An overflow point in a combined sewer line. The overflow is designed to relieve pressure on an overburdened sewer system. (Photo courtesy of the USEPA)
The wet weather of the last few weeks has caused some communities to dump sewage into the Great Lakes. That’s triggering health concerns for this summer. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Transcript
The wet weather of the last few weeks has caused some communities to
dump sewage into the Great Lakes. That’s triggering health concerns
for this summer. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach
reports:
Frequent heavy downpours have overwhelmed some lakeside sewer
systems. Some cities have dumped partly treated or untreated sewage
into the Great Lakes, instead of causing sewer backups in local basements.
Jeffery Foran is an aquatic toxicologist and president of the Midwest Center for
Environmental Science and Public Policy. He says the sewage contains pathogens –
bacteria and microorganisms – that can cause disease in humans. He’s worried about the
material spreading along the lakeshore.
“Probably accumulating at the beaches, in the sand, and in the cladophora, this algae that
washes up in the lake and rocks, and other structures that occur along the shoreline.”
The sewerage district in Foran’s home city of Milwaukee has already dumped about two
billion gallons of sewage into Lake Michigan this spring. He says the large volume of
water in the lake will dilute some of the sewage. But Foran is still expecting some beach
closings this summer.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.
The Environmental Protection Agency wants to relax sewage discharge rules. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sarah Hulett reports, there’s disagreement about what impact those changes would have on water quality:
Transcript
The Environmental Protection Agency wants to relax sewage discharge rules. As the Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Sarah Hulett reports, there’s disagreement about what impact those changes
would have on water quality:
The change would make legal a practice that’s already common at many wastewater treatment
plants. Partially-treated sewage is released when plants get overloaded, during heavy rains, for
example. The wastewater is blended with cleaner water, disinfected, and discharged.
Officials with the EPA say “blending” is a safe way for plants to avoid sewage backups in
people’s homes.
But Laurel O’Sullivan of the Lake Michigan Federation says the policy could have severe
consequences for public health in the Great Lakes region, where many sewer systems are old and
in need of more capacity.
“And the blending policy basically gives a pass to these sewer systems, in terms of trying to have
to upgrade their system’s capacity.”
O’Sullivan says the policy could result in a repeat of incidents such as a 1993 sewer overflow in
Milwaukee. The city’s water supply was contaminated by a parasite that killed more than a hundred
people.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Sarah Hulett.
A sewer plant is now trying to stop condoms from making their way into Lake Michigan. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports on the plans to capture the latex before it gets to the lake:
Transcript
A sewer plant is now trying to stop condoms from making their way into Lake Michigan. The
Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports on the plans to capture the latex before it
gets to the lake:
After an angler found what he estimated to be hundreds of condoms floating on Lake Michigan,
the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District began investigating the source of the problem.
Michael Martin is Technical Services Director with the Sewerage District.
“Last spring we discovered that there were a number of condoms floating out in Lake Michigan.
We believe that some of these condoms could be or have been coming from our Jones Island
wastewater treatment plant.”
The Sewerage District plans to spent two million dollars for new filters to trap the condoms. In
the meantime, workers with nets are skimming the final tanks to get rid of the problem. Martin
says they still haven’t figured out why this problem has suddenly popped up and only at this one
wastewater treatment plant.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.
A group that represents sewer and water agencies is calling for the creation of a federal trust fund to help rebuild antiquated pipelines. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush has more:
Transcript
A group that represents sewer and water agencies is calling for the creation
of a federal trust fund to help rebuild antiquated pipelines. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush has more:
Water and sewer bills are going up because cities are faced with the problem
of fixing and upgrading their old pipes. These projects can run into the
billions of dollars, and the cost is borne by local communities.
Ken Kirk is the Executive Director of the Association of Metropolitan
Sewerage Agencies. His group is calling for the creation of a federal trust
fund to help finance these huge projects:
“We’re talking about a trust fund that’s going to preserve and protect, and
enhance the water quality of all the great water bodies in this country, and
that is a national issue, it’s always been a national issue and we have to
put it back on the map again because to lose that resource would be an
absolute crime.”
The EPA estimates that current funding sources are falling short of the need
by hundreds of billions of dollars.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mark Brush.
