ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENTS - CHAPTER 7

7 The Man-Made Environment: Surface Water The water-related environmental component of a NEPAstudy includes consideration of water quality, drainage patterns, nearby surface water bodies, and floodplains. Legal requirements for water quality must not be violated. The initial portion of this chapter will review the legal requirements for water quality and the regulations that apply. The primary and secondary impacts on surface water will be defined. The methodology for defining the existing water quality then will be described. The evaluation of impacts will be discussed. There are some very specific types of projects that may impact surface water. The EIS approach to some of these will be described in detail. Requirements and impacts relating to groundwater are unique, and fit better in Chapter 8 of this book. They will be discussed there. 7.1 LEGAL REQUIREMENTS The 1960s and 1970s brought forth a framework of federal laws providing for water quality protection. As a group, these laws were meant to protect human health, the water we drink, and the fish we consume. They were intended to protect aquatic life and to provide a quality suitable for recreation in and on the water. They are interre-lated in that they are designed to function in concert, one with the other, in providing an umbrella of protection. Most have been amended since initially enacted in order to extend and solidify their initial requirements. While there are several laws affect-ing surface water that must be considered in the NEPA type studies, the two that are the most important by far are the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act. The provisions of those acts that must be considered in an EIS are discussed in the following pages. 7.2 THE CLEAN WATER ACT 7.2.1 WATER QUALITY STANDARDS The key part of the Clean Water Act, insofar as NEPA is concerned, is the require-ment to establish water quality standards. NEPArequires that any actions taken under it will not violate those standards. The Clean Water Act calls upon the states to establish programs for water quality planning and management. The first part of this is the development of water quality standards. Each particular reach of each body of water in the state receives a set of goals for what the use of that water body should be. These goals could include any of the following: cold water fishing, warm water fishing, recreation, drinking water, aesthetics, and so on. The cleaner the body of water, the higher the goal for its use that the state would establish. Generally, water bodies tend to be at their cleanest in the mountains or other areas where they first form, and then they become polluted as they travel down towards the city. The water body tends to cleanse itself after it goes through the city, if additional pollution is not introduced, and eventually can be used for desirable purposes once more. For that reason, the water up in the mountains where the streams originate frequently will be designated for fishing for temperature-and oxygen-sensitive fish, such as trout. The next reach of water may be for recre-ational use, including both primary recreation (which means body immersion) and secondary recreation (which means boating). Water for drinking purposes may be taken from this reach of the river as well. As the water begins to approach the city and pass through it, the discharges from point sources and nonpoint sources become such that the utility of the water may be limited to boating and to appearance. Going through the city, the water may be limited to having aesthetic purposes. As the water goes past the city and begins to clean itself up, the higher uses begin to prevail. Eventually, the water body may empty into a lake or an ocean, and swimming and recreation may become the prime uses. Having determined what the uses of a particular reach of water are to be, the state then decides what the chemical and physical criteria are for the water constituents that will affect those uses. For example, dissolved oxygen values of at least 6 ppm or higher are necessary for cold water fisheries. Generally, 5 ppm of dissolved oxy-gen is required for practically every use except the water that may serve an aesthetic purpose only. Temperature is another sensitive indicator. For cold water fisheries, temperature requirements may be in the 60°F range. On the other hand, warm water fisheries may allow temperatures to go up into the 80°F range. The bacterial count is particularly important in terms of the use of water for recreational purposes. The fecal coliform count is generally kept below 2 per cc so that swimmers do not get dysentery; 0.14 per cc protects shellfish harvesting. This means eventual restrictions on the treatment of sewage that might contribute fecal coliform. Total dissolved solids are regulated, as is turbidity, because water clarity is a desir-able item. In almost every case, grease, scum, and oil on the surface is forbidden. Once these criteria for attaining the standards are set by the state, they must be approved as a part of the water quality standards by the administrator of the EPA. They then become the values that the particular water body must meet, as a mini-mum, to ensure its use for the designated purposes. Another aspect of water quality standards is the nondegradation issue. That par-ticular requirement was inserted many years ago to ensure that water bodies that have numerical values such as for temperature and dissolved oxygen that are much better than the minimum criteria for best uses, will not be degraded to the minimum levels without adequate consideration of the reasons for degradation and adequate public input. The author of this book was one of the authors of that nondegradation require-ment that is now a part of every state’s water quality standards. Having established water quality standards, the states now are expected to estab-lish and maintain a continuing water quality planning process that will ensure that those standards are met The planning process may include such items as the following: · Total daily maximum loads. · Effluent limitations. · Descriptions of best management practices for municipal and industrial waste treatment. · Provisions for non-point sources. How do industrial and municipal dischargers make certain that their discharge into water bodies will not upset the water quality standards requirements for their particular water bodies? The mechanism uses both effluent limitation guidelines and discharge permits. As a result of several years of detailed studies of various types of industrial and municipal discharges, the EPA established effluent limitation guidelines for existing sources of water pollution, standards of performance for new sources, and pretreat-ment standards for certain types of both sources. These guidelines place limits on the quantities, rate, or concentrations of pollutants that may be discharged from point sources into a water body. They are based on what can be done for those discharges using the best available treatment