DC Sewage Politricks

Politics at every turn.......

As overflows continue, D.C. plan for sewage tunnels getting messy

Turf battles, firings occur over best way to control flow into city waterways

By Jeffrey Anderson  -  The Washington Times  -  Sunday, June 2, 2013

More than a billion gallons of stormwater and sewage flow into the District of Columbia's rivers every year, and there is a belief that George Hawkins is the man to fix it.
The D.C. Water general manager is a national environmental rock star, a charismatic man — as anyone who has seen him sketch a once-in-a-century infrastructure project on a white board can attest.
He is said to harbor ambitions of someday becoming administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
But with Mr. Hawkins acting in concert with D.C. Water's Chairman of the Board Allen Lew, who also is the D.C. City Administrator, the attempt to open up a 2005 federal consent decree requiring reduced overflows from the city's combined sewer system has gotten messy. The plan is to shift resources away from a three-tunnel project to divert and treat polluted rainwater that flows into the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers and Rock Creek, and into a pilot project to study green alternatives such as rain gardens.
Already, there have been consequences for D.C. officials who questioned the plan, with Mr. Lew exercising a heavy hand in firings and aborted attempts at firings. Meantime, Mr. Hawkins, with the approval of Mr. Lew and Mayor Vincent C. Gray, has quietly negotiated a "Green Infrastructure Partnership Agreement" with the EPA that could shift D.C. Water's financial burdens onto District agencies and taxpayers to support its stormwater projects.
On Monday, Mr. Gray and Mr. Lew will ask the D.C. Council to confirm appointment of the director of the District Department of Environment (DDOE) to the board of D.C. Water. But D.C. Water is supposed to be an independent agency, and DDOE is empowered to regulate stormwater management activities in the District.
Environmental groups see the maneuver as a conflict of interest, and Mr. Gray as willing to manipulate his DDOE director in spite of his regulatory authority in order to gain EPA approval of Hawkins' plan.
They are equally concerned the pilot project will forestall the tunnels in favor of newer technology that is unproven on a citywide scale.
Mr. Hawkins often plays by his own rules, according to those who have observed him up close. In promoting the pilot project, he reportedly bypassed EPA Region 3 Administrator Shawn Garvin and went directly to former EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, a friend from when the two served as environmental protection officials in New Jersey.
Mr. Hawkins denies bypassing Mr. Garvin — a major "process foul" in EPA parlance — but during a recent two-hour interview he conceded, "We communicate with EPA [headquarters] more than other agencies because they're in D.C. Plus, I know Lisa from New Jersey."
Mr. Hawkins also admits that he kept DDOE — the city's stormwater administrator — out of the EPA discussions until the 11th hour, a decision that would not be possible without Mr. Lew's approval.
"If I had it to do over, I would have involved DDOE earlier and more often," Mr. Hawkins said. "I misjudged that, and should've engaged them early on."
Put D.C. at the forefront
Mr. Hawkins aims to put D.C. at the forefront of the clean rivers movement. Currently the project to reduce stormwater and sewage overflows is funded by D.C. Water, which provides 600,000 residents, 17.8 million annual visitors and 700,000 District employees with water and sewer service.
D.C. Water is spending $1.6 billion to build a tunnel along the Anacostia River to divert those overflows to the Blue Plains Advanced Wastewater Treatment Plant. Mr. Hawkins said D.C. Water will finish that tunnel by 2017, and that by 2025, it will reduce billions of gallons of annual overflows into the city's rivers by 96 percent.
But faced with a 2015 deadline to begin work on the other two tunnels, at an additional cost of $1 billion, he is proposing spending $30 million to $40 million to evaluate the impacts of green roofs, rain gardens, rain barrels and "pervious pavements."
Initially, Mr. Hawkins asked EPA for an 8-year grace period from working on the other two tunnels, but now he says he "mischaracterized" the plan. He says he is asking EPA to give him until 2015 to gain the support of the other necessary federal and local agencies. If he cannot, or fails to meet other benchmarks by 2017 or 2023, then D.C. Water will keep tunneling, he said.
Cities such as St. Louis, Cleveland and Indianapolis are working under similar consent decrees with a combination of tunnels and green methods. Philadelphia has a plan that is almost entirely green.
But environmentalists ask why the District hasn't made more green progress since 2005, and question whether green infrastructure can capture the amount of stormwater that the tunnels can handle.
'International green city'
In 2009, as director of DDOE, Mr. Hawkins spoke before the D.C. Council on the importance of "teamwork" in turning D.C. into a "leading international green city." He supported the Stormwater Management Act, a 2008 law that made DDOE responsible for "monitoring and coordinating the [stormwater] activities of all District agencies, including [D.C. Water]."
In January 2012, however, once Mr. Hawkins became general manager of D.C. Water, his agency argued in an EPA appeal that "the District government cannot impose financial obligations on D.C. Water," and that "DDOE cannot speak for or constrain D.C. Water with respect to [its] obligations…"
That appeal was dismissed, and DDOE still regulates stormwater management, but its status relative to D.C. Water has changed. According to a letter from Mr. Gray to Ms. Jackson, by March 2012, D.C. Water had made "significant progress in its negotiations with EPA to establish a framework that would allow for an exploration of green infrastructure as an alternative to the costly underground tunnels."
This was news to DDOE when, in July, Mr. Garvin notified former DDOE Director Christophe Tulou that a draft green infrastructure partnership agreement with EPA was in the works, according to multiple sources. At Mr. Garvin's — and Mr. Hawkins' — request, Mr. Tulou submitted comments on the draft agreement to the EPA. He was fired in August, purportedly for not getting the mayor's approval prior to submitting the comments, despite having sent them to Mr. Lew, Mr. Hawkins and the mayor's chief of staff, Christopher Murphy.
Mr. Lew would not respond to requests for comment. Mr. Garvin did not return calls. The Gray administration did not respond to questions about its relationship with D.C. Water.
Mr. Tulou was not the only casualty. His special assistant, Barry Weiss, who wrote the Stormwater Management Act, was fired. DDOE's general counsel and deputy general counsel were reprimanded, but only after D.C. Attorney General Irvin Nathan refused requests from Mr. Lew's office that they too be fired, according to multiple sources outside D.C. government.
Environmental advocates took note of the lack of distance between Mr. Hawkins and the Gray administration, embodied in the draft agreement with EPA and two letters to the EPA administrator signed by Mayor Gray — without DDOE's knowledge.
"George Hawkins has everyone under his spell at some level, and the city has consolidated power with D.C. Water with Lew as the chairman of its board," said Chris Weiss, former aide to Council Chairman Phil Mendelson. "The mayor is clearly deferring to Lew, and he doesn't seem to have a problem undermining his own agency heads."
'Fiscally irresponsible'
Mr. Gray's letters to Ms. Jackson, sent without Mr. Garvin's knowledge according to multiple sources, state that "it would be fiscally irresponsible" for D.C. Water to continue spending funds for the Potomac River and Rock Creek underground tunnels without first studying the impacts of green infrastructure.
Neither the Gray administration nor D.C. Water would say who drafted those letters or the green partnership agreement.
In an Aug. 12 letter to Mr. Garvin, environmental groups accused D.C. Water of negotiating a backroom deal with the EPA, and said the 60-day comment period after the proposal is unveiled may not be sufficient. They also question whether Hawkins' plan can meet the consent decree's deadlines, and point out that both the Stormwater Management Act and the 2005 consent decree required them to have undertaken that review by now.
Rebecca Hammer of the Natural Resources Defense Council says Mr. Hawkins' plan is vague, that the city does not have enough land to build green infrastructure on the necessary scale, and that it is underestimating the maintenance such systems will require.
"How do you do it on private property?" she asked.
Mr. Hawkins and Mr. Lew say the maintenance will create jobs. Mr. Hawkins also insists he has found public land in less developed parts of the city that are contributing to toxic runoff into Rock Creek.
But talk of cost is fuzzy. While there exists a notion that green is less expensive than gray infrastructure, Adam Krantz, managing director of government affairs for the National Association of Clean Water Agencies, says this is a misconception. "The idea that green is a cheaper approach is not true," he said.
Mr. Hawkins agreed that the city will be "spending like crazy on these [green] projects," and noted that monthly water bills have gone up by $7 since the tunnel project began. "But we believe we will get more bang for the buck," he said.
Speaking for Mr. Hawkins, the mayor's chief of staff added: "We owe it to the rate payers and, frankly, the environment itself to get more data about the effectiveness and cost of what some have called 'green solutions.' It's a question about effectiveness and whether one approach has more ancillary benefits."
So who will pay for D.C. Water's green pilot project, and any further tunnel plans going forward? The EPA draft agreement states that decision points for the project will weigh "the extent to which District departments will commit to revising capital expenditure plans to prioritize [green infrastructure] retrofits in priority areas" — suggesting costs could shift from D.C. Water to District agencies.
Mr. Hawkins brushed aside such concerns, but confirmed the agreement will be part of the proposed modified consent decree to be approved by EPA and a federal judge. Of the possibility that DDOE and other agencies such as the District Departments of Transportation and Public Works end up paying for his projects while having limited input, he said: "Not if the parties are working well together. I'm not going to be political about it, but I'll explain to any mayor or city administrator why it's important. If anything, the costs will be to D.C. Water and not the other way around."
DDOE's recently appointed director Keith Anderson, who is up for confirmation as D.C. Water's newest board member, said he has not spoken with Mr. Lew — both chairman of that board and, as city administrator, Mr. Anderson's putative boss — or Mr. Hawkins about the role his agency will play. Yet he bristled at the suggestion he could soon be taking orders from Mr. Hawkins. "I'm never going to be working for George Hawkins," Mr. Anderson said. "I regulate D.C. Water, and I work for the mayor."