The Army wants to get rid of its stockpiles of chemical weapons because they fear terrorists might get to them. There are eight Army sites across the U.S. that store those kinds of chemicals. At one site in the Midwest, the military is planning to dispose of Nerve Agent VX. To destroy the stockpiles, the Army must first “water-down” the nerve agent. Then it has to be shipped to a company that disposes of industrial wastes. But while the Army says it’s making neighborhoods safer near where the chemical weapons are stored … some people fear having the watered-down nerve agent trucked into their neighborhoods. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Natalie Walston reports:
Transcript
The Army wants to get rid of its stockpiles of chemical weapons because they fear terrorists might get to them. There are eight Army sites across the U.S. that store those kinds of chemicals. At one site in the Midwest, the military is planning to dispose of Nerve Agent VX. To destroy the stockpiles, the Army must first “water-down” the nerve agent. Then it has to be shipped to a company that disposes of industrial wastes. But while the Army says it’s making neighborhoods safer near where the chemical weapons are stored, some people fear having the watered-down nerve agent trucked into their neighborhoods. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Natalie Walston reports:
Nerve Agent VX is a clear, odorless liquid with the consistency of motor oil. It was
accidentally created during the Korean War, when British chemists were experimenting
with various concoctions meant to kill lice on North Korean POW’s and refugees. Nerve
Agent VX kills within minutes after contact with the skin. It has never been used in
combat by the United States. Instead, most of the country’s supply sits in a highly-
guarded tank at the Newport Chemical Depot in west-central Indiana. In 1985, Congress
ordered the chemical weapons destroyed because many seemed obsolete. In 1997, the
United States joined the Chemical Weapons Convention, which prohibits countries from
developing, producing, stockpiling or using chemical weapons.
Then, as U.S. Army spokesperson Terry Arthur explains, terrorists slammed planes into
the World Trade Center towers:
“After September 11th, 2001, because the public suddenly became aware of the possibility
for terrorism here in the United States, folks living near the stockpiles became acutely
aware of that. And the army began to look at ways to accelerate destruction of the
stockpiles.”
The Army is planning to burn some of its chemical weapons in incinerators. The Nerve
Agent VX that’s stored in Newport, Indiana will be destroyed through a neutralization
process. That’s a process that makes the nerve agent no more harmful than a household
drain cleaner.
(Ambient sound fade up)
The watered-down version of the nerve agent is called hydrolysate. It will be shipped by
tanker truck to Perma-Fix Environmental Services, a company in Dayton, Ohio. It’s a
company that usually handles industrial wastes and used oils.
“If you get your oil changed anywhere at a service station near the Dayton, Ohio area,
chances are, the used oil from your vehicle ends up here.”
That’s company Vice President Tom Trebonik. He says the hydrolysate will, simply put,
be broken down by a natural process. It will be eaten by microscopic bugs. And then it
breaks down even more into a form that will be pumped into the sewer system.
But, once word of a “nerve agent” coming to town spread around the small, poor
neighborhood near the plant, environmentalists began working with residents to voice
opposition to its disposal. They tacked up signs in the local supermarket and carry-out
that read “Deadly VX Nerve Agent” is coming to the neighborhood.
(Nat sound)
Martha Chatterton is a young mother of one with another child on the way. She lives in a
small house in a decaying area. Her husband fixes cars in the garage out back. They’re
glued to the news on CNN about heightened terror alerts. They know terrorist attacks are
a possibility. But they don’t want a problem from Indiana shipped to their backyard.
Chatterton is worried about the health effects of living near a plant that deals with such
industrial wastes. She says some days the air is orange and smells of a chemical stew.
“Well, last year we did the whole yard with roses and different flowers, and about a week
after we planted them, all of them died. So there’s got… there’s something wrong with
the ground here, because when I dug the hole for the rose tree, it smelled like gas fumes.”
Chatterton fears Perma-Fix won’t be able to properly handle the hydrolysate. The
company was cited in 2001 for odor violation but has since installed equipment to solve
the problem. Beyond that, the U.S. EPA and the Army see no reason why the treated
nerve agent can’t be trucked into town. Again, Army spokesperson Terry Arthur:
“We understand the concern of the public because it’s derived from a chemical agent.
What we want them to understand is that we have truckers who will be dedicated and
trained specifically for hauling this product and getting it across the state line to the Ohio
facility, where experts have been working with this kind of material for years.”
With the threat of terrorism, there’s little that’s likely to slow the pace of the destruction
of the nerve agent. The risks of leaving it intact seem greater than the risks associated
with destroying it.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Natalie Walston.
A city along Lake Michigan is fighting the construction of a waste-treatment plant. The town filed a lawsuit against the local waste-treatment company that wants to dry and burn sludge from half the surrounding county. City officials say they don’t want an eye sore on their lake front and environmentalists are worried about mercury getting into the lake. But the sanitary district says it has a system that will virtually eliminate emissions. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Annie MacDowell reports, environmentalists say that’s not enough:
Transcript
A city along Lake Michigan is fighting the construction of a waste-treatment plant. The
town filed a lawsuit against the local waste-treatment company that wants to dry and burn
sludge from half the surrounding county. City officials say they don’t want an eye sore on
their lake front and environmentalists are worried about mercury getting into the lake.
