per month per household to clean it up. The difficulty comes when one starts trying to make those abstract dollars a funding reality. Government at all levels-federal, state, local-has gotten the message that people don't like taxes. Moreover, Puget Sound doesn't show as many signs of pollution as some other estuaries in areas that have been developed longer, so the need for clean-up funds doesn't seem as pressing as it might elsewhere. In fact , Puget Sound, located in the northwestern corner of Washington state, seems rather pristine on the surface. The sound's deep, cold depths help keep the water clear. Daily tides move the pollution out toward the Pacific Ocean. But when scientists looked deeper into the sound, they found a series of sills [shallow areas) that stop most of the water- and the pollution it carries- from reaching the ocean. Instead, most of the pollutants sink lo the bottom of the sound and stay there. This leads to toxic "hot spots" along the bottom of the sound's urban bays- and liver tumors and reproductive failures in the bottom-dwelling fish there. There are other problems. Nine commercial shellfish beds were closed between 1986 and 1990 because of bacterial pollution from fai ling septic systems and farm animals-a problem made worse by increasing rural development. The region's overall rapid pace of development (population is projected to increase by 40 percent by the year 2010) also results in a continuing loss of wetlands and other fish and wildlife habitat. (Frahm is Publications Manager for the In 1985 the Washington State Puget Sound Wa ter Quality Authority. ) Legislature, seeking a solution to these

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1990 29 Chris Ayres photo. problems, created the Puget Sound chronic lack of money for state and of grants. The state pays 50 percent of Water Quality Authority to develop a local governments to address water the cost for water quali ty facilities, comprehensive plan to protect and quality problems. such as sewage treatment plants, and improve the water quality in Puget The 1986 state legislature took steps 75 percent of the cost for activities such Sound. In developing the plan, the to address the funding problem by as planning and education. The Authority studied a number of increasing the tax on cigarettes and cigarette tax has proven to be an pollution problems, what was being other tobacco products. The important, though limited, source of done to address them, and what could 8-cents-per-pack tax provides about $45 funding for local water quality projects. be done to improve the efforts. One million a year statewide to support Sometimes great results can come difficulty the Authority found was a local water quality projects in the form from relatively small sums of money.

30 EPA JOURNAL Puget Sound wetlands provide key statewide. The following year, however, obtaining $53 million from the habitat for birds and other wildlife. state voters approved a toxics initiative legislature in 1990 for acquisition of Washington state and private non-prr:>fit which removed the cap and called for wildlife and recreation lands statewide, groups are allied in efforts to acquire the Department of Ecology to set the fee together with a promise of more and protect wetlands. high enough to fully fund its discharge funding over time. Between 1987 and permit program. The initiative also 1989 a joint state-nonprofit campaign established a tax on hazardous raised $5. 3 million for wetlands products: the tax money goes toward acquisition, using a 3-1 state match. cleaning up toxic "hot spots" and fo r Some federal funding has been education on the proper disposal of available for Puget Sound through Over the last four years, the Puget household hazardous wastes. Sections 319 and 320 of the Clean Sound Authority has received $2 The Department of Ecology is Water Act. The Washington State million from the cigarette tax for its currently collecting $3.6 million per Congressional delegation is also seeking Public Involvement and Education (PIE) year from the permit fee and intends to a line-item appropriation for increased Fund. The PIE-Fund has financed 100 raise the fee over time. The increased funding for the Puget Sound Estuary projects reaching a variety of audiences, funding has enabled the department to Program. from builders to farmers, school hire new staff for its discharge-permit The newly created Puget Sound children to community residents. Over Foundation should also help fund a million people have already been research and education over time. In its reached in some way, and many 1990 session, the state legislature projects have found other funding to Sometimes great results can authorized the Authority to create the continue. Over time, these outreach come from relatively small foundation as a public nonprofit ventures should greatly reduce water sums of money. corporation, with a charter to support pollution. education and research. The fo undation While the cigarette tax is a good start, will seek funding from corporations unfortunately, it isn't nearly enough. It program and to begin writing new and other private donors and w ill will cost about $600 million to upgrade permits that include limits on the provide grants on a competitive basis. the remaining primary sewage discharge of toxicants. Over time, these All of these funding endeavors still treatment plants to secondary stricter permits are expected to reduce fall short. Recognizing that chronic treatment. Reducing pollution from a chronic source of pollution to Puget funding shortages would continue, in stormwater may cost $50 to $160 Sound. 1988 the Authority created the Puget million per year. Ongoing efforts to Local governments have also been Sound Finance Committee to look for reduce nonpoint-source pollution are seeking and finding new sources of new funding sources. EPA fu nded a expected to cost $12 million per year. funds. Several cities and counties have study to support the committee's work, Monitoring, wetlands protection, created self-supporting stormwater along with a guidebook fo r local reducing pollution to "hot spots" and utilities to provide funding both for governments on financing options. The eventually cleaning them up, spill "hardware"- such as detention ponds committee considered a wide range of prevention, education: All these are and infiltration basins- and for possible funding sources, from a real pressing needs. And the state general education programs to reduce estate excise tax to a toilet-paper tax. fund is spread thin by other needs, stormwater pollution at the source. In its final report, the committee such as education, social and health Most stormwater utilities are funded proposed four new sources: a tax on services, and transportation. through monthly rates, often based on commercial marine fu els (c urrently In its initial plan, adopted in 1986, the contribution of the business or exempt from state tax), a fee charged to the Authority proposed another source household to pollution (such as the motor vehicle manufacturers fo r each of funds: a higher fee for water quality amount of pavement on the property). new car or truck registered in the state, discharge permits. The funds would be Some counties have also taken initial increases to the fish and shellfish tax, used to improve the state Department steps to create septic system inspection and an excise tax on the leasing of of Ecology's regulation of discharge and maintenance districts. public lands. The Authority is permits. Private efforts on behalf of Puget including the marine fuels tax and the After much controversy and debate, Sound have also had some success, motor vehicle manufacturers' fee in its in 1987 the state legislature did most notably in the acquisition of key 1991 legislative proposals. Their fate in approve a higher discharge permit fee, wetlands and other habitats. A the legislature is uncertain. but imposed a $3.6 million per year cap 95-group coalition succeeded in As the search for additional funding

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1990 31 sources continues, changing countervailed by another subdivision or Protection Fund, financed by an circumstances make the need more industrial park. Like Alice and the Red endowment from the eight Great Lakes urgent. Among the nation's great water Queen, we may be running as fast as states; a surcharge in Rhode Island on bodies, Puget Sound is by no means we can just to stay in the same place. items that are "hard to dispose of," alone in facing problems exacerbated Where can we find the money to keep such as tires and organic solvents; and by rapid growth. up with pollution, let alone gain on it? a program to provide subsidized loans While we're working to clean up At a recent national estuary program to communities in Massachusetts for existing pollution in our aquatic conference in Seattle, participants water quality projects, using a · resources, and to put standards and agreed that creative funding approaches combination of federal and state funds. plans in place to prevent future are essential. Among the ideas In Puget Sound, we have sought to pollution, the gains we make can be presented: a $100 million Great Lakes ease the strain on the state general fund

The Soundkeeper by Mary Ann Gwinn

local kayaker has a joke about the Moser's aim is to educate polluters, Exxon Corporation tankers in the A ungainly, squawking herons who and if that doesn't work, to catch them, Hudson. live on the Duwamish River-that they and if that doesn't work, to sue them. It seems Exxon was unloading its oil, were graceful loons before they drank He's being trained in sampling and filling its ballast tanks with water, from the Duwamish. But the birds have chain-of-evidence procedures. He has a flushing the oil residue into the gumption-they make a living, toll-free number people can call when Hudson and then refilling them with heron-style, on a river whose banks they see pollution of Puget Sound. He clear Hudson River water. This water have been covered over with dredge plans to train a citizen army-a group went to the Dutch island of Aruba, off spoils and whose sediments contain bf fisherman, kayakers, birdwatchers the Venezuelan coast, where it was some of the most toxic junk ever and anyone else who knows the nooks used in an Exxon refinery and the spewed into a stream. and crannies of Puget Sound-to call to balance given to the president of Aruba On this day, the herons are raising account degradation of the Sound, for his water supply. Some of it even hell about a man in a red kayak. They which Moser calls "the heart of the filled his swimming pool. are croaking and lifting their great Northwest." The Hudson River Fisherman's wings in offended dignity as he passes "People who have lived here any Association threatened to sue. Exxon under their perches. The man is length of time know the Sound, settled out of court for $500,000, a skimming the edge of the river, in and whether it's South Sound or Useless chunk of which has funded the out of the rusted hulls of ships, under Bay or Admiralty Inlet," he says. "Now Riverkeeper program ever since. the cool cave of a concrete dock. He is they know they can call and say, The Soundkeeper program was taking an excessive interest in the little 'There's something going on here."' started with seed money from pipes that dribble this and that out of And people have called. Since the Starbuck's Coffee, KING-TV and the industrial property and into the river. program began in July, the Alliance's Puget Sound Water Quality Authority. These herons should raise a greeting, membership has swelled from 200 to The Puget Sound Alliance, an umbrella not a ruckus. This man is the 600, the result, says the Alliance's organization of environmental groups Soundkeeper. Kathy Callison, "of people wanting to concerned with the health of the Ken Moser is the red-haired gent in do something for the Sound." Sound, placed an ad in The Weekly. the red kayak and the point man for a "We believe in education." Moser Moser, who had recently quit a tough new program designed to protect says with a small smile, "but we have high-paying job in the San Francisco Puget Sound. Moser, 38, a former discovered that litigation can be an advertising industry to return to Seattle, advertising man, merchant seaman and effective tool for educating people." answered it. skipper for yachts of the rich and The Soundkeeper's number is Moser's biggest accomplishment in famous, was hired by the Puget Sound 1-800-42-PUGET. the ad industry had been to write a Alliance to find polluters of Puget The Soundkeeper program is reggae-inspired jingle extolling Clorox Sound. modeled on similar programs bleach, a substance harmful to the He is the symbol of a new throughout the country, including those environment when it gets flushed down watchfulness on the part of local at Long Island Sound, San Francisco the drain. It still makes him gloomy to environmental groups, an Bay and the Hudson River. think about it. acknowledgement that the sweep of The Hudson Riverkeeper is the "The strategy was, you never thought environmental legislation enacted in grandfather of all such programs and about Clorox," he recalls. "You never the last two decades is a mile wide and owes its continuing existence to one of thought about dirty clothes. You thought an inch deep. It's illegal to pollute. But the most cunning pieces of about bright, clean, happy children. people do it every day, either because environmental piracy ever discovered. What we're talking about is habits they don't know or they don't get The first Keeper program was people have. They think it goes away. caught, and because society hires cops founded by Pete Seeger, the folk singer, Where do they think it goes?" to keep people from hurting each other, to watchdog the cleanup of the Hudson. He was hired both for his marine not other species. Seeger's group had hired John Cronin, skills-'-he's licensed to skipper vessels the first Riverkeeper, who was on the under 100 tons-and for his ability to job when he got a tip about some very mount a public-relations campaign. (Gwinn is a Seattle Times reporter.) peculiar activities taking place on Moser knows there's no way for him to

32 EPA JOURNAL by developing new and innovative become more willing to contribute to funding sources. But the way is hard, the solutions. and the outcome doubtful. Each crisis Showing results is also important. brings a flurry of activity and Short-term successes can help gain support-which soon dies down until support for long-term funding. We have the next crisis. to become more efficient and effective It's hard to gain stable, long-term in how we spend our money. And we support in such an environment. must continue to be creative: finding Education is one key: As residents and new sources of funds and smart ways businesses learn more about their to get optimum results from the money contributions to pollution, they often we have available. o

Tom Reese phoro. Seanle Times. Patrolling in his red kayak, Soundkeeper police 2,000 miles of the shores of environment. His first step might be to Ken Moser hunts for polluters. Puget Sound alone. The Alliance hopes contact the polluter and ask them to to train a sort of "environmental navy" stop. The next step might be to call the to spot pollution all over the Sound. regulators. If the regulators can't or Lee Moyer, a local kayaker who won't pursue the case, the Soundkeeper accompanied Moser on his Duwamish will. tour, is evidence it works. His ultimate goal is to back up his Moyer. who owns Pacific Water work with an environmental law clinic, Sports, a kayak sales and rental similar to one at New York's Pace business, was on the Duwamish one University headed by Robert Kennedy day about five years ago. He spotted a Jr. The clinic has successfully litigated milky pond spreading out from a numerous pollution cases along the half-concealed outfall. Hudson. Moyer called the Department of The Soundkeeper needs a boat; he Ecology and the EPA. His tip ultimately cu·rrently hitches rides with allies such ended the dumping of highly alkaline as Moyer. He's also getting training • cement waste into the Duwamish. The from local and federal agencies, company, Pioneer Construction including Metro and the National Materials, was fined $150,000. lt Oceanic and Atmospheric has since been sold. Administration. "I found out that all Soundkeeper Moser says his goal is the agencies are made up of people," he to help citizens with a complaint says, "people who want to see the penetrate the "alphabet soup" of environment kept clean and who are agencies concerned with the frustrated at the lack of funding." o (Story rep11nted w1rh pe1m1ss1on. rhe Seattle Times

NOVEM BER/DECE MBER 1990 33 An Environmental Snapshot of the Mississippi by Reggie Mcleod

ithout the visitors, the beginning In the 1980s the State of Wisconsin W of the Mississippi River in sued the Metropolitan Waste northern Minnesota would be rather Commission to stop the flow of about inauspicious- just a shallow, 4.6 billion gallons of raw sewage from rocky stream spilling from a the Twin Cities into the river from old pine-ringed lake like 10,000 others. storm sewers that overflow into However, a steady stream of pilgrims sanitary sewers during heavy rains. The comes here from all parts of the world su it was dismissed, but Minnesota to wade in the numbingly cold water agreed to replace the remaining or, at the very least, to crnuch on the outdated sewers by 1995. shore and rinse their hands in it, as Despite sharp reductions in the though to seek a blessing from this discharge of untreated sewage and great river. other pollutants, the Metropolitan As is the Ganges to India, the Nile to Wastewater Treatment Plant's permit Egypt, and the Amazon to Brazil, so the Mississippi is to America: It offers us a reflection of ourselves-our strengths The dams may have created and weaknesses, our history and a problem for which there is IOWA culture. We respect its power and unpredictability, but we want too much no solution.