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jun/2/as-overflows-continue-dc-plan-for-sewage-tunnels-g/print/

 

Washington Gas Starts To Pay The Piper

Washington Gas to clean Anacostia riverbank under new agreement

By Darryl Fears, Published: December 12

Washington Gas Light Co. has agreed to clean a section of land along the Anacostia River that it contaminated with harmful chemicals for more than a century, federal officials announced Monday.

As part of an agreement involving the utility, the U.S. Interior Department and the D.C. government, Washington Gas will also pay for a comprehensive investigation of toxic contamination of soil and groundwater on the site. It will repay nearly $1 million to federal agencies for investigations that revealed how badly the river was fouled where the company once processed gas.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar called the agreement “a milestone in our efforts . . . to transform what was once known as America’s forgotten river into a model urban park.” A walkway is slated to traverse the area once when the work is done.

But the Anacostia Watershed Society said much is unknown about the agreement, including its cost and how the utility will be held accountable for its work. “How much they’re committing is really unclear at this point,” said Brent Bolin, director of advocacy for AWS.

A Washington Gas spokesman said contaminated soil will be removed and replaced with clean soil over four acres. The spokesman, Reuben Rodriguez, declined to give an estimate of the cleanup cost.

For 60 years, from 1888 to 1948, the utility manufactured gas feed stocks at a facility along Water Street SE, just upstream from the 11th Street Bridge on the river. Waste created by the gasification process contained harmful organic compounds such as benzene, cyanide, arsenic and other contaminants such as tar, coal and coke.

The company continued to use the “East Station” site intermittently until it was closed in 1983 and demolished in 1986. Between that time and 1999, six major federal environmental investigations were performed at the site.

“This has been a cleanup 100 years in the making,” Bolin said. “These are known carcinogens. They are an exposure risk for people who fish, people who boat, people who row.”

The Anacostia River was called “one of the most polluted waterways in the nation” in a May report by the advocacy group DC Appleseed.

