A pile of scrap metal and debris at the Grimmel Industries facility in Portsmouth, NH. Toxic stormwater discharges from the site have long been polluting the Piscataqua River. (Photo credit: CLF)

At CLF’s urging, today the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued an administrative order requiring Grimmel Industries to take prompt action to clean up toxic stormwater discharges to the Piscataqua River. Grimmel Industries operates a massive scrap metal collection and shipping facility at the Pease Development Authority’s Market Street Terminal, in Portsmouth, NH, on the banks of the river.

“For too long, this facility has been discharging mercury, PCBs and other pollutants into the Piscataqua River,” said Tom Irwin, CLF New Hampshire director.  “It’s simply unacceptable for this or any facility to discharge such toxic contaminants into this river – a critical coastal resource for New Hampshire – or into any of our waterways.  These discharges are in clear violation of the Clean Water Act; we’re pleased that the EPA is taking action to force compliance.” More >

Today, the U.S. EPA announced that it will join CLF’s lawsuit against the Boston Water and Sewer Commission (BWSC) for violations of the Clean Water Act. The suit, filled by CLF in U.S. District Court in February 2010, states that BWSC has failed to control polluted discharges from its storm water system, allowing it to carry raw sewage and excessive levels of bacterial, copper and zinc into Boston’s waterways, threatening the health and well-being of the surrounding communities.

BOSTON, MA  December 22, 2010 – The Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) has issued the following statement in response to the motion filed today by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) stating that it will join CLF’s lawsuit against the Boston Water and Sewer Commission (BWSC) for violations of the Clean Water Act:

“The complaint against the Boston Water and Sewer Commission documents serious failures in the system that are allowing ongoing unlawful pollution of Boston’s waterways, including the Charles, Mystic and Neponset Rivers, in some the city’s most economically-challenged communities,” said Christopher Kilian, director of CLF’s Clean Water and Healthy Forests program. “The federal government’s entry into this case is a clear indication of the urgency of the matter and the priority EPA places on it. BWSC’s inability to maintain a system that ensures clean water is a violation of the law and an affront to the people of Boston. The United States agrees with CLF that BWSC must make a major commitment now to improve water quality, as other cities have done, and restore these resources to health for everyone’s benefit.” More>>

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

That opening line from Dickens’ classic A Tale of Two Cities ran through my head last week as I had two very different experiences of Lake Champlain, the 6th largest freshwater lake in the lower 48.

On Saturday, CLF participated in Burlington, Vt’s Lake Champlain Maritime Festival.  Visitors from Canada, outlying towns in Vermont, and many of the 50 states descended on the waterfront for fun in the sun along New England’s “west coast.” Festival goers had a chance to take sailing lessons and inspect old-style guide boats and other watergoing vessels from the Lake’s past.  By day, the sun shone on the broad blue Lake with its breathtaking vistas of the Adirondack Mountains in New York.  And by night great music from the likes of Grace Potter and the Nocturnals echoed across the waterfront.  Although they may not have known it, many of the festival goers also had a chance to drink water from the lake as it serves as the main public drinking water source for 250,000 people in the greater Burlington area.

The festival was exactly the kind of event that highlights the Lake as a recreational, cultural, and economic resource for Vermonters and those who come to visit.  It was a “best of times” moment for our great Lake.

But less than two months ago, in the midst of the summer’s worst heat wave, the same waterfront exploded with foul blue-green algae blooms that turned the water a nasty shade of slimy green.  The Burlington Free Press has an depressing gallery of photos here.

And that brings me to the “worst of times” moments from last week.

On Tuesday, members of the St. Albans Bay Area Watershed Association invited me to come see the foul water quality that has been plaguing the Bay for most of the summer.  I drove up to St. Albans, roughly 30 miles north of Burlington, to meet with three local residents–a retiree, a high school principal, and a state police officer–who are both maddened and saddened by the plight of St. Albans Bay.