But the sanitary district says it has a system that will virtually eliminate emissions. As
the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Annie Macdowell reports, environmentalists say
that’s not enough:
After rolling out of bed in the morning, what’s the first thing you do? Do you use the
toilet? Take a shower? Brush your teeth? Probably one or all of the above. And what
happens to that unwanted dirty water? It just vanishes, right? Flushes into oblivion?
Disappears down the drain? Wrong. All that scummy sludge heads straight for your
local waste water treatment plant.
The North Shore Sanitary District along Lake Michigan in northern Illinois receives 187
tons of waste water a day. That adds up to 20 trillion gallons of the stuff a year. And in
among all that waste there are 26 different toxic metals. At this point, North Shore is
trucking the toxic sludge to landfills and dumping it. Brian Jensen is the general manager
of North Shore. He says toxic chemicals aren’t necessarily safe in a landfill because a
landfill liner can leak.
“If in fact, that liner were to leak, and there’s been a history around our country and in
Europe that these liners do leak, when that happens, the environmental liability is
extremely significant.”
With these worries in mind, a couple of years ago Jensen started looking around for a
new way to dispose of the sludge. He says a process called “sludge-drying” was the best
option.
Here’s how the system works: the sludge is pumped into a dryer where most of the water
is sucked out. Then the dried sludge is burned as fuel for the next part of the process –
the melter. The melter burns up the organic part of the sludge at 3000 degrees. That’s
hot enough to melt heavy metals. So after everything else is burned away, what remains
are the toxic metals locked up in a glass matrix that looks a lot like lava. It’s called glass
aggregate. It can be used in concrete where it’s sealed and can no longer pollute water or
soil.
The only toxic metal that doesn’t go into the glass matrix meltdown is mercury. That’s
because in the hot melter, mercury becomes a vapor. Over the course of the year, north
shore gets about 33 pounds of mercury – a third of it comes from fillings in people’s
teeth. The rest is from industry and commercial sources.
People in the area and environmentalists, object to the idea of the plant emitting all that
mercury into the air. That’s because it could further contaminate Lake Michigan which
already is contaminated by mercury from coal-burning power plants. Cameron Davis is
the head of the Lake Michigan Federation. He says mercury is a dangerous neurotoxin.
“You know the MadHatter in Alice in Wonderland? That character was developed
because in the old days, people who made hats actually used mercury in the hat
manufacturing process, and that mercury being around it in the manufacturing of hats,
would cause people, literally, to go insane, to go crazy.”
Davis says Lake Michigan already has a fish advisory because mercury has contaminated
the water so badly. If people eat the fish, especially expectant mothers and children,
there could be serious health effects. Mothers could pass mercury poisoning onto their
infants. Children’s bodies are especially susceptible because they’re developing so fast.
Davis says anyone who cares about the environment is against the construction of any
new source of mercury emissions.
But Brian Jensen says the North Shore sludge incinerator will fix that problem too. The
plans include a filtration system, to catch mercury in the vapor state. The air travels
through carbon canisters and the mercury particles cling to the carbon. The canisters last
for up to 5 years and then the mercury is recycled and reused. The result is something
less than two pounds of mercury emissions a year. Jensen says that’s such a small
amount that today’s scientific instruments can’t detect it in the normal emissions each day.
They’ve tried. And in the end, Jensen says it could very well be that the new North Shore
Plant will emit no mercury at all.
But Cameron Davis says any uncertainty is unacceptable.
“We do want to encourage different ways to be able to get to zero and if we are in fact
getting to zero, then we’ve got a different game here, and that’s important, but we are
talking about zero.”
But Davis doesn’t have any better ideas for getting rid of the sludge. He says North
Shore should continue landfilling for now.
Michael Murray with the National Wildlife Federation’s Great Lakes Office says there is
a better alternative. It’s a process called land application. That’s when sludge is used as
fertilizer for crops.
“There’s a study published on work in France recently where they looked at number of
different options for sewage sludge treatment and they found that land application in
general had the lowest environmental cost, in other words it was the best environmental
option.”
Murray says companies must have a really good pre-treatment program if they’re going
to use land application. That means capping levels of toxic metals before they get into
the sludge.
Brian Jensen at North Shore says he looked into land application and saw too many
problems. He says North Shore already has an award-winning pre-treatment program,
but they still get too many metals to land apply. And he’s heard about problems like e-coli bacteria growths from the fecal matter in the sludge. Beyond that, he says they just
have too much sludge and not enough land to fertilize.