With its low flows, the Anacostia cannot easily flush pollutants, many of which come from combined sewage runoff and from chemical waste from the Navy Yard, according to the report. It called on the federal government, as one of the river’s biggest polluters, to take a larger role in the cleanup.

Despite of a 2006 federal decision that called for a cleanup amid hiking trails, yacht clubs and a fishery, work was never completed, Bolin said. AWS filed a suit in August to compel the utility and federal government to act. “You couldn’t get the federal government to care about this issue until the Obama administration,” Bolin said.

The city has been acquiring land nearby with an eye on its Anacostia Waterfront Initiative, a vision for recreational, residential and commercial development along the river.

“This settlement is a major step forward in restoring this vibrant river . . . [and] protecting habitat and wildlife,” Salazar said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/washington-gas-to-clean-anacostia-riverbank-under-new-agreement/2011/12/12/gIQAc0ihqO_story.html

Water Goes Up

D.C. Water’s tunnel vision, with green in mind

By Mike DeBonis, Published: May 19

Think your water bill’s high now? Wait about eight years, when District residents and some folks in the suburbs will see their average monthly bill exceed $100.

The hit to residential pocketbooks will come thanks to the region’s biggest all-but-unknown public works project. D.C. Water later this year will break ground on a $2.6 billion, 25-year project to build three tunnels deep underneath area waterways to store sewage so that it doesn’t end up in those waterways. And it’s being paid for mainly through water bills.

In other words, said George S. Hawkins, D.C. Water’s general manager, “It’s people who are paying this cost.”

Last year, D.C. Water started adding a new “impervious area charge” to customers’ bills to cover tunnel costs. What today is $3.45 a month for the average home will be more than $30 a month by 2019. The utility isn’t digging these tunnels for fun, mind you, but is doing so as part of a 2005 court agreement with the federal government and various community and environmental groups to stop dumping raw sewage into the river.

Some background: When it rains in the city, water drips off roofs and sidewalks and streets and parking lots and ends up down a drain. In the oldest portion of the city, there are no separate storm sewers, so the runoff gets mixed with sewage from sinks and toilets and other unsavory locales and sent to Blue Plains, the treatment plant at the southern tip of the city. When it rains, there’s more sewage than the plant can handle, and it overflows into the Anacostia and Potomac rivers and Rock Creek.

The tunnels offer a simple solution to the problem: Keep the runoff-and-sewage cocktail in a safe place until it can be treated. The problem is that tunnels are expensive and dangerous to build. They also do nothing to prevent storm-sewer runoff — full of dirt and grease and other nasty stuff — from ending up in rivers.

But what if there wasn’t so much rainwater dripping off roofs and sidewalks and streets and alleys and parking lots? That’s what Hawkins has in mind. Rather than spend billions on three tunnels, he’d like to build one tunnel and work on keeping water from going down the drain in the first place.

That includes building “green” roofs, which, instead of having hard shingles, are covered with dirt and vegetation that capture water, which then evaporates. There are green streets and alleys, too, which use plants and permeable materials that enable water to seep into the ground rather than run into storm drains.

Incidentally, Hawkins added, building green roofs, alleys and streets means good jobs for local residents. (Tunnel building requires skilled workers who travel from job to job.) And let’s not forget that more trees and plants make neighborhoods nicer places to live.

The ideas aren’t new but, in many ways, are newly feasible. Chris Weiss, who leads the D.C. Environmental Network, remembers proposing runoff prevention methods at a meeting about river issues early last decade. “I think we were pretty much laughed at,” he said. “But the technologies have come a long way. All of a sudden, this other stuff seems possible.”

And with Hawkins, a former Environmental Protection Agency lawyer, pressing them, they have a new champion. The EPA said in a statement that it “encourages” the inclusion of green infrastructure in consent decrees.

D.C. Water has started preparing a proposal, but while these are great arguments on paper, Hawkins’s challenge must sway the EPA, green groups and their lawyers, who aren’t all convinced that “low-impact development” will get the river as clean as fast as tunnels will.

David Baron, an Earthjustice lawyer who has represented environmental groups that signed the court agreement, said development methods have long been discussed as ways to keep rivers clean. But the tunnels are expected to eliminate 96 percent of the sewage flowing into the District’s waterways. It’s unclear whether green roofs, streets and alleys will do as effective a job.

“We don’t want to be in a position where we’re getting less in the way of raw sewage reduction,” Baron said. Also, Hawkins said, D.C. Water will ask for more time to make low-impact development work, which Baron calls a no-go. “The schedule for these tunnels is already pretty protracted,” he added. “It’s real easy for bureaucrats to lapse into the habit of delaying things whenever they change their approach. We’d want strong assurances that nothing’s going to get delayed.”

Hawkins said the overall benefit is worth a slightly longer wait. “The only reason we would propose this alternative is because the environmental outcomes might be better, not worse as a whole,” he said. “And, conceivably, to save out ratepayers some money.”

But when there’s a will, there’s a way, Baron said, pointing to the example of Nationals Park — located, incidentally, right next to one of the Anacostia’s biggest sewer-outflow locations.

“If they can do that in a couple of years,” he said, “what else they can do?”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/politics/dc-waters-tunnel-vision-with-green-in-mind/2011/05/19/AFhJTQ7G_story.html

More on EPA Stormwater Permit For DC

Action letter about the EPA stormwater permit for DC from DC Greenworks and the DC Environmental Network.

Healthy Rivers Equals Healthy Communities

When I woke up this morning I could hear the rain falling outside my window. It made me
think about the 1.6 billion gallons of polluted stormwater and raw sewage that makes its way into our rivers each year. When it rains, DC's parking lots, streets and rooftops funnel polluted runoff laden with bacteria, trash and toxics into our waters, making them unsafe for fishing and swimming. This is important to me because my work as Executive Director of DC Greenworks involves building green roofs that capture and cleanse rainwater runoff, harvesting it as a resource and creating new, green jobs for our city.