technology. In addition, a list of 65 toxic pollutants has been published by the EPA that must not be discharged in toxic amounts into receiving water bodies. Limits are established on these toxic pollutants in the efflu-ent guidelines. The state assures that these guidelines will not disturb the water qual-ity requirement by doing very sophisticated water quality modeling on the body of water that will receive these discharges. Based on the modeling, determinations are made of how much in the way of contaminants can be introduced into a specific stretch of water without violating water quality standards. The state then determines how to best distribute the available quantities that may be discharged from the vari-ous point sources that have discharge requirements. The amount allocated to each source is written into permit requirements. The situation is much more difficult in the case of nonpoint sources such as fer-tilizer runoff from farmlands or discharges from animal feedlots. Nevertheless, the state calculates how much in the way of pollutants from these sources may enter the water bodies, and what their effect will be on the water quality standards. 7.2.2 SECTION 404 Section 404 of the Clean Water Act is the mechanism for issuing permits for the dis-charge of dredged or fill material. It is the principal means within the Clean Water Act to prevent the unnecessary destruction of wetlands. Throughout its implementation, it has been a controversial part of the Act because the issues surrounding the grant-ing or nongranting of a permit usually involve land development. Section 404 begins with four significant provisions; it states that 1. The U.S. Corps of Engineers may issue a permit, after notice and oppor-tunity for public hearings, for the discharge of dredged or fill materials into the navigable waters “at specified disposal sites.” 2. In specifying the disposal sites, the Corps of Engineers must use guide-lines developed by the EPAin conjunction with the Corps. 3. Where the guidelines would prohibit the specification of a site, the Corps could issue a permit regardless, based upon the economic impact on nav-igation and anchorage. 4. The EPAis authorized to veto permitting a site based upon environmental considerations. Regulations have been promulgated specifying how each of these actions will be managed. 7.2.3 NATIONAL POLLUTANT DISCHARGE ELIMINATION SYSTEM The core of the Clean Water Act is the National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES), which requires anyone who discharges material into the navigable waters of the United States first to obtain a permit issued by the EPA or a state to whom permitting authority has been delegated. These permits limit the amount of pollution from each point source. The NPDES permit program operates in three stages: application, issuance, and compliance monitoring. Each stage involves a sig-nificant amount of information. 7.2.3.1 Application Applicants must provide the permit-issuing agency with information on the produc-tion processes of their facilities, the characteristics of the effluents that result from these processes, and a description of the treatment methods they propose to use to control the pollution. 7.2.3.2 Issuance of NPDES Permits The EPARegional Administrator or responsible state official prepares a draft permit that consists of the appropriate effluent limitations for the point source, monitoring requirements, record-keeping requirements, and reporting obligations. It is then pub-lished for public comment, following which a final permit is issued. Adischarge per-mit must not allow water quality standards to be violated. 7.2.3.3 Compliance with NPDES Permits Individual permittees must provide information to the EPA or the state. The permit-tee must retain records that reflect all monitoring activities that are required in the permit. Monitoring and related activities must be conducted in accordance with the test procedures specified in the regulations. Discharge monitoring reports generally are required on a monthly basis. 7.2.4 OTHER KEY SECTIONS OF THE CLEAN WATER ACT The preceding laws and regulations represent the key portions of the Clean Water Act with which most NEPA documents must conform. Construction grants, which until recently were perhaps the major federal activity that impacted NEPA, will be dis-cussed later in this chapter. Section 401 of the Clean Water Act is a significant section because it requires any applicant for a federal license or permit to obtain a certification from the state that any discharge connected with the action will not violate certain sections of the Clean Water Act, including existing water quality standards. No license or permit shall be granted if certification has been denied by the state, interstate agency, or the admin-istrator of the EPA, as the case may be. One other portion of the Clean Water Act that should be mentioned is the require-ment for pretreatment of industrial discharges that flow to municipal waste treatment plants. These requirements are set by each local authority that operates the plants and conform to the EPA’s pretreatment regulations. The purpose of the pretreatment pro-gram is to control pollutants that may pass through and interfere with the operations of the wastewater treatment plants or which may contaminate wastewater sludge. 7.3 THE SAFE DRINKING WATER ACT 7.3.1 STANDARDS The Safe Drinking Water Act requires the promulgation by the EPAof primary drink-ing water regulations that specify maximum contaminant levels for constituents that may have any adverse effects on the health of persons, and of secondary drinking water regulations which specify maximum contaminant levels necessary to protect the public welfare. States have primary enforcement responsibility for the provisions of the Act, but must have EPA approval. Any NEPA activity that discharges into a supply of water to be used for drinking water purposes must keep this in mind. The Safe Drinking Water Act contains a prohibition on the uses of lead pipes, sol-der, and flux in public water systems. EPAregulations place stringent limitations on the control of both lead and copper. The Act provides for the protection of underground sources of drinking water through the issuance of regulations for state underground injection programs, the provision of petitions by citizens for no new underground injection programs, and sole source aquifer protection where the vulnerability of an aquifer is owing to hydrogeologic characteristics. Amendments to the Act provide for a wellhead protection program and the identification of anthropogenic sources of con-taminants to wells. Contaminant limitations promulgated under the Safe Water Drinking Act require filtration if the following contaminants do not meet EPAcriteria: · Total and fecal coliform. · Turbidity. Disinfection is required for most drinking water with a minimum of 0.2 mil-ligrams per liter (l) of disinfectant residual maintained in the water entering the dis-tribution system. The water must have the following degrees of inactivation: ... - tailieumienphi.vn