I from it: a sewer and a source of drinking water, a highway and a \ was delayed recently because it did not ILLINOIS I playground, a prime piece of real estate I and a refuge for wildlife. monitor the release of phosphates into At Lake Itasca things look pretty the river. Experts fear that fish kills and \ good. The water is clear, the air is the disappearance of water plants heavy with the scent of pines, song downstream may have been caused by birds welcome the morning, and loons dense algae blooms nourished by high summon the night. Jn spots, the modest concentrations of phosphates during Mississippi is too shallow to float a the lower flow in the drought of 1988. canoe. It enters and exits several big Carl Korschgen, wildlife specialist at MI S~OU RI lakes- Bemidji, Cass, and · the U.S. Fish and Wildlife laboratory in Winnibigoshish. After travelling north, La Crosse, Wisconsin, says the loss of east, and southwest, the river begins its more than 90 percent of the wild celery more-or-less southward course near beds in the river appears to be hurting Brainerd, describing a big question populations of canvasback ducks who mark in the center of Minnesota. depended on them for food during As the river gathers the waters of migration. Other wildlife species are other rivers and creeks, growing deeper probably also suffering from this and broader, signs of civilization along dramatic loss of water plants. its banks become more frequent. Yet, it The face and personality of the upper often flows for miles out of sight of any Mississippi River changed in the late MISSISSIPPI I roads or homes. 1930s, when the U.S. Army Corps of I I The fi rst dramatic change in the river Engineers began building 29 locks and occurs near the Twin Cities. Bluffs dams from Minneapolis to St. Louis. I begin rising on both sides of it. The Their sole purpose is to maintain a Upper St. Anthony Falls Lock and Dam nine-foot channel for barge traffi c. The marks the start of the river's dams, by creating a series of long lakes commercial navigation channel in called pools, changed the profile of the Minneapolis. A few miles downstream, river from a gradual slope to a series of the Minnesota River joins the steps. As a result, fo rmer bottom lands, Mississippi beneath the walls of Fort islands, and backwaters at the lower Snelling, built at this strategic spot in ends of the pools are under several feet 1819 to protect fur traders from warring of water, while islands and maze-like Sioux and Chippewa Indians. About 20 backwater channels are plentiful below miles downstream, near Hastings, the many dams. St. Croix River adds lo the Mississippi's This stretch of the river is full of long strength as the river, after winding a sandy islands covered with maples, (McLeod is a free-lonce journalist who quarter of its length within Minnesota, cottonwoods, wild grapes, and poison has written frequently about the begins marking the border with ivy. The river valley is embraced by Mississippi.) Wisconsin. 34 EPA JOURNAL steep, wooded, rocky bluffs that river sediment. Backwater channels that sometimes rise more than 400 feet were 10 feet deep a few decades ago above the river. Many of the islands have silted in. Backwater lakes have and much of the shore from Lake Pepin turned into thick cattail beds. to Rock Island, Illinois, is owned by the A few years ago, the Army Corps of Corps of Engineers or the Fish and Engineers started moving dredge spoils Wildlife Service, which manages it as a out of the floodplain, rather than just wildlife refuge. At some points, the piling them up on islands where they river and bottoms are more than three washed back into the river. A number miles wide and include a profusion of of projects funded by the Upper habitats: islands, marshes, lakes, and Mississippi River Environmental channels. In summer, an increasing Management Plan are testing methods number of boaters fish and camp on to restore or stabilize islands and sandy beaches created with spoil backwaters by dredging, island dredged from the main channel. In fall building, and other techniques. and winter, trappers harvest muskrats, The Environmental Management Plan beavers, mink, and otters from the also funds a project to collect and backwaters. When the ice thickens, organize an immense quantity of data barge traffic stops, and the best fishing about the upper Mississippi River. A spots are marked by clusters of computer at the Environmental ice-fishing shacks. Management Technical Center, in La The dams may have created a Crosse, Wisconsin, is being fed problem for which there is no solution. information collected by dozens of The resulting long pools are sediment workers in five states. It combines and traps that capture much of the soil and compares that information with satellite sand washed into the river and its images and past studies to create a tributaries from eroding farmland and dynamic image of the river. Engineers, stream banks. Barge traffic and boaters, or scientists can play "what if" dredging on the main channel stir up with the river, asking the computer to

Wide World photo.

Minnesota's Lake Itasca forms the headwaters of the Mississippi River.

Barges li ne the Miss1ss1ppi south of St. Louis. More than 61,000 barges passed through this area 1n 1989.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1990 35 USDA photo. speculate how a change might affect the This section of the river roughly The Greenpeace report We All Li ve river over decades. follows a major earthquake fa ult Downstream: The Mississippi River and The Illinois and Missouri rivers join centered at New Madrid, in southern the National Toxics Crisis. published in the Mississippi just upstream from St. Missouri. A powerful earthquake there December 1989, claims that the St. Louis, finally giving it enough water to in 1811 devastated towns, temporarily Louis metro area is second only to float barges year round. Locks limit the reversed the flow of the Mississippi, Louisiana's "Chemical Corridor" in size of a tow to 15 or 17 barges, but and created shock waves strong enough adding toxic chemicals to the below the last lock, larger towboats can to ring church bells in Washington, DC. Mississippi. "At least 10 major push tows of 40 or more barges up and petrochemical faci lilies and 7 ,500 down the river. In 1989, towboats smaller industries discharge wastewater pushed 61,200 barges loaded with 75 to the river, either directly or via the million tons of corn, soybeans, coal, The old notion of a river sewer systems of St. Louis or Sauget, fuel oil, steel, and other cargo through carrying away a city's waste Illinois, across the river from St. the last lock, at Granite City, Ill inois, is backwards; rivers bring it Louis," according to the report. across from St. Lou is. together .... The report goes on at length about A few miles downstream, in Cahokia, the Chemical Corridor, where many Illinois, a group of huge mounds marks cities draw their drinking water from the spot that probably served as the the river and cancer rates are high. center of an empire more than 700 The river below St. Louis not only Though the report has been criticized years ago. At that time, a stockade carries a lot of barge traffic, it also for ignoring some facts, such as protected the center of a city where as carries a heavy load of pollutants and higher-than-average cigarette many as 40,000 of the people sediment. The Missouri, Ohio, and consumption per capita in Louisiana, archaeologists call the Mississippians upper Mississippi rivers drain a good there is general agreement that more lived. Other cities of the Mississippian share of the nation, from th e than 100 major industries along the culture have been studied near the river Appalachian Mountains to the Rocky 150-m ile stretch between Baton Rouge as far north as Wisconsin and Mountains. They carry the agricultural and New Orleans contribute a huge downstream nearly to the Gulf of chemicals washed by rains from quantity of pollution to the river and Mexico. The Mississippians also built millions of acres of cropland. They the rest of the environment. Greenpeace stockaded cities along the Ohio and carry untreated sewage, toxic quotes the EPA 's Toxic Release Missouri rivers and inland. They grew chemicals, and parking-lot runoff from Inventory fo r 1987, stating that large fields of corn, beans, and squash Great Falls, Montana, fro m industries in the eight parishes along and traded over much of what is now Minneapolis, from Pittsburgh, and that 150-mile stretch release over 933 the central United States. Not a lot is dozens of cities in between. The old million pounds of toxic chemicals known about them because they notion of a river carrying away a city's (excluding sodium sulfate) to the abandoned or were forced from their waste is backwards; rivers bring it environment each year, 196 m illion cities shortly before Columbus sailed to together, and the inadequacies of much pounds of which are discharged the West Indies. of our nation's pollution control comes directly into the Mississippi River. together at St. Louis. The Mississippi appears to be trying to avoid the Chemical Corridor (who

36 EPA JOURNAL M ss1 s1ppi tributary, with d p te low water.

M1 1ss1pp1 mud being dredged from the river near Memphis, Tennessee. can blame it?) by taking a shortcut to About 5,000 ships and 50,000 barges At this point 133 cubic miles of the Gulf of Mexico. About every move about 145 million tons of cargo a water, soil, effluent, and industrial thousand years river sediment year over New Orleans' docks. Lake waste from 31 states and two Canadian lengthens its route to the sea until it Ponchartrain borders the north edge of provinces flows into the Gulf each year. switches to a shorter route. It is now the city, and the Mississippi marks a Thanks to improved sewage treatment due for a change. curvey border on the south. If you and concern for the environment, the In the 1950s the Atchafalaya River climb the river levee near Jackson water gets a little cleaner each year, but carried close to a third of the Square in the French Quarter, you may it is far from clean. Meanwhile. Mississippi's water to the gulf by a be surprised to find that the river is backwaters fill with sediment, plants route that is steeper and less than half and animals continue to disappear, and the distance. The Atchafalaya was people along the river drink tainted gaining steadily and seemed on the At this point 133 cubic miles water. Some of these effe cts are verge of capturing most of the flow and reversible, and some are not. But the turning the channel that had carried so of water, soil, effluent, and sources of the problems are all within much commerce and prosperity to industrial waste from 31 our control. o Baton Rouge and New Orleans into a states and two Canadian sluggish bayou. In 1963, at Old River, provinces flows into the Gulf 74 miles upriver from Baton Rouge, the Army Corps of Engineers opened a new each year. lock and a structure to limit the flow of water from the Mississippi into the Atchafalaya. Though the structure has higher than the city below. Actually operated successfully for more than 17 much of the city is below sea level and years, some people insist that the river depends on 130 miles of levees and a will win its struggle with the Corps. gargantuan system of pumps to keep it At Baton Rouge, the Mississippi from being flooded . becomes deep enough to carry The river continues past New Orleans ocean-going ships. The ports along this for 115 miles on a tongue of land stretch are busy exchanging cargos from extending into the Gulf of Mexico. This those ships and the barges from the narrow strip and much of southern Mississippi and the east and west Louisiana was created by sediment branches of the Gulf Intercoastal carried by the Mississippi. As sediment Waterway, and the products of the settles and the tongue extends farther petrochemical plants that line the river into the sea, the rate of the river's fa ll is banks. reduced and the river slows, which causes more sediment to be deposited , creating more incentive for the river to take the Atchafalaya shortcut.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1990 37 The Southern California Bight: Where Traditional Approaches Won't Work by Wesley Marx

he Southern California Bight Tborders a curve of the Pacific Coast that runs from Point Conception in Santa Barbara County, southeast 357 miles to Cabo Colnett, Baja California, CALIFORNIA in Mexico. Bounded on the west by the cool. south-flowing California Current, the bight covers more than 3 7 ,000 square miles of ocean. The populous coastal strip bordering the bight is internationally known as a center for high-technology industry, mass entertainment, fast tract development, and auto-centered transportation. A combined U.S.-Mexican population of some 15 million currently resides in the bight's drainage basin. Residents enjoy such PACIFIC OCEAN resources as the bight's bluff-backed beaches- Malibu, Rincon, Santa Monica, Huntington Beach, the Trestles, Baja's San Miguel. Annual beach attendance along Santa Monica Bay runs some 44 million. Offshore, more than 30,000 recreational boats cruise the waters. Scuba divers glide through lush submarine forests of kelp. Anglers pursue tuna, swordfish, and recreational and commercial fish contaminate the bight's marine food yellowtai l. stocks, including halibut and turbot. chain. But too many wetlands, in the drive The pace of development outstrips Enter Environmental Overload towards coastal buildout, have been environmental safeguards. Repeated converted into marinas, housing closures of San Diego's Mission Bay Each day, some 1.5 billion gallons of developments, and parking lots. For and Santa Monica Bay because of treated sewage are discharged to every acre of coastal wetland that sewage spills have affirmed just how the bight. Storm drains, marina remains, over three acres no longer overloaded these systems were. EPA operations, and aerial fa llout from exist. Some 75 percent have been lost. resorted lo legal action against both San smokestacks and auto exhaust add lo Schools of steelhead trout in the Diego and Los Angeles to secure the wasteload. bight once converged by the thousands compliance with federal water quality Rapid growth has taken its toll on the to ascend coastal watersheds to spawn. standards. bight's resources. Among these are Today, only remnant runs remain; Keeping a lid on pollution with coastal wetland systems, which are dams block them from access to conventional measures is increasingly important as feeding and resting spawning grounds. Stream flows have d ifficult. The region is trying to find stations for migratory waterfowl along been diverted to farm fields and urban answers to some basic questions. Can the Pacific Flyway. They also serve as reservoirs. ways be found to recycle, reuse, and nursery grounds for important The chemical industry has played a reduce the soaring wasteloads? Can prominent role in the region's rise to storm drains and other uncontrolled industrial prowess, but it has left pollution sources be cleaned up? Can environmental scars. In the 1960s and coastal habitat be restored to help the 1970s, uptake of DDT turned more region regain its natural marine fi sh-eating natives of the bight- brown heritage? Can the United States and pelicans, osprey, bald eagles, Peregrine Mexico cooperate in protecting a falcons- inlo endangered species. DDT resource they both share? Jn short, can (Marx served on the National Resource was banned from domestic use in 1972, new environmental options be Council panel on marine monitoring in but past marine discharges of this developed for a high-growth region that the outhern California Bight.) durable chemical continue to is outstripping conventional solutions?