You can join me in taking positive action for clean water and greener, healthier neighborhoods in DC. Let's work together to stem the flow of polluted runoff to the Anacostia and Potomac Rivers and Rock Creek. The opportunity we have for the next month - between now and June 4, 2010 - is to help establish a clean water program with accountability for the District of Columbia.

Tell the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) you want a strong, effective clean water permit for DC - one that promotes healthy rivers and green, healthy communities.

Like other cities and urban counties nationwide, the District of Columbia is required to address polluted runoff with a clean water act permit issued roughly every five years. The EPA has just issued a new "DRAFT" polluted runoff permit to the District, in April, 2010, for the public to review. This permit can help DC to stem the flow of polluted runoff and restore our waters to full health - if it contains specific pollution reduction requirements, with accountability for meeting cleanup targets and deadlines.

Join me in telling EPA you want a strong stormwater permit that promotes healthy rivers and healthy communities. Green roofs, and other green infrastructure projects, are economic drivers that can create new jobs for residents during these hard times.

I know this because my organization is part of a growing movement that is creating new jobs each day focused on restoring our rivers and creeks. Green infrastructure can also help build a vibrant waterfront that will promote livable, walkable, healthy neighborhoods on both sides of the Anacostia River. Green infrastructure can also help the District be a leading green city and help District of Columbia Mayor Fenty reach his stated goals of 40% green roof and tree canopy coverage.

New jobs and healthy communities make this a win-win situation.

Peter Ensign, Executive Director, DC Greenworks

Why I Buy Drinking Water In 5 Gallon Bottles

People have asked me why I do not always subscribe to the CDC's version of things - here is an example -



CDC misled District residents about lead levels in water, House probe finds

By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 20, 2010; A01

The nation's premier public health agency knowingly used flawed data to claim that high lead levels in the District's drinking water did not pose a health risk to the public, a congressional investigation has found. And, investigators determined, the agency has not publicized more thorough internal research showing that the problem harmed children across the city and continues to endanger thousands of D.C. residents.

A House investigative subcommittee concludes that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention made "scientifically indefensible" claims in 2004 that high lead in the water was not causing noticeable harm to the health of city residents. As terrified District parents demanded explanations for the spike in lead in their water, the CDC hurriedly published its calming analysis, knowing that it relied on incomplete, misleading blood-test results that played down the potential health impact, the investigation found.

The city utility says lead levels have been in the safe range in D.C. water since 2006, after a chemical change to reduce lead leaching. But the House report raises concerns about children in 9,100 residences throughout the city with partial lead-pipe replacements. Their parents may not know CDC research has found that children in such homes are four times as likely to have elevated lead in their blood.

The House science and technology subcommittee investigation, scheduled to be released Thursday, was spurred last year by one scientist's research and Washington Post reporting suggesting that the 2004 CDC analysis was missing many test results for children who might have lead poisoning. With its final report, the committee reveals that the missing data showed clear harm to children from the water -- and that CDC authors knew the data was flawed. It finds that CDC officials "failed in their public health duty."

Pediatric lead experts advise concerned parents to monitor their children's behavior to determine whether they have noticed coordination, hearing or mental-focus problems or changes. Parents who witness such changes should have their children's blood tested for lead.

Late Wednesday, the CDC declined to directly rebut the House investigators' findings. Instead, it released a brief re-analysis based on the missing tests, which it said confirms the original 2004 findings that residents did not suffer significant harm.

The agency acknowledged, however, that its 2004 claim that no children had been found with lead poisoning was "misleading," because it referred to only one part of its study. Another part showed that children living in homes serviced by a lead pipes were more than twice as likely as other D.C. children to have unsafe lead in their blood.

Yanna Lambrinidou, head of a parents' activist group that formed in the lead crisis, said the CDC, the city water utility, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the D.C. Health Department knew that lead was spiking in the water but did little to fix it or warn the public.

"CDC gave the perpetrators of D.C.'s lead crisis a 'get out of jail free' card," Lambrinidou said. "They will finally have to answer for what they did."

When nearly 1 million residents throughout the District and in small parts of Falls Church and Arlington learned from a Post article in January 2004 that they had been exposed to unsafe lead in water for at least a year, the CDC analysis was largely used to quiet public anger. The study has since been cited as evidence that even astronomically high lead levels are not cause for concern.

Rep. Brad Miller (D-N.C.), the subcommittee chairman, said the CDC report "left the public health community with the dangerous and wrong impression that lead-contaminated water is safe for children to drink."

Lead is a toxic metal long known to cause brain damage and developmental delays in fetuses and children when they or their pregnant mothers ingest significant amounts.

Marc Edwards, a Virginia Tech scientist who early on questioned the paper, said it's time for the CDC to retract its findings and for the senior author of the 2004 report, Mary Jean Brown, to resign.

The House subcommittee's investigation also chides the CDC for not alerting the public to its subsequent research that contradicted its earlier claims. This 2007 research determined a clear link between the water problem and lead poisoning in D.C. children. For example, it showed that city children with high levels of lead in their blood were significantly more likely to live in homes with lead pipes, and after the city fixed its water treatment problem, the CDC saw a "dramatic reduction" in lead poisoning.

The committee also urged release of this research to alert residents to a continuing, lurking threat in the estimated 9,100 D.C. homes where water utility crews replaced part of the lead service pipe bringing water to the house. The CDC study concluded that the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority's $93 million effort to reduce lead risks after the 2004 lead crisis had largely backfired: Children living in homes with partial lead pipe replacements were four times as likely to suffer from unsafe levels of lead as those in homes without lead pipes.

The House science subcommittee reserves its strongest criticisms for Brown, the CDC's director of lead poisoning prevention. She worked with D.C. health officials to review blood-test results and frame the CDC's response. Brown led a team in publishing the conclusion that the lead problem wasn't having a serious health impact.