Jensen says he’s confident the judge will not let the lawsuit stop north shore sanitary
district from building the plant. It already has the permits from the Illinois Environmental
Protection Agency. He’s amazed that people are giving north shore such a hard time,
when right next door to where they want to build the waste treatment plant, a coal-burning incinerator emits up to 450 pounds of mercury a year.
“The North Shore Sanitary District is truly people that are concerned about the
environment. And this process, even though it probably, it does, in fact, cost a little more
to own and operate than a landfill, the environmental gains, I’m saying the environmental
gains, not losses, are significantly greater than any other sludge disposal method.”
Jensen says environmentalists should be the first to recognize when a waste water
treatment plant is doing the very best job that’s possible with the most recent technology
available instead of criticizing the effort.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Annie Macdowell.
Beaches along Lake Michigan were closed more often this year as a result of high bacteria levels, according to a new report. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sarah Hulett reports:
Transcript
Beaches along Lake Michigan were closed more often this year as a result of high
bacteria levels, according to a new report. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sarah
Hulett reports:
The report from the Chicago-based Lake Michigan Federation says beach closings and
advisories were at an all-time high in 2002 – at nearly 900 in Wisconsin, Illinois,
Michigan, and Indiana.
Part of the spike can be attributed to more frequent testing in coastal counties. But
Federation director Cameron Davis says an uptick in sewage spills and wastewater
overflows are also to blame. Davis says tracking and cleaning up pollution sources should
be the next step for communities along the Lake Michigan coast.
“That is absolutely key, because right now, so much of the debate has been on monitoring
technology and whether counties are even testing in the first place. We need to start to
move beyond that to identify sources and eliminate them once and for all.”
Davis says Indiana lawmakers recently passed legislation aimed at reducing sewer
overflows. And voters in Michigan are considering whether to approve a billion dollar
bond proposal to repair aging sewers.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Sarah Hulett.
Biologists release bass, gills laced with Higgin's Eye Pearly Mussel larvae, into the Mississippi River. Photo courtesy of the Minnesota Department of Natural
Resources.
Biologists lock through a dam on the Mississippi River. Photo courtesy of the Minnesota Department of Natural
Resources.
Up and down the Mississippi River, people once collected tons of mussels for the pearl button industry. Factories stamped out pearl buttons from the shells, sometimes wiping out 50,000 tons of mussels annually in the early part of the last century. In recent years, the biggest threat to local mussel species has come from the zebra mussel. That invasive species came to North America in the ballast water of ships and has since disrupted many local ecosystems. Today, there’s a new effort underway to bring back local species like the Higgin’s Eye Pearly Mussel, and it’s in an unlikely place. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Todd Melby has this report:
Transcript
Up and down the Mississippi River, people once collected tons of mussels for
the pearl button industry. Factories stamped out pearl buttons from the shells,
sometimes wiping out 50,000 tons of mussels annually in the early part of
the last century. In recent years, the biggest threat to local mussel species
has come from the zebra mussel. That invasive species came to North America in
the ballast water of ships and has since disrupted many local ecosystems. Today,
there’s a new effort underway to bring back local species like the Higgin’s
Eye Pearly Mussel. And it’s in an unlikely place. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Todd Melby has this report:
Urban areas like Minneapolis-Saint Paul might seem like an unusual
location to boost the population of an endangered species.
But it’s here, below a busy bridge that spans the Mississippi River, that
biologists are searching for a safe place for their project. Divers have
just come up from the bottom of the river with a few mussel specimens.
“Well, we’ve got Big Toe, Maple Leaf, Three Ridge. Good enough I think.”
That’s Mike Davis rattling off the names of mussel species. Davis is
a biologist with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. The fact that
some mussels live in this part of the river makes Davis think that this
might be a good spot for the Higgin’s Eye. The Higgin’s Eye, which has an olive-
colored shell, has been languishing on the Endangered Species List since
1976.
Just two decades ago, this part of the river suffered from sewage runoff. The river is cleaner now and some mussels have returned. But not the Higgin’s Eye. And that has Roger Gordon worried. He’s a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
“They function as the kidneys of the river, more or less. They siphon everything that
goes through the river. They are a very good indicator species if we have a problem in the environment. They are usually the first species to get hit hard and disappear.”
For the past decade or so, it’s been the zebra mussel that’s been hitting the Higgin’s Eye. But the zebra mussel hasn’t made it to this part of the river. That’s why biologists are on a small flotilla of boats on this morning with 800 large-mouth bass. The bass and the Higgin’s Eye have a strong connection. Attached to the gills of those bass are thousands of Higgin’s Eye larvae.
