Environmental Group Sues EPA Over DC's Bacteria-Tainted Water
By Peak Johnson
The national environmental group Earthjustice is filing a lawsuit against the U.S. EPA on behalf of several river organizations in Washington, DC.
The environmental group represents the Anacostia Riverkeeper, the Kingman Park Civic Association, and the Potomac Riverkeeper Network, reported the Bay Journal.
The lawsuit, according to the Bay Journal, claims that the EPA approved high levels of fecal bacteria to enter the Anacostia, Potomac, and Rock Creek rivers including their tributaries by not applying DC’s own water quality standards.
It was towards the end of 2014 when the EPA had approved a new “total maximum daily load” (TMDL) for fecal bacteria in the Potomac. These were the first updated limits since 2004.
According to the Bay Journal, sewage usually flows in District rivers during heavy storms. DC’s water and sewer authority, DC Water, is already working to address the problem.
The Bay Journal reported that according to DC’s 2014 water quality report to Congress, “fecal bacteria concentrations in local waters violated the District’s water quality standards as much as 42 percent of the time in one branch of the Anacostia River, and close to that in Rock Creek.”
The most important claim made by Earthjustice’s suit is that in order to measure compliance, the EPA’s TMDL handles a 30-day limit for bacteria levels in DC’s waters.
“If you only rely on a 30-day average, that ends up hiding spikes in bacteria,” Phillip Musegaas, legal director at the Potomac Riverkeeper Network told the Bay Journal. “There are certain days you could still be in compliance (for the month) but you’d have very high spikes.”
The Bay Journal reported that DC Water filed its own suit in 2015 against the EPA over the latest TMDL limits, claiming that the limits are too strict and agreeing with them would become a burden for ratepayers.
According to a press release obtained by the Bay Journal, the suit further claims that the TMDL set for bacteria discharged by DC Water’s Blue Plains Wastewater Treatment Facility are “based on flawed methodology that does not account for normal and expected variations in flow and effluent concentrations.”
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