But the committee said it found evidence that Brown knew that the D.C. Health Department data was missing thousands of blood-test results in a critical period of the lead crisis. She told investigators that she believed all the missing data was for low blood-lead levels, but she never tried to obtain the original results to check.

The committee did go back to the labs for the original test results for 2002-03 and learned that three times as many children had elevated lead levels as reported, 954 instead of 315. This means child lead poisoning was rising, not falling or staying the same, as the CDC had claimed.

In one part of the 2004 report, the CDC paper analyzed the blood of children and adults living with lead levels in their tap water 20 times the amount raising concern -- and said not one was suffering from elevated lead. Brown and her co-authors knew, however, that most of those tested had been drinking bottled or filtered water before their blood was analyzed.

A public health expert and co-author suggested to Brown in an e-mail that the report mention this factor because "this may help to explain why currently none of the persons have blood lead levels above the level of concern." It was never mentioned.

Brown acknowledged to investigators that she "didn't have a lot of confidence" in the results but didn't delay the report's release because many federal agencies were pushing the CDC to publish.

In internal e-mails at the time, Brown expressed pleasure that the drumbeat of media reports was easing. "Today has been the first day in over a month that there wasn't a story on lead in water in the Washington Post and also the first that I haven't been interviewed by at least one news outlet," Brown wrote to her boss. "I guess that means it worked!"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/19/AR2010051902599.html?hpid=moreheads

Federal Logic - Stormwater In DC

On one hand the EPA, a federal agency, is requiring DC to take actions about stormwater runoff - on the other hand............ sort of a take with one hand, give with another......... definetely an example of the right hand not talking with the left hand............ or maybe the one hand consciously obstructing the other.....

Feds say they won't pay D.C. for stormwater runoff fees

By: Alana Goodman
Examiner Staff Writer
April 28, 2010

Federal government agencies are refusing to pay fees for new federally mandated District environmental regulations, and D.C. officials say that the expense may be passed on to city residents.

The Environmental Protection Agency took control of stormwater regulations in D.C. last spring, in an effort to help restore the Anacostia River and in response to an executive order by President Obama. Under the new system, the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority changed its fee structure for stormwater runoff, charging landowners by square footage instead of by the number of people who utilize the property.

But several federal agencies have balked at the city's new rules, arguing that they should be exempt from the fees under a law that exempts federal buildings from paying property taxes.

"[B]ased upon our preliminary review, the [stormwater] charges adopted by the District appear to be a tax on property owners," an attorney forthe Government Accountability Office wrote in an April 13 letter to WASA. "Accordingly, we are instructing the Department of Treasury not to make a payment to the District from GAO's appropriations."

The Department of Defense also is refusing to pay up and snubbed the fees as an "impermissible tax on the federal government," a top military official wrote in an April 15 letter to WASA.

WASA denies that the new rate structure represents a property tax. "It's a fee, because it's directly related to a service that is rendered by our agency," WASA spokesman Alan Heymann said.

If the federal government doesn't pay, WASA says the approximate $2 million cost might be passed on to local residents. "The money has to come from someplace, and that someplace is our ratepayers," Heymann said.

D.C. Councilwoman Mary Cheh called the situation "extraordinarily concerning to us all."

"If [the federal agencies] don't pay it, the alternative is to spread it out over the other ratepayers of the district," she said.

WASA officials will be meeting with the GAO to attempt to negotiate on the matter. Other options may include another restructuring of the fee system or legal action.

"We don't want to go to court about it," Cheh said. "But, it may be that we might have to go to court about it."

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/Feds-say-they-won_t-pay-D_C_-for-stormwater-runoff-fees-92258154.html

EPA To Require Rainwater Collection In DC

If this goes through as planned, it will mean major changes to Washington, DC, construction practices. I don't quite follow the five year part though - a developer might decide to wait it out especially for a project in the fourth or fifth year of the project.

EPA proposes rainwater-trapping rules for D.C.

By David A. Fahrenthold
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 22, 2010; B10

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced plans Wednesday to require "green roofs," rain barrels and other measures that trap runoff at new and redeveloped buildings in the District, making the city a test case for an ambitious effort to stop pollution from flowing into rivers along with the rain.

The EPA's plan, contained in a proposed permit for the District's storm-sewer system, would require developers to trap 90 percent of the water that falls on a plot during a storm.

Water usually hits roofs and parking lots and runs into sewers, carrying trash and chemical pollutants. Under the permit, that water would be filtered naturally, through plants and dirt, or be caught in a receptacle for use watering plants.

If developers cannot make the changes, the EPA proposed, they would be required to pay for projects elsewhere.

The EPA will seek public comment on the plan, which would last five years. If approved, it would mean a major shift in thinking for a city covered in glass, concrete and shingles. EPA officials estimated that some buildings currently might trap 30 percent of rainwater with gardens or landscaping. At sites where the buildings are surrounded only by concrete, the number could be zero.

In the EPA's plan, "you're using water on site as an asset, rather than a waste product," said Jon Capacasa, director of the water protection division of the EPA's mid-Atlantic regional office. He said the changes were part of a larger effort, begun with a presidential order last year, to improve the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. "The local water bodies need these levels of [storm water] control to be healthy," he said.

Capacasa said the plan would make the District's rules on rainwater among the strictest in the country.

In the past few months, Virginia and Maryland have proposed similar measures to trap and filter rainwater. But house builders and other developers said they would add vast new costs to their projects. Virginia shelved its plan, and Maryland made some alterations that developers demanded.

The EPA plan for the District would require developers to trap the first 1.2 inches of rain that falls during a storm (it would require federal buildings to trap the first 1.7 inches). In that way, it is more restrictive than the proposal that was shot down in Virginia, and tougher on redevelopment projects than Maryland's rules are.

A D.C. Building Industries Association official said she could not comment Wednesday because she had not seen the details of the permit. An official with the D.C. government declined to comment for the same reason.

