Watershed Investments NC

To follow up on my previous post, the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) wants to push EPA’s Clean Water Act obligations if the Jordan clean-up strategy is repealed.  This article was posted by “Cheap Trick” Wise in the N&O outlining steps that SELC wants EPA to pursue if the nutrient reduction strategy is repealed.  An excerpt:

“In a May 24 letter to regional Environmental Protection Agency officials in Atlanta, Derb S. Carter, director of SELC’s Chapel Hill office, and Senior Attorney Julie Furr Youngman ask the EPA to “take any and all actions within its power” to ensure the lake meets a federally mandated standard for water quality.”

Actions EPA could take are blunt.  I outlined some in my previous post.

EPA has yet to weigh in on the SELC’s request.

This legislative session is starting to wind down.  We should no soon if this ill-conceived legislative repeal is going any further or if more sensible minds have prevailed.

What happens if the NC Legislature repeals the rules for reducing pollution to Jordan Lake, a drinking water source for nearly 300,000 triangle residents?  If you’re the sponsor of the bill, Senators Rick Gunn (R-Burlington) and Trudy Wade (R-Greensboro), you hope that development is spurred and that municipalities save on the cost of implementing pollution control measures.  Excess levels of pollution will still flow to Jordan Lake but we can figure out a way to deal with that later.   

Let’s call this a “no plan” scenario and discuss possible outcome for when the State fails to plan. 

Extensive monitoring of the Lake during the 1990’s and 2000’s established that Jordan Lake is impaired for nutrient related water quality violations (i.e., too much nitrogen and phosphorus).  Further assessment by the State identified sources of pollution and established a plan to reduce pollutants from those sources to eliminate impaired conditions.  This plan, known as the Jordan Lake Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL), was submitted to, and approved by, the EPA which required such a plan because of the Lake’s impaired status.

If the State repeals that plan without a suitable alternative, the EPA can step in and enforce their own plan.  This scenario would not be a good one for communities in Jordan Lake and here’s why.

Unless there’s better science telling them differently, EPA would likely require the same amount of nutrient reductions required under the State’s current plan.  The difference between the State’s plan and an EPA driven one would be that the EPA could only enforce their plan on permitted sources such as municipal wastewater treatment plants.  The State’s current plan is more balanced and looks to get reductions from all sources of nutrients.  An EPA driven plan, therefore, would require the same amount of reductions but from fewer sources. 

Shown in the pie graph for the Haw arm of the Jordan Watershed, total nitrogen reductions needed for the Haw add up to 223,200 lbs per year.  Currently, these reductions are addressed by the State’s plan that seeks reductions from both permitted point and non-permitted nonpoint sources.  Under an EPA plan it’s likely that the nonpoint portion of reductions currently covered by the State’s plan would be shifted to the point sources.  The result would be more reductions from permitted sources in the form of costly upgrades to wastewater treatment plants in Jordan’s watershed. 

One final option EPA could exercise is even uglier.  It’s their ability to prevent new or expanded discharges in Jordan’s Watershed.  This option would potentially cease development activity.

The above EPA options are not ones that Senators Gunn and Wade are seeking yet they are very possible. The State’s current plan is a more balanced approach and should be given a chance to work.  Senate Bill 515 should not be allowed to prevent this from happening.

Two subjects near and dear to my heart, pickles and water.  What intersects these two subjects?  It comes with the byproduct of the pickling process – brine.  Brine is a mix of salt, vinegar, and water that is used to produce the pickles. Now if you or I are pickling a few jars of cucumbers, there won’t be a lot of excess brine.  But, if you are Mount Olive, North Carolina’s largest producer of pickles, the amount of salty water being released can have significant impacts.

Enter the Fresh Pack!

As explained on the Mt. Olive website, “fresh pack pickles are those made from fresh cucumbers that do not undergo a lactic acid fermentation process before being packed….The pickles are then pasteurized to prevent the product from fermenting” and to kill off bad bacteria.

In a nutshell, the pickling process occurs in the jar instead of a big pickle barrel. This reduces the amount of brine needed in the pickling process and, consequently, that ends up in our streams.  The result, good pickles and improved water quality!

Two pieces to add to my last entry.

First, what can be done?  Contact your NC House representative and inform them of your opposition to this ill-advised effort to repeal the clean-up strategy Jordan Lake.  The Triangle Lands Conservancy has put together an online aid in the campaign to stop the repeal mess.  You can see their petition here.

Second, NC EMC published an op-ed this past Sunday picked up by the News and Observer.  Amongst other things, it highlights the years of effort the state has put into getting the strategy started to help protect a drinking water source for nearly 300,000 people, the transparency of the process, and the total lack of a substitute offered by the repeal bill’s sponsor.

State political changes this past year promised pushback on policies passed under previous administrations.  The promise of change has certainly played out for environmental protections with two examples being the threatened rollback of protections for streamside forests in the Neuse and Tar Basins and removal of the installation of new groins at the beach.  Yesterday, however, a proposal passed the Senate that moves the state backward in its effort to control nutrients in its drinking waters.  For those that didn’t follow the vote, Senate Bill 515 repeals the rules that have been developed to clean up and protect Jordan Lake a drinking water source for some Triangle municipalities.  The measure now moves to the House for their review which will hopefully end in a different outcome.