38 EPA JOURNAL Wesley Marx phoro Today, the process to treat sewage Some Hopeful Signs of a Comeback Sea lions are denizens of the California shoreline. Th is rookery is at San Miguel sludge produces more than enough Eldorado Nature Park in Long Beach Island. methane gas to meet LACSD energy has a lush landscape. The park is needs. Under an EPA grant for watered by treated effluent that was innovative technology, LACSO has once routinely discharged into the installed a gas turbine engine that bight. Reclaimed water is being used lo burns the recovered gas more efficiently cool industrial processes in Glendale, Diego, for example, is planning to than an internal combustion engine, process wastepaper in Pomona, construct six reclamation plants. while reducing air emissions. recharge ground water in Los Angeles, Wastewater reuse does require careful The region is also learning to reduce and stem salt-water intrusion in Orange planning. Reclaimed water can not be sewage flows and conserve treatment County. used for direct reuse as a drinking capacity. The City of Los Angeles and By recycling treated effluent, the water. It is limited to industrial uses, neighbors that use the city's sewage region can reduce its reliance on waler farm and landscape irrigation, and system are mandating use of ultra-low imported from the lower Colorado ground-water recharge. Reclaimed flow toilets. The City of Santa Monica River, the Sacramento-San Joaquin water lines must be separate from lines recently approved constructi on of D delta, Mono Lake, and other stressed that carry drinking water. But lower large commercial office complex that aquatic habitats. Treated effluent for water bills can justify installing a dual would normally generate some 70,000 reuse generally requires a higher level system. The farther away a large, million gallons of sewage daily. With of treatment (tertiary) than that for central sewer plant is from customers, water-conservation fixtures, this ocean disposal (secondary). But the longer the distribution lines. By projected daily flow will be cut to reclaimed water can generate income. opting for a series of smaller plants in 40,000 million gallons. The Los Angeles Country Sanitation its service area, LACSD expands its More regulatory attention is being Districts [LACSD) gains about $700,000 reuse options. Residential waste flows directed to uncontrolled sources of a year from such sales. Buyers profit are preferred. Industrial fl ows are pollution. In Southern California, storm too. Reclaimed water costs less than harder to treat for reuse. drains are separate from sewage drains. imported water. The shift to waler Another treatment byproduct is being However, storm drains can still be reuse is spreading, encouraged by the made to pay. LACSD once had to buy contaminated by nonpoinl sources: ongoing drought in California. San energy to run its major treatment plant. animal fecal matter, sewage spills and

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1990 39 bypasses from clogged sewer lines, used oils and cleaning solvents. The City of Santa Monica is now trying to clean up its infamous Pico-Kenter storm drain, which regularly dumps highly polluted flows into the surf zone in Santa Monica Bay. Bathers are warned to avoid the area. If the flows could be disinfected prior to discharge, the bay might be spared one more gross insult. Chlorine, a standard disinfectant, is hazardous and costly to store. Ozone is not, and Santa Monica, with a grant from EPA, is evaluating its use to disinfect the flows. So far, test results are promising, and a second option is emerging. Treated flows may meet standards for landscape irrigation. Ergo, an expanded study to consider reuse of treated flows to water nearby freeway medians and cemeteries. Controlling pollutants at the source is another way to cleanse storm drai n flows. To reduce debris washing into the Pico-Kenter Drain, Santa Monica has stepped up street cleaning programs and placed debris traps on drain inlets. Sensors along the drain can detect hydrocarbon spills; an alarm sounds so that spills can be contai ned before reaching the surf zone. "Midnight" dumpers now risk being caught. Santa Monica's experi ence is proving helpful to ·other coastal communities that must now implement drain controls under the federal Water Quality Act. Reclaiming seemingly lost habitat is becoming as promising an option as reclaiming wasteloads. By removing old salt-pond dikes and accumulated silt, the California Department of Fish and Game reopened a derelict section of Upper Newport Bay in Orange County to the tides. As the tides return, so do the fish, the shorebirds, and the sa lt marsh plants. In Balsa Chica marsh near Huntington Bea ch , another derelict wetlands area has been restored to 300 Work crews rake and shovel oil-soaked straw during the famous 1969 acres of prime salt marsh. The U.S. Santa Barbara oil spill. The recent Amoco Trader spill off Orange Fish and Wildlife Service plans to County showed that clean-up efforts still need improvement-one of restore over 1,000 acres of sa lt ponds in many challenges facing the Southern California Bight. south San Diego Bay.

40 EPA JOURNAL Brown kelp frequently washes onto California beaches. Th is underwater plant is a key link in the bight's marine ecosystem.

Steelhead salmon may get a new stringent air pollution controls will As can happen north of the border, lease on life in the busy bight. A fish mean less aerial fallout of pollutants to Tijuana's explosive growth can outstrip ladder has been installed on the Santa the bight. public services. As much as 10 million Clara River to help a remnant run of Historically, responsibility for gallons a day of raw sewage from about 100 steelhead regain historic protecting the bight from pollution has Tijuana has flowed along a river spawning grounds. Screens have been been split up among a maze of state, channel and into the U.S. side of the installed on canal diversions to prevent local, and federal agencies. This border. Since the early 1980s, a juvenile steelhead from straying into fragmented approach can hinder two-mile stretch of San Diego beaches fatal dead ends. Farther south, a group effective responses to critical areas of north of the border have been closed to called California Trout is working to concern such as Santa Monica Bay. In use because of these runaway flows. install fish bypasses around barriers in 1988, the bay was made part of EPA's The Tijuana estuary, designated a Malibu Creek to help another remnant National Estuary Program, which National Estuarine Area by NOAA, has run of steelhead. provides a mechanism for coordinated also been contaminated. In February 1990, the oil spill from action. Some 50 member organizations In 1990. the United States and American Trader off Orange County not are collaborating in the Santa Monica Mexico entered into a joint agreement only perpetuated environmental Bay Restoration Project, created to to fund a sewage-treatment plant on the concern in the bight over marine oil develop a Comprehensive Conservation U.S. side to treat the cross-border flows. activities, but showed that clean-up and Management Plan for the bay. Mexico will require industries to efforts can still leave something to be A 1990 National Research Council pre-treat their flows before discharge desired. Some 400,000 gallons of (NRC) report, Monitoring Southern into the bi-national plant, which will Alaskan North Slope crude were spil t. California's Coastal Waters, provide secondary treatment and Despite containment efforts at sea, oil recommended establishing a regional disinfection prior to ocean-outfall washed up along 15 miles of coast. It marine monitoring program. The report disposal. Mexico will also upgrade a was a month before the final beach found that current monitoring efforts in treatment facility on its side of the closure could be lifted. water quality and marine resources are border that discharges into the surf However, concern over oil activities fragmented and uneven. The data zone. Tijuana's collection system is to in the bight can help spur the region's collected can go unused. As the NRC be upgraded and expanded; hall the quest for resource alternatives. In 1990, report noted, "There currently is no city's residents live in unsewered areas. the California Public Utilities effective system for reporting findings Commission, working with major of monitoring programs to the public, The Future is in Doubt energy utilities and environmental the scientific community, or policy groups like the Natural Resources The emerging opportunities in water makers." One priority effort in the reuse, wetland restoration, energy Defense Council, began a major Santa Monica Bay Restoration Program program to provide utility customers conservation, and cross-border will be to develop an integrated cooperation may provide this coastal with rebates for purchasing monitoring system for the bay. energy-efficient furnaces, refri gerators, region with expanded options in Major industrial and population shaping its environmental future and and water heaters. By shifting to energy growth in the Baja area underscores the conservation and alternative energy protecting the resources of the bight. importance of a regional perspective. But population pressures and the risks sources, Pacific Gas and Electric This growth is fueled, in part, by the Company plans to save the equivalent of outstripping environmental Maquiladora program, under which safeguards will intensify. of about 11 million barrels of oil per businesses in the United States and By 2010, 2.6 million more people year. other countries can establish The region is adopting a similar will reside in the coastal counties of production lines in Mexico's border Los Angeles, Orange, and San Diego. strategy in dealing with another cities to take advantage of lower labor pervasive environmental problem. To according to NOAA's Ocean and operating costs. Finished products Assessments Division. Orange achieve EPA air quality standards for can be shipped back across the border the smoggy Los Angeles basin, the Country's population alone will jump subject only to U.S. duties on the value by 704,000. By then, fast-growing California Air Resources Board is added after assembly or processing. moving beyond the nation's most Tijuana could become the second Over 300 Maquiladora plants in Tijuana largest city along this coast, exceeded stringent tailpipe emission controls and pump an estimated $10 million a mandating changes in car design, only by Los Angeles. Amid such rapid month into the city's economy. The development, the challenge of including cleaner burning fuels and city's population, currently an engines. The 1990 federal Clean Air Act protecting the bight's natural resources estimated 1.2 million, is expected will remain as formidable as ever. o amendments reinforce this shift. More eventually to exceed that of its neighbor, San Diego.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1990 41 The Ogallala Aquifer: An Underground Sea

by Jack Lewis

ne of America's greatest natural renown of a great above-ground tourist Owonders is invisible to the naked attraction. r------J eye: A king's ransom in fresh water lies Yet its beneficial effects-if --~ ~ buried under 170,000 square miles of workmanlike-are nothing short of I sand and rock in the nation's once arid, spectacular. Thanks to Ogallala-tapped now verdant Great Plains. Named the irrigation, the High Plains region of High Plains aquifer, this ground-water America's Great Plains has escaped its ~-- system is the largest in the United near-desert image of a century ago. States, and one of the largest in the Though precipitation is moderate in the world. A vast, hidden, silent freshwater High Plains (16 to 28 inches), it is aquifer, it runs from South Dakota all insufficient to sustain intensive the way to Texas, with part of its vast agricultural cultivation. The High reserves extending under eastern Plains aquifer's bounty is directly Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico. responsible for $20 billion worth of The High Plains aquifer system High Plains food and fiber production consists for the most part of the fa mous in 1989 alone, with ancillary economic Ogallala Formation as well as benefits estimated at $50 billion per connected parts of adjacent annum. underground water deposits. The term But all is not well with the High "Ogallala Aquifer" was widely used in Plains system. Seventy years of steadily the past to refer to what is now increasing pumping have skimmed the technically known as the High Plains top off the aquifer's reserves of aquifer; the name "Ogallala" is still water-reserves that took millions of commonly used in areas where the years to build up through a slow Ogallala Formation comprises most of dripping process not unlike the passage the High Plains system, as it does in of water through a full coffee filter. most localities. ("Ogallala" in the Experts now estimate that 11 percent language of the Sioux Indians means of the aquifer has been pumped since rEXAS "scatter their own"-which is the 1930s, and that 25 percent of its something the Sioux did to survive. once vast reserves will be gone by the The Ogallala Formation is named after year 2020. With 170,000 wells sucking the Nebraska town of Ogallala, located it dry-one for every square mile of the above the aquifer.) aquifer's area-it is almost a miracle In a sense, the High Plains that roughly 89 percent of the High ground-water system is America's sixth Plains aquifer's freshwater treasure is Great Lake. Its 3.3 billion acre feet* of still intact. Two-thirds of that reserve is fresh water would fill Lake Huron to under Nebraska, which is blessed with the brim, with water left over to fill the thickest and most densely saturated one-fifth of Lake Ontario. If pumped of the vast system's underground out over the United States, the High formations. Other states, with Plains aquifer would cover all 50 states ground-water reserves of shallower with one and 1/2 feet of water. saturated thickness, have not been so Despite its richly deserved status as fortunate; many wells in Colorado, one of America's great bodies of water, Kansas, and Texas have already been the High Plains aquifer is virtually pumped dry. unknown outside its native region, The pumping craze began in Texas even under its more traditional name, shortly after World War I. A few Ogallala. Symptomatic of its obscurity dry-land farmers had a vision: They is the fact that neither the Encyclopedia wanted to transform the Texas (Lewis is on Assistant Editor of EPA Britannica nor the Encyclopedia panhandle into a crazy quilt of huge, journal.) Americana devotes even one word to heavily irrigated cotton plantations. this wonder of nature Out of sight, as The 1930s Dust Bowl, which struck • An acre foot of ground water is the adage goes. all too often means out further north, brought a new wave of enough to cover an acre of land with of mind. Ground water. because of its converts to irrigation, eager to tap into one foot of waler. It is equivalent to invisibility, is mysterious, even the transforming riches of the High nearly 326,000 ga llons of water. awe-inspiring, but it lacks the Plains aquifer. However, it was not charismatic glamour and the wide until after World War II that High

42 EPA JOURNAL Corn being irrigated in southwestern Nebraska. Many farmers using water from the Ogallala aquifer are Tim McCabe photo. USDA becoming more conservat1on-minded.