Rainwater is an unlikely sounding, but important, source of pollution for the Chesapeake, bringing down more than 10 percent of the two pollutants that cause "dead zones" downstream. Environmental groups applauded the EPA's proposal Wednesday, saying it would also reduce the amount of mud and garbage washed down during storms.

"Less of that storm water flowing into the river is going to mean less trash," said Brent C. Bolin of the Anacostia Watershed Society. "You'll be able to see the difference."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/21/AR2010042104929.html

Water Leak In the Street - How Long Does It Take To Fix?

I am wondering a few things about a water leak in our street. The picture below shows a water leak in the middle of the street on the 1100 block of Fairmont St. NW. I took the photo on September 24, 2009. At that date, the leak had already been going for at least a few weeks.



Soon after I took this picture, emergency no parking signs went up and on one day a crew was out looking like they were doing preparation work to fix the leak. I asked them about the leak and they said it was going to be fixed. Since then the no parking signs came down and the water continues to come up out of the middle of the road.

Today I called the Water And Sewer Authority DC to see if I can find out any info about the leak. While the woman I spoke with was very nice, I was unable to get any info beyond that the leak has been reported and she would "send a message to the foreman for the area" that the leak continues (and has gotten bigger).

A variety of concerns / questions come to my mind about this leak. With freezing temperatures coming sooner than later, this is an ice patch and potential accident waiting to happen. Doe sthis result in contamination to our drinking water? I don't drink it or cook with it, but I would like to know... Historically, this area of the water pipe has had a number of breaks in the past 20 years - at least 4 times the pipe has broken within 20 feet of where the leak is now. How efficient is it to keep fixing a pipe that keeps breaking? Is there ever any consideration of a bigger problem than a one time leaking pipe? I know that if a pipe kept breaking in my house every 3 to 4 years, I would conclude that previous fixes were just band-aids.

I also wonder how WASA-DC prioritizes fixing pipe leaks. Is two months plus standard time to expect a repair?

___________________________________________________________

Update - Monday, November 2, 2009 - According to a man I spoke with in the DC-WASA Public Affairs office this morning, work on the leak is supposed to begin this week.

Upward Mobility: A Toilet

Americans should take note of the success of this program in India - No Toilet, No Bride accompanied by the jingle "no loo, no I do". While some Americans may think that all Americans have indoor plumbing the following dated statistics from the 2000 census show that while a small percentage, not everyone in America benefits from indoor plumbing.

States with the highest rates of residents without complete plumbing facilities in the 2000 US census:
Alaska - 6.3%
New Mexico - 1.8%
Arizona - 1.1%
Hawaii, West Virginia - 1%
District of Columbia, Kentucky, Maine, Missisippi - 0.9%
Arkansas - 0.8%

The broader implications of this campaign are also clear to me - I am one of those who for a long time has promoted the idea, despite it's possible negative impact on myself, that if women throughout the world withheld sex from men in a coordinated campaign, world disarmament could occur faster than anyone thought possible. Just a thought.



In India, New Seat of Power for Women
Prospective Brides Demand Sought-After Commodity: A Toilet

By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, October 12, 2009

NILOKHERI, India -- An ideal groom in this dusty farming village is a vegetarian, does not drink, has good prospects for a stable job and promises his bride-to-be an amenity in high demand: a toilet.

In rural India, many young women are refusing to marry unless the suitor furnishes their future home with a bathroom, freeing them from the inconvenience and embarrassment of using community toilets or squatting in fields.

About 665 million people in India -- about half the population -- lack access to latrines. But since a "No Toilet, No Bride" campaign started about two years ago, 1.4 million toilets have been built here in the northern state of Haryana, some with government funds, according to the state's health department.

Women's rights activists call the program a revolution as it spreads across India's vast and largely impoverished rural areas.

"I won't let my daughter near a boy who doesn't have a latrine," said Usha Pagdi, who made sure that daughter Vimlas Sasva, 18, finished high school and took courses in electronics at a technical school.

"No loo? No 'I do,' " Vimlas said, laughing as she repeated a radio jingle.

"My father never even allowed me an education," Pagdi said, stroking her daughter's hair in their half-built shelter near a lagoon strewn with trash. "Every time I washed the floors, I thought about how I knew nothing. Now, young women have power. The men can't refuse us."

Indian girls are traditionally seen as a financial liability because of the wedding dowries -- often a life's savings -- their fathers often shell out to the groom's family. But that is slowly changing as women marry later and grow more financially self-reliant. More rural girls are enrolled in school than ever before.

A societal preference for boys here has become an unlikely source of power for Indian women. The abortion of female fetuses in favor of sons -- an illegal but widespread practice -- means there are more eligible bachelors than potential brides, allowing women and their parents to be more selective when arranging a match.

"I will have to work hard to afford a toilet. We won't get any bride if we don't have one now," said Harpal Sirshwa, 22, who is hoping to marry soon. Neem tree branches hung in the doorway of his parents' home, a sign of pride for a family with sons. "I won't be offended when the woman I like asks for a toilet."

Satellite television and the Internet are spreading images of rising prosperity and urban middle-class accouterments to rural areas, such as spacious apartments -- with bathrooms -- and women in silk saris rushing off to the office.

India's rapid urbanization has also contributed to rising aspirations in small towns and villages. On a crowded highway that runs into this village, about 170 miles north of New Delhi, young women, once seen clinging to the backs of motorbikes driven by their fathers or husbands, now drive their own scooters. One recent popular TV ad shows a rural girl sheepishly entering a scooter showroom, then beaming as she whizzes through the parking lot on her new moped.

With economic freedom, women are increasingly expecting more, and toilets are at the top of their list, they say.

The lack of sanitation is not only an inconvenience but also contributes to the spread of diseases such as diarrhea, typhoid and malaria.

