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Ohio River water quality to be studied
Huntington Wastewater Treatment Plant, shown here Friday, receives approximately 13 million gallons daily. State water quality experts hope to pinpoint how bad the bacteria problem has gotten in the 277-mile stretch of the Ohio River that borders West Virginia.
Purchase this photoHUNTINGTON -- State water quality experts hope to pinpoint how bad the bacteria problem has gotten in the 277-mile stretch of the Ohio River that borders West Virginia.
West Virginia has joined with Ohio, Kentucky and three other states that border the Ohio River for a study being conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency. The aim is to identify and reduce any dangerous bacteria levels in the waterway.
The study, known as a total maximum daily load study, wants to determine how much bacteria that sewage treatment plants, factories, farms and municipalities can discharge into the river without exceeding safety standards. According to the Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission, about 500 miles of the 981-mile-river has unsafe levels of bacteria.
The study, which will include thousands of samples from the Ohio River, is scheduled to be completed next year. The water commission is providing the EPA with 15,000 water samples taken at 5-mile intervals of the entire river collected over the past five years.
Dave Montali is the total maximum daily load manager with the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection and the EPA study's West Virginia coordinator. His normal duties are to determine which waterways are meeting the state's water quality standards.
The two main bacteria found and studied in the Ohio River along West Virginia are fecal coliform and Escherichia coli., commonly referred to as E. coli. Jason Heath, the Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission's manager of water monitoring, assessment and standards, said ingestion of the polluted water can lead to gastroenteritis, which can result in vomiting, diarrhea and fever.
Heath said higher amounts of fecal coliform and E. coli. found in the river typically means that more human fecal matter is present in a particular section of the river.
The two largest contributors of fecal coliform in the Ohio River are raw sewage leaking into the river because of overflowing sewers and urban overflow caused by poor municipal drainage, Montali said.
Huntington has been notorious for both.
Huntington has had longstanding combined sewer overflow problems that have resulted in raw human sewage being leaked untreated into the river. The sewer problems primarily stem from the fact that 85 percent of Huntington's sewer pipes carry both storm water and sewage.
When a heavy rain occurs, the combined sewer system overflows, impairing the city wastewater plant's ability to treat the water and resulting in untreated water flowing into the Ohio River. The EPA mandated several years ago that Huntington create a plan to lessen the number of overflow occurrences.
The Huntington Sanitary Board created a "long-term control plan" in 2007 that costs about $357 million to deal with the occurrences. To pay for the initial improvements costing $54.5 million, an increase in monthly sewer bills from $17 to $29 for Huntington would be phased in over three to five years, J. Bruce Fox, former executive director of the sanitary board, has said.
Several communities along the Ohio River have had similar problems with overflow occurrences.
In early February, monthly sewer bills in Kenova increased from $20.02 to $22.22 per for the first 2,000 gallons of water used. The rate hike came after the completion of an EPA-mandated sewer project that overhauled the city's combined sewer and storm water drainage system.
The $8.9 million project separated the city's sewer system that leaked into the Ohio River during heavy storms and carried large fines. After an overflow incident in June 2007, Kenova Mayor Ric Griffith said the city had to pay a $7,000 fine. The sewer rate increases will go to pay back the 30-year bond needed to complete the project.
Griffith said if the city didn't approve the project in 2007, the city faced a $70,000-a-day fine from the EPA. The decision to use bonds and start the project following the EPA's recommendation in November 2007 probably saved the city $1 million in potential fines, Griffith said.
Realistically, Montali said the EPA study of the Ohio River will identify the bacteria present in the river but will not be able to offer funds to solve the problem.
"Ultimately the goal is to prevent overflows," Montali said. "Some (municipalities) might want to get there, but they'll never have enough money to make the necessary changes."
"More money's the answer," he said.
Facilities, such as sewer treatment plants, that go over their budgeted bacteria allowance are given permits that put them on a schedule to fix the problem. If the problem is not fixed in the scheduled time, which could be a 15-year plan, they can be fined, Montali said.
Each year "impaired waters" in a different section of the state are analyzed to determine their water quality. Last year, Montali said between 200 and 400 sample sites on waterways were monitored monthly to determine the bacteria levels. The program's purpose since it was developed in 2000 has been to check all of the state's five watershed groups three times each in 15 years.
The monthly monitoring includes hundreds of waterways around the state. Because they are unable to check every waterway year-round, Montali said a complicated modeling system is implemented that assumes the amount of allowed bacteria that can be present in a waterway.
Because the Ohio River runs along the borders of six states, sections of the river in each particular state must meet each state's water quality standards. Montali said there are no federal water quality bacteria level standards.
Once the study is finished and the sources of the bacteria are identified, Heath said it will be up to the state agencies to enforce the reduction of bacteria. Other states participating in the study are Pennsylvania, Indiana and Illinois.
Montali said most municipalities are on the right path to separate their combined sewer systems. To lessen bacteria into the river, Montali said more people in the agricultural community need to voluntarily control the amount of pollution they emit into the river. Right now, Montali said he has no authority to regulate animal and farm owners who release manure used as fertilizer or feces directly from the animals into the river.
Though the study will not create any new regulatory authority, Heath said it will help state agencies identify where bacteria is coming from, if portions of the river have higher concentrations of bacteria and what bacteria are in the river.
"The overall goal is to make the river safe," Heath said. "But we have to identify what's in the river and where it's coming from in order to make it safe."