Plains irrigation became entrenched up opposed to 21 million in 1980. Wes use dropped 19 percent in the High and down the region, even all the way Robbins, a High Plains farmer, Plains region. Between 1980 and 1988, up to South Dakota. From relatively acknowledges the aquifer's pivotal role: there was a most encouraging High humble beginnings in the late 1940s, "The High Plains is the largest land Plains system water-level rise of 0.8 these operations quickly intensified. mass in the world with this kind of feet, representing an increase in For example, in 1948 Texas had 8,356 [irrigation-sustained] cropland." available water of 13 ,400.000 acre feet. wells; a mere nine years later, that total By 1980, however, there were signs During the 1980s, the Ogallala had soared to 42,225. Southwest that the party was coming to an end. pumping that continued became more Nebraska had 111,600 acres irrigated in The state of Kansas discovered, to its cost-effective and more 1950, as opposed to a whopping dismay, that it had already pumped up conservation-minded. It must be 873,000 in 1983. conceded that economic pressures The popularity of irrigation was not forced farmers to become water hard to understand. Despite the conservationists, but few would deny expense of pumps and the fuel needed In 1948 Texas had 8,356 that that is what they have become. to power them, irrigation increased wells; a mere nine years One success was achieved with LEPA, yields by 600 to 800 percent over those later, that total had soared "low-energy proficiency application," obtainable through dry farming. There to 42,225. which saved water by using a nozzle to was also a dangerous and pervasive squirt it directly into the soil rather myth that the waters of the High Plains than up into the air in a spray of system were inexhaustible, endlessly quickly evaporating artificial rain. !·or replenished by an underground river to 38 percent of its High Plains system many years, farmers had relied on from the Rockies. In reality, almost all reserves. In parts of Texas, depletion artificial rain released in great wasteful recharge to the High Plains aquifer was even worse, with water tables sprays of water from so-called " pivots." originates from infiltration and down 200 feet, and wells either downward percolation either of surface running dry or ceasing to be profitable Other farmers experimented with the water or, more commonly, of to pump. In Colorado, water tables solar-powered surge valve, which precipitation. were dropping up to five feet a year. automatically opened and closed For 30 years, from the late 1940s to Such drastic declines in ground-water irrigation valves around the clock. Still the late 1970s, the rapid proliferation of levels were attributable to farmers others built "run-off pits" to capture privately owned wells continued pumping water at a rate faster than and recycle irrigation flows. The virtually unabated. The result was the nature's ability to recharge the aquife r. greatest savings in High Plains ground transformation of the once The High Plains system was simply water came, however, not from any drought-ridden High Plains into a new being overpumped. technological gadget or farming fertile crescent, a "green belt" Then fu el prices shot up in the innovation, but simply from the enormous in its dimensions and its 1970s, and with them so did the once discovery made by farmers that " less is productivity. Never before in human negligible cost of irrigation. Assisted by more": Beyond a certain point, history had irrigation so drastically increased rainfall, farmers began to irrigation does not boost either profits altered the physiognomy of so large an discover that higher profitability was or yield enough to warrant wholesale arid region. And it was all thanks to the often compatible with lower yields and pillaging of an irreplaceable resource. High Plains aquifer, 7 million acre feet curtailed irrigation. As a result, By the 1980s, the quantity of High of which were pumped in 1950, as between 1980 and 1985, ground-water Plains ground water was no longer the NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1990 43 sole concern: Signs of its growing In turn, a few people have suggested contamination were throwing a scare that Nebraska begin exporting some of into farmers throughout the region. The its over-abundant High Plains reserves, problem was most acute in the very but these suggestions have met with an heart of the paradise created by ground even greater storm of protest. Critics of water-namely, water-rich Nebraska. the idea note that interlopers from The aquifer is close to the surface in Kansas, Colorado, and Texas are Nebraska and protected only by sandy already buying up large parcels of soil. It was easy for pesticides and Cornhusker real estate. fertilizers to leach down into ground Is it any wonder that some water and degrade what on e was fresh water-crazed High Plains farmers are and pure. hiring rainmakers to attempt with Several Nebraska communities that magic what logic and science have been had been relying on the High Plains unable to accomplish: the saving of the system for drinking water had to pump People once thought that water and the High Plains aquifer. Professional new wells when nitrate levels exceeded prairie would last forever, despite drains rainmakers, using a blend of high-tech the regulatory standard . The problem on the aquifer and other impacts of savvy and good old-fashioned hocus human act1v1ties. But natures bounty 1s was less acute in Texas and Colorado, not 111exhaustible pocus, liave taken credit in some areas where High Plains ground water was for the recent increases in High Plains deeper beneath the surface and rainfall. Unfortunately, rainfall restores shielded from surfa ce activities by cap only 10 percent of the ground water in rock and low percolating soils. Even in the High Plains aquifer that pumping al those states, however, contaminants present rates depletes. Given the basic managed to seep down wellheads al the "The horse has alread y left the aridity of the High Plains region, it very site of pumping and to pollute barn ... . A new proposal would limit would take hundreds of years of depleted waters that were already 12 areas in Greeley County to 641 acre heavier than normal rainfall to becoming increasingly expensive to fe el of [irrigation] water. Bul permits replenish what 70 years of retrieve. are already in existence for 8.191 acre undisciplined pumping have depleted: oncern over depletion and feet. What do you do: sue everyone to reserves of ground water accumulated contamination of the High Plains take away their properly rights? What's drip by drip over millions of years. system has prompted several s tates to the cost of that?" It will take more than a rainmaker take regulatory action. New Mexico is Water-rich Nebraska, with High but probably less than a canal to right in the best position to act because its Plains reserves predicted lo last 400 the wrongs of the High Plains system's ground-water reserves have been in the years, is determined to preserve its past. Already the sheer cost of public domain since 1931. To cite just advantage. The Cornhusker stale is in irrigation-$40 per acre foot in some one example, farmers in Yuma County, the forefront of ground-water places-is teaching farmers valuable New Mexico, pump only one-quarter as regulation. In 1975 the state legislature lessons of self-restraint; others are much High Plains water as their divided Nebraska into Natural learning new behavior from stale neighbors in Gaines Co unty. Texas, Resources Districts (NROs), to be regulators, once despised but now who regard the ground water under headed by elected officials, mainly regarded as harbingers of the future. their land as private properly. Texas farmers. In 1978, the Upper Republican Part of this shift in attitude can be passed a ground-water control law in River NRD had to go to court to defend explained by the growing popularity of 1949, and Colorado began requiring its right lo meter wells. Te n years later, the concept of "sustainable" we ll permits in 1957. In 1968 Kansas the same NRD set the first pumping development: the idea that present-day created three water districts to monitor limit in the stat 75 inches per acre farmers and other businessmen must pumping. over the next five years- and met with save nonrenewable resources for future In all three of these states, opposition astonishingly little resistance. generations. So pervasive has this new to slate regulation has been intense. For What does the fu ture hold? Some attitude become that the farmers of the instance, a few years ago in Burlington, visionaries have suggested using High Plains region would be Colorado, state troopers had to be surface waler to compensate for universally castigated if their single called out to que ll opposition to depleted ground-water reserves. Al the legacy was a bone-dry aquifer, proposed metering of irrigation pumps. cost of billions of dollars, these especially one formerly so mighty. Today the same farmers are more likely prophets recommend constructing a How sad it would be, almost to acquiesce in what they once huge canal west to Texas from the everyone now realizes, if residents of resisted- or at least to shun direct Mississippi. and another south to some new High Plains desert could confrontation in favor of hiring Kansas and Colorado from the Yukon. only read of what their forefathers once high-pri ced lawyers. Susitana, and Tanana Rivers in Canada. squandered: the legendary but only T he threat of litigation also hovers Predictably. officials in the Mississippi seemingly inexhaustible riches of the over Greeley County in western Kansas. River valley and Canada have turned a High Plains ground-water Keith Lebbin, th water mam1ger in deaf ear to these bold, outrageously system ... otherwise known in more Scott Citv. has condemned the expensive, and possibly ecologically traditional and more romantic terms to k cnis ~ implicit in recent efforts: damaging proposals. simply as the great Ogallala.o

44 EPA JOURNAL The Quetico~Superior Lakes: Tainted by Surprise by Dean Rebuffoni

BWCA. Quetico Park. and the surrounding region. including Voyageurs National Park and the Superior National Forest. That has prompted Minnesota and Ontario health officials to issue fish-consumption advisories , and environmentalists are calling for prompt action to halt the contamination. Until recently, neither the source of that mercury nor the extent of the problem was known. Some observers suggested that the contamination was a natural phenomenon; others thought MINNESOTA that it resulted from old gold-mining activities in the region. LAKE SUPERIOR But such conjectures were before completion of a two-year study, made public last January. by scientists at EPA's Environmental Research Laboratory in Duluth, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA). and D Boundary Waters Canoe Area the University of Minnesota. The study concludes that air pollution is the D Superior National Forest istorically, the myriad lakes along primary source of the mercury. It also Hthe Minnesota-Ontario boundary estimates that the rate of mercury have exemplified good water deposition in the region's lakes is quality-clear, clean, cold, and increasing at 3 to 5 percent annually. sheltered within a vast coniferous Although more research is needed to forest. determine the specific sources of the This is the land of the Boundary contaminant, the study calculates that Waters Canoe Area (BWCA) perhaps 86 percent of the mercur, Wilderness, the largest federal comes from atmospheric deposition. wilderness area east of the Rockies, and That phenomenon occurs when the adjoining Quetico Provincial Park potential sources-the MPCA cites of Ontario. Each covers more than 1 coal-burning power plants and garbage million acres. and together they have incinerators-emit mercury high into more than 2,000 interconnected lakes. the atmosphere and the contaminant Not only do these lakes comprise one then falls onto the surface of the lakes of the finest freshwater systems in snow or rain or as dry deposition. anywhere, but this is North America's Federal and state researchers said the premier canoeing region. contaminant could be blown into the There are no year-round residents in region from outside sources after being either the BWCA or Quetico Park, carried long distances on the wind. logging and mi ning are prohibited. and They emphasized that research on acid there are no point sources of pollution rain, another form of air pollution. has within either wilderness sanctuary. shown that about 90 percent of the And while more than 250,000 canoeists acid-forming air pollutants in paddle across the lakes each year, they Minnesota come from other states. (Rebuffoni is the environmental leave little trace of their visits. Another potential source of the reporter for the Star Tribune in And yet, a toxic substance-mercury mercury is mercury additives in latex Minneapolis.) - has contaminated fish in the paint used on building exteriors to

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1990 45 retard the growth of mildew on the "We found that the mercury in this problem," he said. ,;We are charged paint; mercury additives in the paint precipitation comes from airborne by federal law to maintain a pure, may be entering the atmosphere via this sources, some of which are within the natural environment. Fish that are too sourc~;- region and some outside," Glass said. toxic for some people to eat aren't what The remaining 20 percent of the "Some mercury enters Minnesota much I would call 'natural."' mercury in the boundary-lakes region the same way that acid rain comes into Minnesota officials have known for apparently comes from other sources in the state." He noted that the burning of. more than 20 years that mercury has the lakes' watersheds. That could fossil fuels results in airborne contaminated fish from certain state include mercury that falls onto land emissions which contain not only waters. But the recent state-federal within those watersheds, then is acidic pollutants, but mercury and study pointed out that the problem is washed into the lakes. other toxic metals. growing. In 1977, only one lake in Minnesota environmentalists have suggested that some of the mercury The study calculates that might be emitted from waste-to-energy "It's clearly a problem that incinerators in the state. Fourteen we have to deal with or we perhaps 86 percent of the major, publicly owned incinerators are mercury comes from operating, under construction, or being lose the battle," EPA 's Glass abnospheric deposition. planned in Minnesota. If, as planned, said. all those plants are fully operating in the next several years, they will burn at Based on figures contained in the least half of the state's municipal Minnesota (at the edge of the BWCA) state-federal study, an estimated 300 to garbage. Minnesota then will have a was covered by a fish-consumption 600 pounds of mercury falls on the heavier per-capita reliance on garbage advisory issued by the state Health BWCA and Quetico Park each year incineration then any other state, the Department. Advisories now cover 260 through precipitation; the amount MPCA has said. No definitive studies, lakes and 26 streams, many of them in entering from dry deposition is not however, have been conducted to the state's northeastern quarter. known. determine how much mercury might be Although many of the advisories are Although the study focused on 80 falling on northeastern lakes from based on mercury contamination of lakes in the BWCA, the Superior incinerators in Minnesota, or fish, others result from contamination National Forest, and elsewhere in elsewhere. by chemicals such as polychlorinated northeastern Minnesota, there's little Most of the 80 lakes studied by Glass biphenyls (PCBs). doubt that the mercury known to be and Rapo are in the BWCA or The advisories include the Health tainting fish in Quetico Park also is the elsewhere in the Superior National Department's recommendation that result of atmospheric deposition, said Forest, which sprawls across 3 million women of child-bearing age and Gary Glass, a research scientist at the acres of northeastern Minnesota. The children under 12 not eat large walleye EPA's Duluth Laboratory. "The problem U.S. Forest Service is responsible for or northern pike from more than half of of mercury deposition in the BWCA maintaining the BWCA's wilderness 99 lakes tested within the BWCA and and Quetico is indicative of the kinds values and protecting air quality elsewhere in the Superior National of atmospheric inputs to all freshwater throughout the Superior Forest. But the Forest. bodies that are within the impact zone forest supervisor, Dave Filius, stressed "It's clearly a problem that we have of such airborne toxins," he said. that his agency lacks the power to deal to deal with or we Jose the battle," Glass and George Rapo Jr., a professor with air pollution from outside sources. EPA's Glass said. "The fish in the of geology and chemistry at the "We've got a problem in the BWCA and boundary waters are not being affected University of Minnesota's Duluth adjacent areas that can't be controlled directly: They still have good campus, directed the survey of the 80 by the local ranger," he said. reproduction, for example. But enough lakes to pinpoint mercury Filius emphasized that while the mercury is entering those lakes through concentrations in water, sediment, and Forest Service is concerned about atmospheric deposition that the flesh of zooplankton (plankton animal life). mercury contamination, it doesn't want fish is being tainted to the point where They also gathered data on mercury to frighten people who eat fish from someday they could be unsafe for concentrations in the region's air and northeastern Minnesota lakes. "We do, anyone to eat. precipitation. however, want to inform them in order to build support for more effective controls on the emissions that cause