"Women suffer the most since there are prying eyes everywhere," said Ashok Gera, a doctor who works in a one-room clinic here. "It's humiliating, harrowing and extremely unhealthy. I see so many young women who have prolonged urinary tract infections and kidney and liver problems because they don't have a safe place to go."

Previous attempts to bring toilets to poor Indian villages have mostly failed. A 2001 project sponsored by the World Bank never took off because many people used the latrines as storage facilities or took them apart to build lean-tos, said Ranjana Kumari, director of the Center for Social Research in New Delhi, who worked on the program.

But by linking toilets to courtship, "No Toilet, No Bride" has been the most successful effort so far. Walls in many villages are painted with slogans in Hindi, such as "I won't get my daughter married into a household which does not have a toilet." Even popular soap operas have featured dramatic plots involving the campaign.

"The 'No Toilet, No Bride' program is a bloodless coup," said Bindeshwar Pathak, founder of Sulabh International, a social organization, and winner of this year's Stockholm Water Prize for developing inexpensive, eco-friendly toilets. "When I started, it was a cultural taboo to even talk about toilets. Now it's changing. My mother used to wake up at 4 a.m. to find someplace to go quietly. My wife wakes up at 7 a.m., and can go safely in her home."

Pathak runs a school and job-training center for women who once cleaned up human waste by hand. They are known as untouchables, the lowest caste in India's social order. As more toilets come to India, the women are less likely to have to do such jobs, Pathak said.

"I want so much for them to have skills and dignity," Pathak said. "I tell the government all the time: If India wants to be a superpower, first we need toilets. Maybe it will be our women who finally change that."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/11/AR2009101101934.html?hpid=topnews&sub=AR

eco toilet paper

The Unkindest Flush
Soft Toilet Paper's Hard on the Earth, But Will We Sit for the Alternative?

By David A. Fahrenthold
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 24, 2009

ELMWOOD PARK, N.J. -- There is a battle for America's behinds.

It is a fight over toilet paper: the kind that is blanket-fluffy and getting fluffier so fast that manufacturers are running out of synonyms for "soft" (Quilted Northern Ultra Plush is the first big brand to go three-ply and three-adjective).

It's a menace, environmental groups say -- and a dark-comedy example of American excess.

The reason, they say, is that plush U.S. toilet paper is usually made by chopping down and grinding up trees that were decades or even a century old. They want Americans, like Europeans, to wipe with tissue made from recycled paper goods.

It has been slow going. Big toilet-paper makers say that they've taken steps to become more Earth-friendly but that their customers still want the soft stuff, so they're still selling it.

This summer, two of the best-known combatants in this fight signed a surprising truce, with a big tissue maker promising to do better. But the larger battle goes on -- the ultimate test of how green Americans will be when nobody's watching.

"At what price softness?" said Tim Spring, chief executive of Marcal Manufacturing, a New Jersey paper maker that is trying to persuade customers to try 100 percent recycled paper. "Should I contribute to clear-cutting and deforestation because the big [marketing] machine has told me that softness is important?"

He added: "You're not giving up the world here."

Toilet paper is far from being the biggest threat to the world's forests: together with facial tissue, it accounts for 5 percent of the U.S. forest-products industry, according to industry figures. Paper and cardboard packaging makes up 26 percent of the industry, although more than half is made from recycled products. Newspapers account for 3 percent.

But environmentalists say 5 percent is still too much.

Felling these trees removes a valuable scrubber of carbon dioxide, they say. If the trees come from "farms" in places such as Brazil, Indonesia or the southeastern United States, natural forests are being displaced. If they come from Canada's forested north -- a major source of imported wood pulp -- ecosystems valuable to bears, caribou and migratory birds are being damaged.

And, activists say, there's just the foolish idea of the thing: old trees cut down for the briefest and most undignified of ends.

"It's like the Hummer product for the paper industry," said Allen Hershkowitz, senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council. "We don't need old-growth forests . . . to wipe our behinds."

The reason for this fight lies in toilet-paper engineering. Each sheet is a web of wood fibers, and fibers from old trees are longer, which produces a smoother and more supple web. Fibers made from recycled paper -- in this case magazines, newspapers or computer printouts -- are shorter. The web often is rougher.

So, when toilet paper is made for the "away from home" market, the no-choice bathrooms in restaurants, offices and schools, manufacturers use recycled fiber about 75 percent of the time.

But for the "at home" market, the paper customers buy for themselves, 5 percent at most is fully recycled. The rest is mostly or totally "virgin" fiber, taken from newly cut trees, according to the market analysis firm RISI Inc.

Big tissue makers say they've tried to make their products as green as possible, including by buying more wood pulp from forest operations certified as sustainable.

But despite environmentalists' concerns, they say customers are unwavering in their desire for the softest paper possible.

"That's a segment [of consumers] that is quite demanding of products that are soft," said James Malone, a spokesman for Georgia-Pacific. Sales figures seem to make that clear: Quilted Northern Ultra Plush, the three-ply stuff, sold 24 million packages in the past year, bringing in more than $144 million, according to the market research firm Information Resources Inc.

Last month, Greenpeace announced an agreement that it said would change this industry from the inside.

The environmental group had spent 4 1/2 years attacking Kimberly-Clark, the makers of Kleenex and Cottonelle toilet paper, for getting wood from old-growth forests in Canada. But the group said it is calling off the "Kleercut" campaign: Kimberly-Clark had agreed to make its practices greener.

By 2011, the company said, 40 percent of the fiber in all its tissue products will come from recycled paper or sustainable forests.

"We could have campaigned forever," said Lindsey Allen, a senior forest campaigner with Greenpeace. But this was enough, she said, because Kimberly-Clark's changes could alter the entire wood-pulp supply chain: "They have a policy that . . . will shift the entire way that tissue companies work."

Still, some environmental activists said that Greenpeace should have pushed for more.