A blue-green algae scum fouls and discolors the mostly-deserted waters of St. Albans Bay near a spot that used to average 50,000 visitors a summer before algae blooms like this became a regular experience

They took me on a tour of the watershed, an area that has become dominated by industrial-scale dairy farming responsible for spreading millions of gallons of liquid manure each year onto farm fields that eventually drain into the bay.  The excess nutrients in the runoff from those fields fuel the blue-green algae that choke the life out of the Bay, depressing area businesses and property values.  Forget the image of cows grazing happily on green fields with a red barn in the background.  The cows on these farms were packed tightly into low, single-story barns that look more like warehouses.

The group took me to the waterfront St. Albans Bay Park.  The bright-green, scummy water I saw is pictured at left.  It was a blistering hot day, but no one was using the beach or even thinking about swimming.  The ice cream parlor on the park’s edge had no customers and the convenience store looked pretty slow too.

One of my tourguides, who used to take his kids swimming there all the time in the 80s, told me that the park was once a major destination for Canadians who would drive south to bask on the Bay’s calm beaches–bringing their tourist money with them.  But annual visits to the park–once as high as 50,000 people per summer–have dropped to less than 5,000 as water quality has declined.

Vermont cannot and will not prosper as a state if we continue to tell this tale of two lakes.  The Maritime festival highlights what a tremendous asset a clean lake is and can be.  Yet one wonders what would have happened if the festival was scheduled for earlier in the summer when the water near Burlington looked much as the water in St. Albans did last week.  The experience of depressed property values and economic decline in St. Albans Bay highlights what we stand to lose if we don’t stem the pollution flowing to all sections of the Lake.  We cannot tolerate a situation where you have to check a Department of Health web site to see the status of blue-green algae blooms in the part of the Lake you are planning on visiting.

Whether the problem is pollution from poorly-run megafarms, fouled runoff from big-box parking lots, or inadequately treated sewage, CLF’s Lake Champlain Lakekeeper is committed to restoring and maintaining the best of times all the time and everywhere in Lake Champlain.

There’s nothing like a major summer heat wave to help you appreciate the value of rivers, lakes, and ponds that are safe for swimming.  Like the massive herds of animals that you see on nature shows congregating by a communal watering hole, we all have a primal urge to be submerged in cold, clean water as a cure for oppressive summer heat.

Thanks to the Clean Water Act, many of our nation’s waters are once again safe for swimming most of the time.  But sadly there are still many lakeshores, oceanfronts, and riversides close to major population centers where high bacteria levels and noxious algae often make swimming unattractive and unsafe.

A blue-green algae bloom fouls the Charles River, making it off limits to swimming

All across New England, from Cape Cod to Lake Champlain, wastewater pollution, polluted runoff from parking lots and streets, and manure and other wastes from farming operations fouls water quality, depriving overheated New Englanders of the chance to safely cool off by taking a dip in their neighborhood waterway.  Ironically, the same hot weather that makes us hanker for a refreshing swim can exacerbate pollution problems by stimulating the growth of harmful algae that can make swimmers sick.

It isn’t supposed to be this way! When Congress passed the Clean Water Act in 1972, it set a national goal of restoring all of our nation’s waters to safe-swimming status by 1983 and provided funding, permitting, and enforcement programs designed to achieve those goals.  Though the Clean Water Act has helped us make long-overdue progress toward that goal, our national commitment to properly funding and enforcing this fundamental law has waned along with water quality in many places.

Last night the heat was so bad in my un-air-conditioned home I had to get out for a swim.  Even though there are several stretches of the Winooski River running through my small city of Montpelier, Vt. where water flow and depth conditions would make for nice swimming, I know too much about the untreated pollution that runs off  city streets right into the river to walk down to the Winooski for a swim.  Instead, I had to jump in the car and drive a round-trip of 30 minutes into the countryside to find the clean-water relief I was seeking.  I’m lucky in this regard, because many New Englanders in more densely populated areas would have to drive farther to find a clean swimming hole even though, like me, most have another waterway that could be made–and by law is supposed to be–safe for swimming much closer to home.