46 EPA JOURNAL Dulu1h ews-Tnbune phoro

Clean Air Act that would have restricted emissions of mercury and other air toxins from coal-fired power plants and factories. But congressional sources said that the electric-utility industry was instrumental in persuading federal lawmakers to drop that amendment, arguing that more studies are needed on the issue. As part of its recent reauthorization of the Clean Air Act. Congress directed EPA to undertake such studies, then propose standards to cut toxic emissions. The MPCA seeks a national mercury-control program simil ar to Minnesota's 8-year-old program that has cut emissions of sulfur dioxide from power plants in the state. That state program. one of the first in the nation, is intended to reduce Minnesota's contribution to the national acid-rain problem. Li ke acid rain, airborne mercury does not respect state boundaries, and the MPCA emphasizes that only a national effort will effectively curb both fo rms of pollution. Despite the concern about mercury Although the Boundary Waters Canoe contamination in the boundary-waters Area wilderness appears pristine, region. there is hope that the problem airborne mercury is contaminating lakes in the area. can be alleviated. Glass noted that some of the region's larger, deeper lakes require more than "Now 11 percent of the 80 lakes we And the problem is not restricted to 100 years to renew their 1.vater and studied have advisories restricting fish fish, said Marvin Hora, who heads the flush out some contaminants. "But that consumption to one meal per month," MPCA's water-quality toxics assessment applies to certain other classes of toxins he said. "Unless we act, in 20 to 30 unit and helped coordinate the mercury than mercury," h said. ''Mercury years about 80 percent of those lakes study. He noted that the contaminant appears to have a much shorter lifetime will be covered by the same can harm certain wildlife species which in a lake's water column. If the input of restriction." highly depend on fish for food, such as mercury is halted, it might be only a The MPCA (Minnesota Pollution eagles, otters, loons, and mink. few weeks or months before mercury is Control Agency) stressed that the "Everybody seems to agree that the removed from the water column ancl concentration of mercury in fish mercury in remote lakes is the result of absorbed into sediment or plankton and depends not only on the availability of an atmospheric problem," Hora said. other biota (all of an area's Jiving mercury, but on each lake's water "We have to shut off the source of that material). chemistry, which varies greatly across mercury, and in Minnesota we're "That would allow the fish to grow Minnesota. Before mercury can enter looking strongly at the idea of pollution with decreasing body burdens of the food chain, it must be converted to prevention rather than pollution mercury, and within a short period of methylmercury, a complex process control. We have to make sure that the time they would be safer to eat." o researchers say is not completely mercury is never released into the understood. The MPCA and the EPA's environment." Duluth laboratory are continuing The MPCA and Minnesota research on how mercury finds its way environmentalists recently supported a into the flesh of fish. proposed amendment to the fed eral

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1990 47 Managing Nature in the Everglades by James Webb

nee, North America's greatest saw the Everglades only as a set of Lake Okeechobee broke loose in a 0 wetland system gathered waters engineering, economic, and political hurricane of the mid-1920s, and great from the center of Florida's peninsula problems. Bloody suppression of the storms of the 1940s damaged the and deposited them in Lake Seminole Indians could lead to swelling economy of the region. Such Okeechobee, purified through winding peaceful occupancy by "civilized" events- and the growing technical rivers and grassy swamps. Overflows of people. A shipping shortcut from the prowess of the nation-spurred the the lake moved slowly southward in a Atlantic to the Gulf could be made by impulse to bring the Everglades under wide sheet, picking up abundant dredging the Caloosahatchee and comprehensive human control. rainfall along the way, and drained into building a canal from Lake Okeechobee In 1947, Army engineers, modern the innumerable estuaries of the coast. to the Indian River. Plumes from heirs of the conquistador spirit, issued Over thousands of years, waters millions of slaughtered egrets, perched a plan for management of the sweeping the peninsula's limestone on millions of fashionable chapeaux, Everglades' waters that entailed gigantic shelf produced tree islands and could add millions of dollars to private changes to their natural condition. Built pinewood flats in the slightly higher accounts. Drained and diked, the to the direction of Congress, the Central elevations and, a few inches below, Everglades' rich soils could produce and Southern Florida Project joined created a vast, interwoven system of rich farms. and expanded the faltering drainage swamps and sloughs. The Everglades Despite setbacks from flood , fraud , systems then in place, created the was born, and beneath its waters dying and folly, efforts to subdue the 'glades Everglades Agricultural Area (about plants formed a deep accumulation of inched forward for a hundred years, 700,000 acres of arable land south of peat soils. supported by various forms and degrees Lake Okeechobee), and laid the base for Reaching into the climate of the of public grants and public corruption. the vast urban agglomeration that now Caribbean, the varied landscapes of the Highways and drainage districts, farms occupies Florida's southeast coast. " 'glades" became home to a unique and towns, gnawed at its parts. The Almost simultaneously, Congress mixture of plants and animals from invasion took a toll on nature and on established Everglades National Park at tropical and temperate zones and the intruding humans as well. the downstream end of the s~r stem, provided generously for them all. An Hundreds died when the weakly diked thereby placing over a million acres intricate pattern of life adapted to the seasonal procession of Everglades George Gran r phoro. Narional Paik Service waters and to years of drought and deluge, flood and fire. That adaptation was so successful that Europeans making their timid early entries into the province found the continent's richest hoard of wetland life. Clouds of egrets and ibis rolled from sprawling, noisy rookeries. Waters teemed with fish, amphibians, and alliga tors. The nighttime scream of the panther and the dawn sweep of spoonbills bespoke a magic realm. But the real magic of the Everglades lay invisible, unheard. and unknown. The real magic was that the Everglades was one thing- an organic whole, an ecosystem. From the microbial chemistry of its muck soils to its soaring eagles, from sunfish in its crystal headwaters to infant shrimp in Florida Bay, th e parts worked because the whole ecosystem worked. The Western spirit of conquest being what it was, however, most pioneers

Some areas ot the Everglades remain relatively undisturbed, like this lagoon with (Webb is Regional Director of The trees festooned with Spanish moss. Wilderness Society in Florida.)

48 EPA JOURNAL FLORIDA

The project compartmentalized the Areas along the eastern margin of the Everglades, so that its waters could be Everglades, critical to movement of its used for irrigation when farmlands waters underground, are now drained were dry-and could be drained away and paved for development, adding to when the lands were wet. Thus the demands on the aquifer instead of native flux of the system was lost, and supplying strength to it. Draining the so was wildlife that could not adapt to upstream Everglades Agricultural Area an unnatural pond here, an unnatural (EAA) caused its soils to subside, so the prairie there, or the disruption of whole system is managed at lower age-old cycles of inundation and water levels to keep the EAA drying. sufficiently dry, further denying water Half the historic Everglades is now to the Everglades and the aquifer. farms, groves, pastures, and cities. One reason for the subsidence of What's left functions so poorly that those soils is that they are oxidized plant and animal life, accustomed to when exposed to air and bacterial millennial patterns of water and food action. Nitrogen and phosphorus, once supplies, suffer as those supplies are chemically bound in subaqueous muck. Waterways and Canals diminished, distorted, and dirtied. are released to flow downstream with Over the last 50 years, we have lost drainage water. The typical sawgrass 90 percent of the Everglades' wading marsh of the Everglades is adapted to under the highest standards of natural bird populations, and the trend extremely low levels of those elements. protection that our society offers. This continues downward. Now appended to Modest increases in their was the first great expression of a the Everglades system is the nation's concentrations convert the marsh to national purpose to preserve the longest, saddest list of endangered dense growths of cattail and other Everglades and its natural life. species. pollution-tolerant plants. Thousands of That the Central and Southern Water that once flowed through the acres of public wetlands, including Florida Project and the Everglades heart of the system, taking perhaps a parts of Loxahatchee National Wildlife National Park were born at roughly the year to get from Okeechobee to the Refuge, have been so altered. Their same time is almost ironic. The tension tides, is now rushed to sea, and lost oxygen-depleted waters now support between the respective goals of those forever to the 'glades. As a result, the some topminnows and polychaete two initiatives illustrates the enduring Everglades- think of it as a huge worms, where the whole volume and problems of "saving the Everglades." sponge-is generally drier, and the variety of Everglades life once Considering the era, the Army's effects of flood and drought have grown flourished. project was potent and sophisticated, more volatile. To the Everglades, our The EAA continues to pour nitrogen with capable structures and water management practices now bring and phosphorus into the system, a well-integrated goals for regional flood discharge spikes, too-rapid recession, tremendous slug of pollutants is control and water supply. Again wild swings in estuarine salinity, already in train, and the integrity of the considering the era, the absence of degraded water quality, extended Everglades-oJJ of the Everglades- is strong plans to accommodate and drought, and the threat of early death. imperiled. protect natural processes is no surprise. Property tax assessments for water Unplanned, unintended, and From the time the project's main management force most citizens to damaging results of the Central and elements were built, and their subsidize operations that damage their Southern Florida Project are more operation turned over to a state own natural capital. evident daily, as growing demand agency-now the South Florida Water Everglades water goes underground strains its operating capacities. Management District-human decisions to supply the Biscayne Aquifer, the sharpens competition fo r its benefits, rather than natural forces became the source of every drop from every faucet and generally incurs higher costs to the most influential factor in the watery in every house, business, and industry ecosystem and the society. Against ecosystem. The fate of Everglades of the coastal metropolis. Whereas those effects, we now freight the project National Park and of every natural ships once took on fresh waler from the with purposes not comprehended in its element of the region was tied to aquifer's upwellings in Biscayne Bay, original aims, such as protection of human intention- and human water managers now struggle to keep endangered species and water quality. inadvertence. When we humans take salt water out of municipal wellfields. The latter reflect a legal and moral over management of an ecosystem, our While billions of ga ll ons of water are direction to protect nature in the best efforts are clumsier than God's diverted to tide, authorities plan Everglades, restore what we can of its most casual, and. we align our purposes expensive, energy-hungry desalting Jost values, and provide for a awkwardly to His. plants to meet urban water demands.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1990 49 Drainage of portions of the Everglades has disrupted the ecosystem as a whole. It 1s now much more vulnerable o flood and drought.

expansion measure directed changes lo project works that will let managers replicate more natural water patterns in the slough. The district developed a com puter model, based on regional rainfall, that attempts lo show how the slough's waters would move under U S Fish and W1/d//fe Se/Vice photo unimpaired conditions. That model, refined as necessary by actual operating experience, will guide fu ture deliveries burgeoning human population and for a barriers to needed change-the kind of lo the park. More broadly, it suggests vigorous, urban economy. change that wi ll support the most the kind of knowledge and application Ungodlike as their powers remain, productive economic uses of those needed lo restore abundance and scientists, policymakers, and ordinary waters and also protect the ecosystem diversity in the whole ecosystem. people have learned a lot in the on which such uses finally depend. The most powerful data from the half-century of the project about what Such recognition also reveals some most powerful computers leave us far the Everglades needs, what the steps along the True Path: some things short of understanding a complex Everglades does for us, and what we've done right, some ideas that system li ke the Everglades, but they happens when 4 million people move deserve wider embodiment. sufficiently reveal gross rror and into the neighborhood. The political The system's great public reserves important choices. Many prior choices, lesson is this: Living with the give both motive and hope for the imbedded in the concrete of the Central Everglades system, and restoring its and Southern Florida Project, are liveliness, presents a hard, permanent, sapping resources-water, money, and and vital challenge to our institutions. Half the historic Everglades options-needed to save the Everglades. Throughout the United States, issues is now farms, groves, Those choices-and the project of constitutional federalism are pastures, and cities. itself-must now be remade, as growing increasingly about water. Serving knowledge shows us systematic private and public water needs through impairment that demands systematic the interlaced methods, ai ms, and accommodation of man and nature in corrections. authorities of state and nation is the Everglades; they preserve not just Before we began to alter the nowhere more demanding than in the land and water, but choices. A current Everglades, it survived 5,000 years of Everglades. example of action broadening the drought, hurricane. and fire, The law establishing Everglades Everglades' prospects is the 1989 perennially healing the fabric of its life. National Park calls on the Department addition of 108,000 acres to Everglades We have cul and ruptured that fabric in of Interior to protect the objects and National Park's eastern boundaries. ways that will never be repaired; still it processes of its natural life, forever. In Enacted with firm support by the state, remains one of the world's natural fact, the park's "forever" li es more with the East Everglades expansion brings glories. the South Florida Water Management the park's central supply of overland The Everglades is now our ward. We Di strict than with federal authority. The waters, Shark River Slough, into public are obliged, for the Everglades and fate of the natural system is influenced control. ourselves, to bind energy, intelligence, more by Florida's choices in growth The expansion area is now mostly and the knowledge of the heart to its management than by the United divided into small lots, distinguished protection and revival. Only if we Nations' designation of the park as a only on paper, and their owners are guard and cultivate the seeds of World Heritage Site. mostly victims of unscrupulous swamp renewal, and redress each of our errors, Increasingly, laboriously, in a maze peddlers. As a result of withholding however deeply rooted, will a of enactments, lawsuits, studies, and water flow from the otherwise bounteous nature respond. management plans, stale and federal unprotected, never-to-be-developed There is no adequate precedent, in authorities have come to recognize the private holdings, the western, the nation or the world, for conscious systematic problems of the Everglades park-owned half of the slough is subject restoration of an ecosystem so invaded and lake common aim at better to excessive discharges from project by man. The job in the Everglades is lo solutions. control structures, and the wetlands life set the precedent and to do so quickly That recognition illuminates of the eastern portion is decimated. and well. Nesting success, whether for fundamental errors in the management In addition to its acquisition program storks, alligators, or people, depends on of the Everglades' waters and awful for the eastern lands, the park it. D