The Jordan Lake Nutrient Reduction Strategy was developed by the State with input from affected municipal governments over a 5 year period.  The strategy was finally completed in 2008 but required review by the legislature in 2009 where several of the strategy’s measures were delayed.  Subsequent additional legislative delays in 2011 and 2012 were passed limiting implementation to protection of streamside forests and limits to the discharge of phosphorus from wastewater treatment plants.  Last year, after years of preparation, programs to improve stormwater quality on new development were to take effect but a last minute bill delayed those measures by another 2 years.

This year’s Senate, however, has voted to repeal the entire rule package.  Why is this a mistake?  The State’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources is essentially trying to put the lake on a pollution diet.  One they have been preparing for years and one that’s needed based on monitoring of the Lake’s water quality which shows the upper portion of the lake violating nutrient-related water quality standards 59% of the time in 2012.  Violations were also reported in the Haw River and Lower New Hope portions of the lake.  Eliminating the diet won’t make the Lake healthier.  Let’s hope wiser heads prevail in the State House.

Here’s a link to the N & O story on the vote

The latest issue of NG arrived and in it was an article “Feast or Famine: The Flow of Nitrogen” describing fertilizer usage and sources.  While the focus of the article was worldwide, it included examples and pictures specific to the US.

Worldwide, usage is highest in China and India.  The article profiled farmers in these areas that used as much as 530 lbs/ac of nitrogen on their crops – more than two times typically needed by the most nitrogen hungry plants.

The US, third in nitrogen usage, has more arable land than China and India and, consequently, less pressure to produce more on its arable land.  Most of US nitrogen hotspots, however, are east of the Mississippi leading to the challenges associated with eutrophication which we face in NC.

As NG often does, they had an informative info-graphic on sources of both synthetic and organic nitrogen.  A little over half the N applied to crops is considered “excess” and remains in the environment, leaches out, or runs off to waterbodies.  That portion is the challenge for society to control to keep waters like those found on the NC’s Crystal Coast healthy for fishing and recreating.

Excess nutrients have been plaguing portions of our state for decades. From impairing aquatic biology to promoting toxic algae and fowling drinking waters, eutrophication has many ways of impacting our waters.  In 1982 the State adopted its first strategy to begin dealing with the problem by passing rules to limit nitrogen and phosphorus flowing to the Chowan River which was declared as nutrient sensitive in 1979.

Fast forward 30 years and NC along with other states continue to wrestle with the problem.  To better deal with the causes of eutrophication, nitrogen and phosphorus, the State’s Division of Water Quality is developing its Nutrient Criteria Development Plan to map out a path for better managing and controlling nutrients.  (Online at http://portal.ncdenr.org/web/wq/ps/mtu/nutrientcriteria). Comments on the plan are sought until May 24^th.

No doubt there are those who’ll advocate for the status quo or a plan that doesn’t look to address the problem.  This is not the time for that approach.  The state has passed measures to curtail nutrients in urban and ag runoff in several of its watersheds.  In spite of these measures, there remains a lack of progress at reducing nutrient related water quality problems in the State.  A more proactive plan is needed to better control these pollutants and the conditions they cause.  I’ll touch on some ideas for this in a later post.

Teachable moments come with both kids and adults.

This past week, I got to spend an afternoon with the 5th grade students at Conn Elementary to talk about ecosystems, watersheds, and the importance of restoration.  The students will get the chance to learn about these themes in both the classroom and the field as the go to visit a stream and survey some bugs.  In the class, they built their own ecosystem models and get to compare how they function under different conditions (e.g., light, nutrients, vegetation, bugs).

This mix of hands on and class exposure will certainly help drive home important themes for the kids to understand.  In my afternoon, I was able to see that they’ve digested concepts such as the changes that excess nutrients bring to ecosystems (i.e., algae-choked water and inhospitable conditions for its inhabitants). They also talked about the importance of controlling stormwater and promoting its infiltration to limit its negative impacts.  They are on there way to a successful lesson and I was glad to be a part of it.

I’ll comment on the adult side of this subject in my next post.

The NC Division of Water Quality is in the process of crafting rules related to the protection and mitigation of streamside forests – aka, buffers.  We offered input on these rules back in March.  The rules are meant to consolidate and simplify the regulation of streamside forests.  This is a good thing because, currently, the State has a different set of rules and criteria in each river basin where these rules exist.  The rule changes would make them more consistent throughout the State, which is a worthy goal to aid those trying to figure out how to comply with them.

One aspect of the rules which we commented on is an option that would promote less restoration of stream buffers. Without getting too detailed, the rule proposes to allow stream restoration sites to have multiple credits that they could sell on the same footprint.  Based on the excess nutrient problems faced by the state, this is a bad idea.  Described in previous posts, areas with nutrient problems are either not getting better or expanding to other parts of the state.  Considering the lack of nutrient reduction progress we’ve made, let’s not reduce the protections we have for our lakes and estuaries.

Buffer Rule Comments