By allowing regulators and policymakers to underfund and underenforce Clean Water Act programs, we are forfeiting one of our most valuable natural assets–safely-swimmable waterways.

At CLF, we are committed to achieving the national vision of restoring and protecting all our waters so they are safe for swimming and fishing–including our urban waters that flow through sweltering cities where people are most in need of a more carbon-neutral alternative to air-conditioned cooling off.  Our country still has much work to do on this public health/public happiness issue.  The heat wave is a reminder of why that work is worth doing.  To learn more about CLF’s clean water efforts for New England, please visit our web site.

Out of sight, out of mind—until of course, 2 million people are left wondering why they don’t have clean drinking water.

This weekend’s Massachusetts Water Resources Authority (MWRA) water main break, which spilled millions of gallons of drinking water into the Charles River, should alert us to a larger and often hidden crisis of under-funded water infrastructure across the country. The underground pipes that provide our drinking water and that convey our sewage away from homes and businesses are typically hidden from sight, but are increasingly drawing attention through catastrophic failures.

While the cause of the MWRA pipe burst is not yet clear (officials report the pipe was only 7 years old), this incident signals that continued oversight and investment is needed to keep our water infrastructure working to protect health and the environment.

In 2009, New England spent around $113M in federal funds on drinking water and wastewater infrastructure (plus $2.2M or more in state funds and further expenditures by cities and towns).   The U.S. EPA has estimated New England’s needs at $11.5B for drinking water infrastructure and $8.5B for wastewater infrastructure over a 20-year period.  A national EPA “gap analysis” backed by the General Accounting Office found that unless rates of spending on drinking water and wastewater infrastructure increase substantially, we will come up short by about $500B for necessary upgrades by 2020.  Industry groups representing the operators of drinking water and wastewater systems agree, and the American Society of Civil Engineers has rated U.S. water infrastructure a “D-.”

Major upgrades are also required for our storm sewer systems (the pipes that channel rain water from street catch basins, parking lots, and driveways into nearby rivers and streams) to reflect modern pollution removal methods and to prevent sewage from mixing with the rain water. (Recall the sewage overflows that occurred during storms this past March.)

How to fill the investment gap?

The U.S. EPA and state environmental agencies provide funds for all of the above through loans and grant programs, but these won’t fill the gap entirely.  One proposal in Congress, introduced yesterday, would remove caps on private investment and could potentially create new jobs and bring in significant tax revenues.  Another would create a national trust fund supported by taxes on corporations.  Another option is for local water and sewer rates to increase to reflect “full cost pricing.”

In Massachusetts, a Water Infrastructure Finance Commission has been convened, and CLF will be involved in the discussions.

If there is any silver lining to this incident, it is that we have been reminded how much we rely on our water and wastewater systems – and how disruptive the consequences will be if we don’t make the investment to manage them proactively.

To learn more, check out the trailer for Liquid Assets, a documentary about America’s water infrastructure, or EPA’s web site.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens’ announcement that he will retire from the United States Supreme Court will bring some much needed attention to the larger issue of judicial nominations under the Obama Administration. 

These days, it is hard to  find a good word to say about the ultraconservative majority of the United States Supreme Court that Justice Stevens has tried, with limited success, to counterbalance.  That’s especially true for those who care about clean water (query: because clean water is fundamental to human survival and prosperity, shouldn’t we all care about clean water?)  In a few short years, the Roberts’ Court’s rulings have managed to seriously undermine and restrict one of America’s most important and successful laws–the Clean Water Act. 

For example, the NewYork Times recently reported on the chaos one of the Court’s rulings has created:

Thousands of the nation’s largest water polluters are outside the Clean Water Act’s reach because the Supreme Court has left uncertain which waterways are protected by that law, according to interviews with regulators.   As a result, some businesses are declaring that the law no longer applies to them.  And pollution rates are rising.