50 EPA JOURNAL The Eco-Invaders by David Yount

round 250 million years ago, all of More than 30 years ago, Charles Elton Athe Earth 's land mass was wrote in The Ecology of In vasions by contained in one gigantic continent Animals and Plants (London: Chapman which geologists today call Pangaea. & Hall, 1958) of so-called "ecological About 200 million years ago, this explosions": enormous increases in the gigantic continent began to break apart, numbers of some kfods of introd uced and the pieces began to drift toward organisms. Ecological explosions, he their present locations. observed, differ from other kinds of While Pangaea existed, many species explosions in that they do not make were widely found because they loud noises and do not happen could move about and disperse instantaneously-although they oft en relatively freely. As the pieces of make "quite a loud noise in the press." Pangaea separated. however, the Elton wondered whether our awareness organisms that inhabited them became of these events was due merely to a isolated from their relatives on other more efficient news service or whethez continents and islands. Over time, they really were becoming more these species evolved in diverse ways and produced varieties that might not have survived had they needed to compete with their close or distant According to estimates, relatives. Consequently, the diversity of zebra mussels currently species on Earth increased. filter all the water in Lake Zebra Mussels. LePage photo AScl Corp. About 500 years ago, the human species began, in effect, to reconnect St. Clair several times daily. the pieces of Pangaea through worldwide shipping. More recently, rail and air travel and faster and larger sea-going vessels have brought together common. He concluded that ecological species previously separated by oceans, explosions were in fact becom ing more deserts, mountains, and other barriers. common. "We need to understand what Historically, such breakdowns of is causing them," he wrote, "and try to barriers between species occurred arrive at some general viewpoint about gradually, over millions of years; now the whole business." the descendants of the species that Within the last two years, many once inhabited Pangaea are being articles have appeared about an Ruffe fish . reunited in the course of a few "introduced species" called the zebra centuries, even decades. (This graphic mussel. The enormous feeding and picture of species exchanges was reproducti ve capacities of this invading painted recently by Alfred Crosby in a species have led to its epidemic spread book called Ecological Im perialism throughout the Great Lakes, where in (New York: Cambridge University some areas it reportedly has reached Press, 1987). population densities greater Ih an 30,000 individuals per square meter. The mussel's spread to other freshwater systems throughout North America is likely. The mussels have immediate economic impacts because they clog Spiny Water Flea . water-intake pipes. In addition, for the longer term, there is also considerable concern that the species may cause (Dr. Yount is an aquatic ecologist at catastrophic changes in the ecology of EPA 's Environmental Research North American fresh waters. Consider Laboratory in Duluth, Minnesota.) the example of Lake St. Clair- a small

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1990 51 connecting lake located between Lake throughout its native Europe before the Shippers and boaters are incurring extra Erie and Lake Huron-which is heavily last glacial era, when it fo und refuge in expenses to have zebra mussels scraped infested with zebra mussels. According the Black an d Caspian seas. From these off their hulls. The mussels also attach to estimates, zebra mussels currently strongholds, it has recolonized Europe themselves in quantity to buoys and filter all the waler in Lake St. Clair not only by natural dispersion, but with navigational aids. Managing the zebra several times daily. Zebra mussels can the help of merchant vessels and inland mussel and other exotic species will cost out-compete many native bottom waterways. Complete recolonization of millions of dollars. organisms, and in Lake St. Clair and Europe occurred about 160 years ago. western Lake Erie, the mussels have Thanks to their natural predators and dramatically shunted the energy fl ow parasites, zebra mussels generally have away from fi sh in the aquatic food web. not been a serious problem in Europe, The spread of this mussel would mean except in new or disturbed habitats its native habitat, wh ere it preys on the severe and dramatic consequences for such as reservoirs. In any case, modern eggs of whitefish. Because it is very the ecological integrity of surface industry in Europe developed over the prolific, the ruffe can rapidly dominate waters as it causes major shifts in years in the mussels' presence, thus other fish populations. food -web interactions and in the giving industry an opportunity to With the possible exception of the movement of nutrients and toxic accommodate gradually by building zebra mussel, the most serious materials, and reduces the diversity of infiltration and control systems. introduced-species problem in the species. The spiny water fl ea (also known as Great Lakes to date has been with the How did this situation come about? Bythotrephes cederstroemii , or BC) sea lamprey. This species migrated At a recent EPA workshop in Saginaw, probably entered the Great Lakes in through the St. Lawrence Seaway into Michigan, on introduced species, ballast water from s hips frequenting Lake Ontario and became common Edward Mills reported on a study of European ports with low-salinity there in the 1 BOOs. Niagara Falls species invasions in the Great Lakes harbors. According to Craig Sandgren at blocked its migration to the other Great which he and his colleagues had the EPA-sponsored workshop on Lakes until the Welland Canal bypassed conducted. The results ind icated that introduced species, BC is native to the falls in 1829. By the late 1930s, sea exotic species have been successfully lakes in Europe, where it is typically a lamp reys had spread throughout the invading the Great Lakes since the early minor component of the planktonic lakes and quickly devastated the lake 1800s; no fewer than 11 5 different community and therefore has been little trout populations in Lakes Michigan species were identified as having studied. It was first reported in and Huron and much of Lake Superior. succeeded in establish ing reproducing southern Lake Huron in 1984. It spread An intensive control program, using a populations. east to Lakes Erie and Ontario in 1985, compound (TFMJ which selectively Although these invasions have been into Lake Michigan in 1986, and into kills sea lamprey larvae with minimal occurring for al least two centuries, 46 Lake Superior in 1987. effect on other organisms, has reduced percent of them look place after the Each Great Lake has responded to BC the lamprey populations to about 5 opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in in a different manner, probably as a percent of their previous levels. 1959. Thirty-five percent of the exotic result of their different p lankton-eating However, continuous expensive and species in the Great Lakes entered fish comm unities. Whereas the zebra labor-intensive effo rt is required to through ship activities. Of this group of mussel has caused economic imparts keep the sea lamprey under control. 40 species, 28 arri ved in the ballast that are easil y measured, an assessment Three of these examples- the zebra water that unloaded ships carry for of the impact of BC must wait until stability when crossing the ocean to fi sheries or other ecosystems respond to pick up cargo. the food-web alterations BC produces. Ed Mills and his colleagues reported The ruffe , a small member of the that these 115 non-native species perch family, is found in lakes, (which have bad both positive and slow-flowing rivers, and canals negative impacts) include the alewife, throughout Europe and across central sea lamprey, purple loosestrife (a and northern Asia. It has been recently J . Howard McCormick, an aquatic biologist with EPA's Environmental wetland plant). chinook salmon, the introduced to North America in ballast Research Lab in Duluth, samples spiny water flea, and the ruffe. as well water. At this time, it has been reported mussels on a recent Lake Erie trip made as the zebra mussel. Of these species. only from the western end of Lake on the Coast Guard cutter Mariposa. the latter three were brought into the Superior, w here it is becoming one of Zebra mussels winter well and appear to Groat Lakes through bal last water. the more abundant species. The ruffe have few natural predators in the Great The zebra mussel was present has little sport or commercial value in Lakes.

52 EPA JOURNAL To maintain stability, ships without cargo take on water from various ports for ballast. When picking up cargo at Great Lakes or other ports, they drain the ballast water, as shown here. Many exotic species are believed to have arrived from overseas in the Great Lakes this way.

mussel, the spiny water fl ea, and the ruffe.-involve the transfer of species between major pieces of the former supercontinent Pangaea; the fourth example, the sea lamprey, concerns the removal of a natural barrier to dispersion. All four cases illustrate the range of problems that can arise when species which have evolved in separate parts of the world are brought together. Other examples, such as the purposeful introduction of rainbow trout or coho salmon, although considered benefi cial by some fishermen, are looked u pon with suspicion by those who are concerned about the natural integrity of ecosystems. So what is the answer? Should we accelerate the reuniting of Pangaea and simply let the best competitors survive? Most thoughtful people say no. Apart from the problems involved, the world would certainly be a much less interesting place to live if that were to happen. Or should restrictions be placed on the controllable routes of introduction? A recent report by the International Joint Commission and the Great Lakes Fishery Co mmission (Exotic Species and the Shipping Industry, September 1990) con cluded that ''the discharge of ballast water in the Great Lakes and connected ... waters must become a privilege granted only to those ships that have taken reasonable and acceptable precautions to prevent ballast-borne introductions." Toward this end, the Nonindigenous Aquatic Nuisance Prevention and Control Act of 1990 requires that first voluntary guidelines, then regulations be issued to prevent the introduction and spread of aquatic-nuisance species in lo the Great Lakes through discharges of ballast water. The act also includes provisions for further research concerning introduced species. This new law should slow the mixing of species among the pieces of Pangaea while promoting scientific understanding and minimizing the impact of those invading species that have alread y become established. o LePage photo AScl Corp NOVEMBER/DE CEMBER 1990 53 An Independent Perspective by William M. Eichbaum

ince the passage of the Federal improvements are limited, scarce detergents, is highly cost effective. SWater Pollution Control Act resources are spent inefficiently, or, A second element of an integrated Amendments in 1972, substantial while quality improves, the abundance management system would be land progress has been made in addressing of flora and fauna does not. This management. The land-development the water pollution problems of the fragmentary approach must be replaced process is perhaps the single most nation. Rivers have been brought back by an integrated management system important activity which degrades from degradation. Billions of gallons of for water quality. Such a system would water quality and related ecological human sewage which received little consist of several elements. values. As the construction of housing treatment are now rendered almost The first of these is poJlution and commercial and industrial facilities harmless to man by massive treatment abatement. Efforts to reduce pollution destroys forests, covers the land with plants. Industrial discharges of metals need to go beyond controlling pipes. impermeable surfaces, and converts and organics have been reduced by as There is no question that point sources, wetlands, we lose an enormously rich much as 90 percent. such as industrial discharges and natural habitat which depends on Yet there is growing concern, as sewage-treatment plants, need to be interaction between land and water for evidenced by the recent report of EPA's effectively regulated. And, in large part, its biologic functioning. In addition, Science Advisory Board entitled this transformation of the land "Reducing Risk," that the ecological fundamentally alters water quality and integrity of few of the nation's great Too often, efforts to reverse rates of flow, which results in the water systems has been restored. The degradation of both surface and ground Chesapeake Bay continues to the degradation of water water. For example, the polluting experience declines in oysters and resources focus only on the impact of runoff from housing rockfish. Waterfowl of the Great Lakes most obvious symptom .... subdivisions can be many times that show substantial contamination by from forests. organic chemicals. The great water If our society is to preserve the aquifers of the midwest, such as the these sources have been well controlled richness of aquatic habitats, we need to Ogallafa, become Jess productive each through expensive treatment facilities. better manage our terrestrial activities year. Lakes in the Rocky Mountains While there remain arguments about which are critical to their viability. have increasing levels of acidification. ultimate levels of treatment and about Controlling the location and nature of Irrigation practices in California degrees of compliance at these plants, development must be a central strategy contaminate local ecological systems today th'e most significant uncontrolled in protecting water regimes. Land and degrade the San Francisco Bay. source of pollutants appears to be disturbance and concentrated The nation's effort, over the past 20 nonpoint sources, such as runoff from development of new communities years, to protect the ecological integrity agriculture and developed land. In fact, should be prevented at the water's edge of our hydrologic regimes has produced current estimates suggest that these since their destructive impacts cannot benefits, yet the natural resiliency of sources of pollution are actually more be completely controlled with these aquatic systems, upon which our important in degrading most water structural or engineered techniques. long-range well-being depends, bodies than are point sources. New development should be largely continues to decline. Where have we Unfortunately, there are few remedial confined to areas where the existing gone wrong'? Or, more significantly, mechanisms which are demonstrably infrastructure has the capacity to what do we need to do in the future if effective for controlling these diffuse minimize environmental harm. Such we are truly to protect the water sources. Accordingly, pollution strategies have been adopted by several resources of the United States? prevention will be increasingly states for their coastal zones and are Too often, efforts to reverse the important for controlling now urged upon the states under the degradation of water resources focus nonpoint-source pollution. recently reauthorized federal Coastal only on the most obvious symptom For example, management practices Zone Management Act. rather than responding to the complex such as grass filter strips and small The third element of our management problems of an entire ecological system. ponds appear to be largely ineffective system would be protection of living As a consequence, often there are in reducing the runoff of nutrients from resources. Too often we assume that several points of failure: Water quality farm fields. This means that pollution achieving compliance with traditional must be prevented by allowing no more water quality standards will be nutrients to be applied to farm fields adequate to protect the flora and fauna than will be utilized by the crops being of the aquatic environment. This is grown. Fortunately, even for point clearly false. Overharvesting and subtle (Eichbaum is Vice-President of World sources, preventing the discharge of changes in the aquatic or terrestrial Wildlife Fund and The Conservation pollutants to treatment facilities, such habitat can result in the demise of Foundation.) as through a ban on phosphates in especially important species almost