“Right now, we’re counting fish in the cage. We have a known number of fish, 25 in
this case, that we’re going to place in these cages. And hopefully over the next several weeks, they’ll drop off and we’ll have clams in the river.”
Melby: “You’re putting them in the bucket?”
“Right now we’re putting them in a bucket and placing them in the cage over the
side of the boat.”
(sound of buckets banging and water sloshing)
The bass are put in cages so they don’t swim somewhere that’s not a good home for the Higgin’s Eye. In the wild, adult females mussels shoot embryos at unsuspecting fish swimming overhead.
“The larvae have a chemo-receptor in them. When they touch flesh, they actually shut. It’s a one-shot deal. If that fish clamps on a fin or an eyeball or a lip, it’s a no-go. He’s not going to develop. But if he’s lucky, and he just happens to be going through a gill arch of a fish and it’s the right fish, the right species of fish and the right size fish, it
will shut on that gill.”
But the Higgin’s Eye population is too low to leave to chance.
(Bubbling sounds of fish hatchery)
So Gordon and his colleagues bumped up the number of mussel larvae
per fish here at a federal fish hatchery in Genoa, Wisconsin. Instead of just a
few larvae per fish, the bass dropped into the Mississippi have several dozen
larvae attached to their gills.
That prep work took place inside the “Clam Shack,” which is really
just a metal pole barn that biologists built themselves.
“We didn’t have any money to do this. We scraped up and saved up at the end
of the year. We had seven or eight-thousand dollars. The hatchery guys just got together and built this little building.”
Since beginning their work two years ago, they’ve added approximately
12,000 mussel-rich fish to rivers in Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa and Minnesota.
“We’re probably going to have to build another little building
like this. But we’ll scrape along and do what we can.”
Back on the river, Mike Davis of the Minnesota DNR calls the return
of the Higgin’s Eye historic. But with the zebra mussel closing in on native
mussel species like the Higgin’s Eye, he’s also a bit wistful.
“The former dead zone of the Mississippi may become
one of the last refuges for the Mississippi’s mussel species.”
In September, divers return to that same spot to check on the Higgin’s
Eye. They hope to find thousands of young clams nestled safely in their new
home. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Todd Melby.
More communities along the Great Lakes are testing their beaches and fighting over who’s to blame for beach closings. One dispute along Lake Michigan involves the performance of a multi-billion dollar sewage system in Milwaukee. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Transcript
More communities along the Great Lakes are testing their beaches and fighting over who’s to blame for beach closings. One dispute along Lake Michigan involves the performance of a multi-billion dollar sewage system in Milwaukee. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Some Illinois Congress people have asked the EPA to stop Milwaukee from dumping sewage into Lake Michigan. The politicians say a major sewage tunnel installed in Milwaukee a decade ago still allows too much untreated material into the water. They argue that city sewage is to blame for a sizable increase in Illinois beach closings over the last few years. But Val Klump of the Great Lakes Water Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee says the local sewer tunnel has greatly reduced the number of sewer overflows.
“Now that’s not to say we’re content with allowing any kind of untreated material getting into our waterways. That’s not our goal.”
But Klump says given other factors like dilution and other bacterial sources like gull droppings and pet waste, it’s less likely that Milwaukee wastewater is fouling beaches fifty miles south.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Chuck Quirmbach in Milwaukee.
A chemical linked to cancer and other health problems has been discovered in sludge spread on farm fields. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shamane Mills has details:
Transcript
A chemical linked to cancer and other health problems has been discovered in sludge spread on farm fields. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shamane Mills reports:
The PCBs were found in recent testing by state officials; just over half the samples of recycled sludge from 50 sewage treatment plants had PCB levels as high as 920 parts per billion. Federal standards allow 50-thousand parts per billion. Wisconsin Natural Resources wastewater engineer Greg Kester says the low levels shouldn’t cause alarm.
“PCBs are ubiquitous in the environment in which we live now. If you look with sensitive enough analytical equipment you will find low levels in virtually anything.”
Nevertheless, Rebecca Katers of the Clean Water Action Council is concerned.
“The
risk assessment shows that these are not negligible numbers; even from very low levels PCBs are persistent and they accumulate up the food chain.”
Wisconsin has recycled sludge since 1973. Eighty percent goes on farmland; the rest is dumped in landfills or incinerated. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Shamane Mills.
An overflow point in a combined sewer line. The overflow is designed to relieve pressure on an overburdened sewer system. (Photo courtesy of the USEPA)