A majority of these Justices seems intent on handing down a death sentence to the Clean Water Act

In another example from 2009, Coeur Alaska v. Southeast Alaska Conservation Corps., the Court badly misinterpreted the CLEAN WATER ACT to reach the conclusion that a gold mining operation was entitled to a permit allowing it to discharge “210,000 gallons per day of mining waste into Lower Slate Lake, a 23-acre subalpine lake in Tongass National Forest,” even though the ” ‘tailings slurry’ ” would “contain concentrations of aluminum, copper, lead, and mercury” and would “kill all of the lake’s fish and nearly all of its other aquatic life.” 

President Obama has an important opportunity, actually I would argue it’s a responsibility, to rebalance the federal judiciary after years of ultraconservative domination and transformation.  (If you want to understand how the judiciary was so effectively radicalized by the right, read Jeffrey Toobin’s book “The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court.”).  The administration’s slow pace and cautious character in nominating people to fill court vacancies has been drawing criticism since November of last year as evidenced by this New York Times editorial.  Unfortunately, recent reporting in the L.A. Times indicates that President Obama still hasn’t made much progress due to a combination of White House inattention and timidity and Republican obstructionism in the Senate.

Terrible judicial decisions, like those discussed above, are turning this country’s essential environmental protection laws on their heads and at the same time putting the public health and environmental sustainability of this country at great risk.  America has some excellent environmental laws.  To be sure, we need to make them stronger to deal more effectively with newly-understood challenges like global climate chaos.  But when we have judges who are ideologically unwilling to affirm the pollution-controlling principles set forth in the laws, we have no hope of achieving the level of environmental protection essential for our continued national prosperity.  

If we want to ensure that our environmental laws work to keep us healthy and happy, we must urge President Obama to follow the lead of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in appointing judges like the late Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. 

Former Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas understood the purpose of our environmental laws and the values that motivated their enactment by bi-partisan majorities of Congress

Justice Douglas truly understood the values that informed Congress’ adoption of such successful laws as the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the Wilderness Act.  In his 1961 memoir “My Wilderness; East to Katahdin,” Douglas expounded on the value of rivers as public resources:

“Rivers are choice national assests reserved for all the people.  Industry that pours its refuse into rivers and the other commercial interests that use these water highways do not have monopoly rights.  People have broader interests than moneymaking. Recreation, health, and enjoyment of aesthetic values are part of man’s liberty.  Rivers play an important role in keeping this idea of liberty alive.”

For this and all the other ideas of liberty that are threatened by a judiciary dominated by radical conservatives, we must take action.  Call or email the White House and ask president Obama to find us the men and women who will follow in the tradition of Justice Douglas, and help the president fight to get them appointed to the federal courts.

Yesterday’s Boston Globe editorial in response to Monday’s New York Times article on the Clean Water Act makes the point that Massachusetts is in a unique position because the state’s waterways are regulated under a more flexible state water act enforced by the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). However, that’s not a panacea. Massachusetts must still support and enforce the terms of the federal Clean Water Act to keep pollution at bay.

While the DEP may enforce discharge permits in Massachusetts, it’s the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that has primary responsibility for issuing them. Two US Supreme Court decisions in 2001 and 2006 have undermined the authority of the EPA by calling into question what defines a waterway eligible for protection under the Clean Water Act.  The confusion over which of these waterways are legally protected has left 52% of Massachusetts’ waterways at risk for increased pollution, because EPA is no longer asserting its jurisdiction to regulate pollution flowing into them.

Congress needs to act quickly convey that the Clean Water Act applies to all waterways and must be enforced broadly and effectively.

The Clean Water Restoration Act, first introduced in Congress in April 2009, would amend the Clean Water Act to clarify that the Act applies to all US waterways as it did prior to the Supreme Court decisions. Passing the CWRA will send a message to polluters that all waterways merit equal protection under the law, and that the EPA will continue to enforce the terms of the CWA to prevent further environmental damage.