54 EPA JOURNAL well-being of the bay because of their nutrient-control functions. Thus. nutrient-control programs which will protect submerged grasses are emerging as one of the most important living-resource protection strategies. Lastly, institution building is necessary for filling out our management system. 1o natural system can long survive or be the subject of intensive human efforts at restoration unless there is a significant effort at building the institutions necessary for managing the human interaction with the system. Institutions of governance are built on political commitment, but if they are to function successfully. they require a wide range of inputs. They must be adequately staffed, and financial resources must be available. There must be strong mechanisms for public information and pathways for the public to influence government. Educating the public about the complex requirements for protecting ecological systems is necessary. Especially in the increasingly difficult world of integrated environmental managemen t. the problem of practicing good science and assuring that it is wisely used by managers and policy makers d eserves serious attention. The science of ecological management is a great deal more uncertain than the simple problem of engineering a treatment facility to produce an effluent to meet a set of water quality standards. This uncertainty places a premium on good communication between scientists and managers and upon well-directed What happens on the land is a major factor affecting what happens in research programs. These efforts need the water of many of the nation's great bays, rivers, and lakes. Heavy to reach beyond the physical, chemical, development is common near many great water bodies, including San and biological sciences into economics. Francisco Bay. Pictured is the East Bay shoreline, from Richmond to sociology, and related fields. Finall y, a Oakland, California. system of monitoring must be established to measure success, or the without a regretful glance to the past. fisheries is a pervasive example of such lack thereof, and allow for program Careful plans must be laid for the protection. Other species are of less evolution and political accountability. survival of species as part of an obvious value, yet they play a role, Successful design of a program based environmental restoration strategy. often subtle, in the maintenance of on these elements of an integrated Many species are import ant to humans natural processes necessary for the management system will require that fo r particular economic, cultural, o r well-being of ecological systems. For we give up thinking of water poll ution other reasons and shou ld be the subject example, in the Chesapeake Bay. it has problems in isolation. The causes of of protecti on programs. The states' been found that submerged aquatic water degradation are not accounted for management of freshwater trout grasses are critical to the long-term simply by the discharge of pollutants

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1990 55 directly to the waler from either point recognition that the use of the land great water bodies are facing a long or non point sources. Poll utan ts come throughout the watershed is perhaps tortured process of decline. The few from a complex set of sources, the single most important determinant exceptions suggest several factors including such unlikely culprits as auto of water quality in the receiving aquatic which drive such leadership in the emissions transported through the air system will be. environmental context: dramatic or changes in hydrologic regimes Political will lies at the heart of a illustrations of the problem, like the resulting from forest destruction or strategic aquatic restoration and die-off of a species; a big event, such as suburbanization. completion of a study; an emotional Thus, the nature of the water, land, appeal, such as a popular book or song; and air throughout the entire adverse econom ic consequences, like watershed, and even beyond, Polluti.on preventi.on will be the loss of a fishery; and, perhaps most determines the quality of water and the increasingly important for important, growing public demands. well-being of associated flora and fauna controlling nonpoint-source The nation's great water systems in a particular body. Understanding pollution. remain threatened. Isolated "hot spots" and protecting the ecological have been corrected, but the central connectedness of these complex function of our aquatic regimes as a interrelationships in an integrated vital source of the environmental fashion is crucial. Not only must our protection program that is based on stability and well-being of our society management efforts be oriented to the managing an entire watershed. The seems to be poorly understood, and complexities of the four elements multiple challenges of complex fundamental protection remains absent. which have been outlined, but these decisions, participation by many Fragmentary approaches will no longer elements must be applied throughout sectors of society, and requirements for work. The future of water quality the often extensive geographic area of a substantial resources can be protection in the United States must be watershed. The crucial role of the successfully met only when there is based on a holistic system derived from watershed- its hydrologic as well as powerful leadership. Manifestation of good science and implemented through terrestrial and atmospheric such political will is altogether too rare. a comprehensive system of protective components- quickly leads to the Consequently, many of the nation's strategies. ;:i

_, ~ ... ~ ' .. ;..-

·' .. - ""' r ..,~,J ~,, • , l . - . ··;·"'.... ;._ ---:-.. ... Cold water doesn't deter beachgoers from recreation at Popham Beach on the Gulf of Chns Ayres phow Maine. Growing public demand for clean recreational water across the United States may help force a comprehensive system of protective strategies.

56 EPA JOURNAL Measuring Environmental Success by Steve Glomb

ow healthy are the nation's great Hwater bodies? The question suggests the story of the blind men who were asked to describe an elephant. One touched the elephant's leg and said it was like the trunk of a tree. Another said it was like a wall. after touching its side. Those who could only touch the trunk or the tail believed the elephant to be a hose or a rope. Everything depends on perspective. Likewise, answers to questions about the health of our nation's water bodies often are based on different perspectives and sometimes fail to paint a complete picture. In the past, many of our reports to Congress and the public on the health of our waters have revolved around numerical accounting-"bean-counting," to use the common parlance. Such accounting measures are administrative surrogates for true environmental measurements and describe only part of the elephant. As a result, EPA and the states can readily tell the world how much money we've spent on various programs, how many permits or grants we've cranked out, how often we've taken bad guys to court, and how many water-quality criteria and standards we've written and reviewed. In several areas we have made real progress, moving beyond administrative beans to measure the amounts and kinds of pollutants entering the water. We can now estimate pollution loads coming into the Great Lakes or other coastal areas; for many water bodies, we can estimate the local proportions coming from pipes, from nonpoint sources, and from rainfall. For example, phosphate loadings into the Chesapeake Bay and the Great Lakes have been cut dramatically due to improvements in sewage-treatment plants and new programs to control nonpoint sources. EPA's new Toxic Release Inventory 0 0 gives us a benchmark against which we "& may be able to gau ge future loadings. ~ ... Jll!::imt""lll~ . But how can we describe the real ci5 .~1~'.=ilrie~ environmental effects of decreased "' pollutant loads? Can l swim there7 Can ~ People want direct answers to questions as to whether water is safe for recreation and other uses. EPA is working on improved methods (Glomb is a biologist in EPA's Office of for measuring changes in water quality. Marine and Estuarine Protection.)

NOVEMB ER/DECE MBER 1990 57 I eat the fish? Are the oysters safe to Although measuring may be easy, evaluating the health of habitats. eat? These are the questions the public understanding what the changes in (Species diversity and productivity are asks. Ecologists go a step furt her and numbers mean is not. While the two of the most promising research ask about biodiversity, or biological standards are uniform, monitoring topics.) community structure, or habitat quality. efforts vary w idely from state to state. Biological community interactions In addition, the public is asking how OAA and EPA are working to are probably the most difficult goals to effective are all the program improve monitoring methods and measure. Many scientists, however, expenditures, the standards, and the reduce some of the monitoring think that these interactions are the permits if people can't eat the fish. variability. most im portant factor to assess. Before finding answers, we need to Similarly, bans and advisories Especially important are the agree on the questions. concerning fi sheries are easy to invertebrates that live in the mud at the EPA is now asking itself many of the' bottom of our coastal waters. Because same critical questions. Consensus is they don't move much, they can be growing in scientific and regulatory used as an indication of problems over communities that admini strative and Before finding answers, we time. Measuring fish communities can pollution-loading measures are not need to agree on the be confusing because of their migration enough-that often they don't tell us questions. patterns. A fish may get contaminated beans, so to speak, about what's really in one estuary, then m ove along the happening in the environment. coast and eventually become part of a The Science Advisory Board recently sample in a clean estuary. Commercial called for greater ecological focus in quantify. But interpreting w hat changes fi sh harvests and sport fishing also EPA's programs. Administrator Reilly in those numbers mean is difficult. A confound analyses of the fish and Deputy Administrator Habicht are greater management emphasis on comm uni ties. also pressing for better long-term decreasing the health risks from eating Even among scientists, there is debate strategic planni ng that would reflect a fish would likely result in a short-term about what index to measure in stronger emphasis on measuring and rise in the number of fish advisories. (It particular instances and how to reporting environmental results of is a truism that any time you look hard measure it. For fresh water, EPA has Agency programs, not just for problems, you can usually find developed a set of community administrative milestones. some.) But continuing emphasis on fish bioassessment protocols. These The framework for the Office of advisories over the long term should protocols comprise a set of methods Water's strategic plan reflects these big eventually lead to a decrease in toxics that assess richness or diversity, issues now in the mind of both the loadings, lower levels of toxic dominance, ratios of pollution-tolerant public and EPA. The plan lays out contamination in fish, and a downturn to pollution-sensitive organisms, and several long-term ecological goals for in the number of bans and advisories. comparative ratios of organisms vvith the nation's waler resources. Among Knowing when to look for resu lts, different feeding strategies. These the goals for the Great Lakes and our combined with a sense of what results factors, when examined together, paint estuaries are: to expect, is important when evaluating a much more complete picture of information on environmental heal th. ecological health than any single factor. • To increase the number of shellfish Measuring oxygen or defining "dead bcds open for harvest As an illustration, consider each of zones" also is relatively simple, but the two stream sites with very similar • To decrease the number of fi shing choice of assessment methods depends physical characteristics and a sample of bans and health advisories on geographic scale. Using a probe that 100 critters from each . The fi rst stream continually measures oxygen site has critters from 10 families, 10 • To decrease the extent of low-oxygen concentration can be very helpful to "dead zones" organisms each. The second also has someone assessing the local influence individual organisms from 10 families, • To maintain, and increase if feasible, of a suspected pollution source, but no but what if 50 are from one fa mily with the extent and productivity of critical one can afford to put such probes the rest split fairly evenly between the habitats, especiall y wetlands everywhere. On a bay-wid e or a other nine families? Both streams have regional scale, reports of massive fish the same richness (10 fam ilies), but are • To maintain the biotic integrity of die-offs may be the most useful invert ebrate and fish communities. the sites equally healthy? Generally, a indicator. On a national scale, satellite community like the one al the second data may provide environmental Not surprisingly, progress toward site, dominated by relatively few managers with the best picture. families , indic.ates environmental stress. some of these goals is harder to Satellite data and aerial photography measure than others. Counting the Further examination of the proportions also have proved useful in measuring of filter-feeding organisms, organisms number or measuring the area of open the amount of wetlands and other or closed shellfish beds is relatively that scrape or scavenge for food, and critical habitats lost over the past fe w those that shred leaves would give easy. State and local governments decades. For example, using these regu larl y measure bacteria resources, Louisiana estimates that its concentration in water near shellfish coastal wetlands have been beds, then classify the beds as being disappearing at the rate of 35 square open for harvest or restricted , based on miles per year. The health of the standard national guidelines. The remaining critical h abitats, including National Oceanic and Atmospheric created habitats built to mitigate losses, g Administration (NOAA) summari zes is much more diffi cult to measure. By these harvest classifications in the 1996, research by EPA, the U.S. Fish National Shellfish Register, published and Wildlife Service, and states should every five years. lead to development of methods for

58 EPA JOURNAL further insight into the types of stresses Gulf Breeze, Florida, and 1 arragansett. understand. The influence of a couple --present. Rhode Island. are examining of very hot seasons, or extremely heavy This type of approach has been early-warning signals, "biomarkers," in rains, could mask bona fide progress readily accepted by many states and individual species. Biomarkers reflect made in protective efforts. incorporated as an integral piece of the effect of pollutant stress on the Understanding such natural variability water-quality protection programs. The chemistry and physiology of the is one of the goals of our current Agency is now beginning to examine individual organism. Pollution-induced efforts. various approaches for assessing changes in the blood chemistry, In order to paint a comprehensive communities in estuarine and coastal enzyme production. or other internal national picture, two differing waters. After discussions this winter to systems can affect the organism's approaches will be used to measure narrow the list of potential methods, ability to grow, respire, or reproduce. ecological health and progress. The EPA should begin field validation tests Such responses are akin to changes in Ecological Monitoring and Assessment in the spring, perhaps leading to results human physiology. Doctors call for Program (EMAP) currently being in three to four years. . blood tests to examine sick patients; developed should prove useful in Until coastal ecological interactions they don't wait until an entire presenting a broad, nationwide are well understood and integrated community is infected before assessment. At the same time, assessments are fully developed and determining there's a problem. These information compiled from monitoring tested, we probably will need to rely on changes in aquatic individuals may also studies by various state and National studies of individual species. Usually help in detecting early responses to Estuary Program environmental the species used as indicators are either improvements in the environment. But managers will help fill in details of the extremely sensitive organisms or more research is needed to link such national picture. commercially important ones. They are changes to an entire population. A marriage of the EMAP's broad, the coastal equivalent of a canary in a Even knowing what to assess, and top-down national picture with the coal mine: Changes in these species can how and when to measure it, may not more detailed, bottom-up view signal changes in the overall be enough. Many other factors can described above will produce a environment. For example, declines in figure into EPA's interpretations of composite portrait that will give the unde[water plants in Chesapeake Bay data. One is the ever-increasing Agency a much clearer picture of the over several decades was one of the key population near the Great Lakes and health of the nation's waters than either changes that helped state and federal other coastal waters. Maintaining the approach alone. Combining both legislators focus on the need to protect status quo despite the increased approaches will also enable the Agency the bay. Increases in the number of fish pollution potential from the higher to better focus its money and people with lesions and fin rot led the Puget population may be a big programmatic and more effectively target the most Sound estuary program to concentrate success, even though there may be no important problems and geographic on controlling sources of toxic marked improvement in the critters. areas. In doing so, we should be able to pollutants to its urban bays. Natural variability and fluctuations avoid the predicament of the blind men Researchers at EPA laboratories in over time are difficult factors to and the elephant. o

Drawing adapred from an •flusrraoon by Aloce Jane L1ppson

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1990 59 Looking Forvvard in the Office of Water by LaJuana S. Wilcher

"If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them." -Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Water-a living resource. Protect it, and benefit from it.

e all want pure, clean water. The Through the municipal wastewater most recent data reported by the states W farmer, the factory worker. the construction grants program, the federal in 1988 showed 70 percent of the family on the beach . Pure water to governm ent contributed $48 billion and assessed waters met their designated drink, healthy aquatic ecosystems to large amounts of technical assistance to use requirements. nurture fish and wildlife, help states and municipalities stop the Today, significant pollution problems uncontaminated water to grow our dreadful practice of using our rivers, come from literally millions of crops. sustain our livestock, and lakes, and coastal waters as open "diffuse" or "nonpoint" sources. Rain support our industries. sewers. The number of people in the water and sn ow-melt runoff from urban EPA has been working diligently United States served by secondary or and suburban areas, farms, mining toward these goals for the last 20 years. higher levels of sewage treatment rose operations and industrial sites are often With the passage of the Clean Water from 85 million in 1972 to 176 million laced with pesticides, heavy metals, Act in 1972, we began to address water in 1988. Significant unmet needs still and excess nutrients. Toxic pollutants quality problems comprehensively. In exist, especially the need to upgrade are still a major concern, especially 1970, when the Agency was created, we and replace wastewater-treatment those that do not biodegrade. These were faced with immense quantities of faci lities. Because this program's focus toxics become trapped in the bottom pollution from industry and munic ipal is changing, we are in the process of sediments of rivers, lakes, and coastal sewage treatment plants. Although we moving toward state-run loan programs. waters or accumulate in the fl esh of had little in the way of sophisticated EPA recently has given another $12 fish, shellfish , other wildlife, and, scientific evidence at the time, many of billion to states to capitalize a new ultimately, in humans. the problems were obvious enough: State Revolving Fund Program for Clearly we have more work lo do, untreated sewage in the Potomac Ri er municipal wastewater-treatment and we need new approaches to do it. and Boston Harbor, toxic industrial facilities and other water quality No longer can we use just an waste in the Mississippi. Ohio, and improvements. To control industrial end-of-the-pipe approach. o longer Cuyahoga rivers, massive red and green discharges, EPA has promulgated can we look only lo industry and tides (algae blooms) in Lake Erie, an d technology-based effl uent guidelines municipalities as sources of our waters' quickly declining fish nnd shcllfi h (limits) for a variety of industrial contamination. No longer can we limit populations in the Chesapeake Bay. At categories and implemented a our efforts to cleaning up our great that time. al l we really had to do was water-quality standards program with water bodies after we h ave fouled them. look; the problems were evident to our the states. No longer can we relegate protection of eyes and noses. Our efforts to issue permits and our ecosystems to the bottom of our firmly to enforce infractions of the law agenda. No longer can we operate our have led to partial recovery of severa l water programs in isolation from each severely degraded waters, including the other and other EPA programs. Potomac River and Lake Erie. Only 36 As the fa mous conservat ionist Aldo (Wilcher is EPA 's Assistant percent of the waters states assessed in Leopold wrote almost 50 years ago, Administrator for Water.] 1972 met their designated uses; the "Instead of learning more and more

60 EPA JOURNAL about less and less. we must learn more and more about the whole biotic landscape." We must look broadly and comprehensively to identify our water Significant quality problems and act boldly to improvements in prevent pollution and habitat water quality d estruction. have been made The fo undations for achieving our since the Clean water-quality goals rest upon several Water Act was passed in 1972, new approaches. when detergent ---- -· Ecological Protection 4 foam on the nation's rivers First, we must place the protection of was a common sight Step by ecosystems on the same footing as step, the human health . Last September. the clean-up effort is Science Advisory Board (SAB) issued a gaining new thought-provoking docu ment entitled understanding Reducing Risk: Setting Priorities and and framing new Strategies for Environmental Protection. strategies to The report says. "EPA's response to meet today's human health risks as compared to pollution ecological risks is inappropriate. challenges. because, in the real world. there is little d istinction between the two. Over the long term, ecological degradation either directly or indirectl y degrades human health and the economy." The Clean Water Act has long been the most ecologically focu ed of our EPA Documenca phoro Nattonal Archives major environmental statutes. Since the 1987 Amendments to the Clean Water Act, water programs have emphasized controlling chemical impacts in response to public concerns about toxics. Physical impacts. including

NOVEMBER1DE CEMBER 1990 61 Nonpomt so ... rcc pollution habitat destruction from urbanization, Geographic Targeting control By plan1ing farming, dam construction, diversion alternating 5trips of corn and irrigation, stream channeli zation, and In order to accomplish this broader goal small grain, this Maryland intense recreation have garnered little of protecting all aspects of the nation's farmer helps prevent erosion attention until recently. waters, ·w e believe geographically and runoff into nearby The SAB report has served as a targeting some of our resources to those treams which f ow rnto the areas most at risk is vital to Chosilpeake Bay. catalyst for our thinking about our programs and how we view our accomplishing our task. mission. The Clean Water Act instructs Tn the past, our systems for us to protect the chemical, biological, controlling pollution were focused on and physical integrity of our nation's national standards for industries and water resources (emphasis added). We sewage-treatment facilities. In order to need to view the integrity of the water ~ully address ecosystem integrity, and environment holistically- the sum total in order to get the most of the complex chemical, biological, "bang-for-the-buck," we must turn our and physical dynamics necessary to attention to individual watersheds and sustain the ecological integrity of ecosystems. In addressing the gross healthy aquatic ecosystems. pollution problems of the past (which As Indian Chief Seattle said in 1854 were common to virtually all our "All things are connected like the blo~d waters), we have uncovered a range of which unites one family. All things are problems which tend to be unique to connected." We are beginning to individual watersheds. For instance, develop the scientific tools necessary to the current problems of the Chesapeake protect ecological systems on a holistic Bay (primarily extensive dead zones caused by excess nutrients) are far basis. o longer is it enough for u~ to concentrate on water chemistry; we different from those of the Great Lakes must move beyond the stream banks to (primarily toxic hot spots, and toxic consider the interrelationships between pollutants in fish and other wildlife). all parts of the ecosystem. Because of the potentially high costs, complexity, and difficulty of the measures which are necessary to achieve ecological protection, we must target our efforts to those watersheds that are most at risk, most threatened, and most valuable-in ecological terms-to the country.

62 EPA JOURNAL William C Franz photo

Even on a dry summer day, this storm sewer outlet oozes its outflow across a Staten Island beach and into the ocean Control of urban stormwater runoff is one of the clean-up tasks society faces.

Restructuring for the Future 2 is devoted to culling the best ideas Foundations for the Future and options from these conversations To better reflect the changes in our As we move toward the 21st century, and other sources and presenting them approach to protecting water resources, federal. state. and local water programs in background papers. In Phase 3, we we are proposing to reorganize our must be prepared to address the most will hold a series of symposia with Headquarters office to reflect our focus pressing water resource problems. If we experts on four aspects of clean water: on better science, ecological protection, are ever to do more than just keep pace and geographic targeting. To this end, • "The Risks to Clean Water" (relative with growing threats, we must be we are contemplating a structure that remaining risks to water resources) willing to change our programs to best will help integrate all of our functions fit the most significant remaining risks. • "The Cost of Clean Water" (economic to focus on addressing the unique We must be prepared to go beyond our incentives, funding issues) problems of individual water resources, present chemical focus to protect the and to strengthen our emphasis on • "The Structure of Clean Water" full range of values that make up scientific and technical support of (necessary changes to the Clean Water chemical, physical, and biological regional, state and local Act) integrity. decisionmakers. We are now Additionally, we must improve our • "The Feasibility of Clean Water" considering many suggestions from ability to target our efforts to the most (economic and political realities). EPA staff and managers as we prepare serious risks or threats to our most to send this ambitious proposal into valuable water resources. Clearly these These symposia will be open to the formal Agency review. are lofty goals, but ones we can public and will encourage their achieve. We have a solid foundation of participation. Our goal is to gather The Clean Water Act Reauthorization programs and people to build toward information from a wide range of our dreams of safe water fo r al I, interests to better prepare us for the As we approach 1992, we must whether fish, fowl , or µeople, reauthorization process. consider how to approach the throughout our country. o reauthorization of the Clean Water Act. We have designed a three-phased process to gain the best thinking from all relevant sectors of society. Jn Phase l, we are holding informal meetings with a broad spectrum of individuals and groups, including state and local water quality managers, agricultural interests, environmental groups, industry representatives, natural resource economists, and others. Phase

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1990 63 Tobin Rasmus8cn Schilling Gagliardi

Patrick M. Tobin is the new The new Regional Albert H. Schilling has been The new Deputy Associate Deputy Regional Administrator for Region 10 named the new Associate Administrator for the Office Administrator {or Region 4 , in Seattle, Washington, is Assistant Administrator for of Communications and which is headquartered in Dana Rasmussen. the Office of Policy, Planning, Public Affairs is Carl S. Atlanta, Georgia. Rasmussen was Assistant and Evaluation. Schilling Gagliardi. Gagliardi Tobin is a charter member Vice President and Chief joined the Agency in 1985 as worked for EPA from 1983 to of EPA. He joined the Agency Counsel of Federal Relations a Special Assistant for 1986 as a Press Officer and as a Sanitary Engineer for the for U.S. West, a Legislative Development after Deputy Director of the Press Office of Research and telecommunications firm working in the private sector Division before transferring to Monitoring in 1970. Since which she joined in 1985. for 14 years. In his five years the Department of the that time, he has worked in She was a General Attorney with the Agency, Schilling Interior, where he served as a the Office of Water as Deputy for Pacific Northwest Bell has also served as Special Assistant in the Director and Director of the Telephone Company in Supervisory Attorney Advisor Secretary's office, and Criteria and Standards Portland, Oregon, from 1979 and Director of the Office of subsequently as Director of Division in the Office of to 1985. Legislative Analysis. Public Affairs for the Bureau Drinking Water. Since 1986, A Portland native, Schilling received his of Reclamation. He left the he has served as the Director Rasmussen received a bachelor's degree in government to work with a of the Waste Management bachelor's degree in economics from Harvard in Washington-based public Division in Atlanta. psychology from Stanford 1967 and his master's in relations firm before He has been a member of University in 1968. In 1977 history from Princeton in returning to EPA as Special many of EPA's National she earned her law degree 1971. He earned a law degree Assistant and Director of Committees and Task Forces, from the University of Oregon from Rutgers Law School in Communications Strategy in has testified for the Agency School of Law. She also is a 1974. 1989. before Congress, and has graduate of Stanford Business He received the Special Act Gagliardi graduated from represented EPA School's Executive Program. or Service Award in 1983 and the University of Maryland at internationally in Japan, She was an Administrative an EPA Bronze medal in College Park with a India, the Netherlands, and Law Section Chair of the 1986. bachelor's degree in Australia. Ratemaking Committee for government and politics in Tobin earned a bachelor's the American Bar Association 1975. degree in civil engineering al from 1989 to 1990, and is Several other appointments the University of Maryland in involved in numerous outside recently have been made in 1962. Following a tour as an community and public the Office of Communications officer in the Air Force, he service activities. and Public Affairs, including earned a master's degree in Charles Osolin as Director of environmental engineering at Pub 'ications; John Kasper as the University of Maryland in Press Director; Hank Roden 1968. as Director of Special Projects; Helga Butler as Director of the Communications Strategy Staff; Nanci Martin as Deputy Press Director; and Chris Rice as Special Assistant to the Associate Administrator. o

64 EPA JOURNAL The nation's great water bodies- a treasure for all ... seasons. Photo of Lake Michigan from Door County, Wisconsin, by f1 Mike Brisson.

Back Cover: San Francisco Bay, a major West Coast estuary. See article on page 20. Photo by Jerry Derbyshire.