If we want clean waterways, not just for Massachusetts but throughout New England, here’s our chance to make sure that the EPA has full authority to do its job right, by passing the Clean Water Restoration Act.

Support the Clean Water Restoration Act

There is nothing more gratifying for CLF advocates than to be able to work with our members in translating big-picture policy goals down to the local level.  Over the last couple of years, I had that opportunity as a result of the City of Burlington’s efforts to adopt a stormwater pollution control ordinance to ensure that Vermont’s biggest city was doing its part to prevent pollution to Lake Champlain.  The idea was the brainchild of CLF member Scott Mapes, a lawyer and engineer who specializes in low impact development techniques to manage stormwater runoff.

As a member of the City’s Conservation Commission, a long-time lover of Lake Champlain, and a regulation-savvy lawyer, Scott was the City’s clean-water conscience and a driving force that overcame bureaucratic inertia to get the ball rolling on  this major project.  Scott’s principled persistence gradually led to enthusiastic buy-in at the highest levels of city government.  His multi-year effort to get the City to take stormwater more seriously was really something to watch.  As the process matured, CLF had a chance to weigh in by reviewing drafts of the ordinance, providing guidance and legal research assistance, and echoing Scott’s message that adoption of the ordinance was necessary for full compliance with the Clean Water Act.

After this experience working with Scott, it came as no surprise to read the headline in today’s Burlington Free Press announcing “Burlington man honored for stormwater efforts.”  In recognition of his work on the stormwater ordinance, Scott was named “Citizen Planner of the Year” by the Northern New England Chapter of the American Planning Association and he received a similar award today from the Vermont Planning Association.

Congratulations to Scott and to all CLF members who advance CLF’s mission through their support of the organization AND their leadership on the local level.

Warning: Bigger, faster, and more abundant mosquitoes may be breeding in a river or stream near you.   A new scientific study presented at this month’s meeting of the Ecological Society of America reaches the scary conclusion that mosquitoes–carriers of the West Nile Virus and other diseases–thrive in waterways contaminated by sewage.  As if we needed even more public health reasons to clean up and prevent sewage pollution!

Scientists have concluded that sewage spills and overflows are a boon to these bloodthirsty pests.

Sadly, untreated sewage pollution still flows regularly into many of New England’s rivers and streams as a result of sewage spills from aging or improperly maintained sewage collection and pumping systems.  For example, when a rupture in a Burlington, VT city sewage collection pipe went unrepaired for 8 days in 2005, it released approximately 4 million gallons of raw sewage into the river until sewage treatment plant operators finally addressed the problem.  In the wake of this high-profile incident, CLF led the effort for passage of the “spill bill”–a Vermont law that requires sewage treatment plant operators to undertake enahnced sewage spill prevention and emergency response measures and to notify the public when sewage spills occur.  The public has a right to know when its waters are being contaminated with spilled sewage (this Agency of Natural Resources web site includes a report of all recent spills) and to demand that action be taken to prevent sewage overflows through regular maintenance and greater investment in clean water infrastructure.

As with so many other important environmental and public health issues, CLF’s efforts in one of the New England states are helping to lead the country toward a future with cleaner water.

Currently, Congress is debating passage of the S. 937 “Sewage Overflow Community Right to Know Act.”  Like the Vermont law championed by CLF, this bill would amend the Clean Water Act to require mandatory reporting of sewer spills and the cleanup, mitigation, and prevention measures adopted as a result.  According to our friends at American Rivers in D.C., the bill has passed through the House of Representatives and through the Senate’s Environment and Public Works committee.  With your help, the Clean Water Act will soon ensure our collective right to know when our rivers, streams, lakes, and beaches have been contaminated by raw sewage.  Ask your Senator to cosponsor S. 937 and to work for its passage this year– in the meantime be sure to stock up on citronella and bug dope…