"The problem is not yet getting better," said Chris Henschel, of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, talking about logging in Canada's boreal forests. He said real change will come only when consumers change their habits: "It's unbelievable that this global treasure of Canadian boreal forests is being turned into toilet paper. . . . I think every reasonable person would have trouble understanding how that would be okay."

That part could be difficult, because -- in the U.S. market, at least -- soft is to toilet paper what fat is to bacon, the essence of the appeal.

Earlier this year, Consumer Reports tested toilet paper brands and found that recycled-tissue brands such as Seventh Generation and Marcal's Small Steps weren't unpleasant. But they gave their highest rating to the three-ply Quilted Northern.

"We do believe that you're going to feel a difference," said Bob Markovich, an editor at Consumer Reports.

Marcal, the maker of recycled toilet paper here in New Jersey, is trying to change that with a two-pronged sales pitch. The first is that soft is overrated.

"Strength of toilet paper is more important, for obvious reasons," said Spring, the chief executive, guiding a golf cart among the machinery that whizzes up vast stacks of old paper, whips it into a slurry, and dries it into rolls of toilet paper big enough for King Kong. He said his final product is as strong as any of the big-name brands. "If the paper breaks during your use of toilet paper, obviously, that's very, very important."

The second half of the pitch is that Marcal's toilet paper is almost as soft as the other guy's anyway.

"Handle it like you're going to take care of business," company manager Michael Bonin said, putting this reporter through a blind test of virgin vs. recycled toilet paper. Two rolls were hidden in a cardboard box: the test was to reach in without looking and wad them up, considering the "three aspects of softness," which are surface smoothness, bulky feel and "drapability," or lack of rigidity.

The reporter wadded. The officials waited. The one on the right felt slightly softer.

That was not the answer they wanted: The recycled paper was on the left.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/23/AR2009092304711.html?hpid=topnews

More D.C. Kids Had Elevated Lead Than Stated

Unacceptable Science & Anecdotal Evidence



Following is a report on inaccuracies in reports by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the DC Department of Health about elevated lead levels in DC children.
The following quote from John Rosen, a pediatric expert on lead and the head of the lead-poisoning prevention program at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, is of particular interest to me - "This is unacceptable science, and it's unacceptable public health, and the losers are the children who may suffer a lifetime from elevated lead exposure". I appreciate his use of the phrase "unacceptable science", a very serious charge against the preeminent government health agency.
I don't totally ignore what I am told by the CDC but the examples in this article are among other examples of why I am slightly skeptical of much of what the CDC says. I note that this year in an information packet about lice distributed by our daughter's public school, for the first time in my eight years involvement with the school, information was included about lice treatment beyond the previously standard reference to the CDC web page which directs parents to put some fairly hazardous pesticides on the child's head. I have spoken to the school nurse a number of times about our successful use of mayonnaise and oil instead of the over the counter and prescription pesticides that are recommended by the CDC. The reference to mayo and oil use is prefaced by something like "some people report that they have used the following.....", "...but cannot substantiate results......". Not the first time someone has told me that my science wasn't "top notch" but at least I have never been of accused of "unacceptable science"! And glad to see the school finally acknowledge other methods than heavy chem.

More D.C. Kids Had Elevated Lead Than Stated By Carol D. Leonnig Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, August 4, 2009 More than twice as many D.C. children as previously reported by federal and local health officials had high levels of lead in their blood amid the city's drinking water crisis, according to congressional investigators, throwing into doubt assurances by those officials that the lead in tap water did not seriously harm city children. The new information was uncovered by a House subcommittee investigating the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's performance and has raised congressional concern about whether the agency properly alerted District residents to a health risk from unprecedented levels of lead in the water. Local officials could not say Monday whether some children with unsafe lead exposure have gone without intervention to reduce health risks. The CDC and city health department had reported dangerously high lead levels in 193 children in 2003, the worst year for high concentrations of lead in city tap water. But lab data gathered by congressional investigators this year show that the actual number was 486 children. The subcommittee's investigators uncovered the higher figures by seeking the data directly from all D.C. labs that analyze local test results. After the lead problem became public in 2004, blood tests from thousands of city children taken in 2003 were inexplicably missing from D.C. government files. Using the partial data, the CDC, the nation's leading public health agency, and the D.C. Department of Health published a paper reporting that they were not finding a significant increase in children with dangerous lead levels. "There is no indication that DC residents have blood lead levels above the CDC levels of concern," Mary Jean Brown, the CDC's top lead poisoning prevention official, wrote in a summary of her paper. She wrote the report with the Department of Health in March 2004 after residents and Congress learned about the lead problem. Brown stressed at the time that from 2001 to 2004, blood lead levels among the city's children and adults were generally dropping as levels in the city's water were rising. The 2003 data on blood tests for children were considered critical in measuring whether a widespread spike in lead in the city's drinking water had harmed children's health. That year, the city found tens of thousands of city homes with elevated lead in the water. It was not until 2004 that the public was alerted to the problem and many residents began protecting themselves and their children by switching to filtered or bottled water. Since then, the city has changed its water treatment. Lead levels have fallen and are at historical lows. Rep. Brad Miller (D-N.C.), chairman of the investigations and oversight subcommittee of the House Science and Technology Committee, which is conducting the inquiry, said the new findings raise questions about the CDC's performance. "Parents thought that they didn't have to worry about lead in their children's drinking water because they trusted CDC," Miller said. "The CDC can't lend their credibility simply to assure the public that there is nothing to worry about. If they say everything is fine, then everything better really be fine." In letters sent to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) on Monday evening, Miller requested more agency documents. He said the CDC should have known it had "wildly incomplete" data when it published research that "suggested there was no danger to children and the public from elevated lead levels in the water." "The disparity in the numbers reported by the CDC and the data obtained by the subcommittee is extraordinarily disturbing," Miller wrote, adding that the missing data "should have set off warning bells that the CDC could not rely on the numbers being provided for public health statements." In a written statement, CDC officials declined to comment on the new data, saying they had not seen it. Fenty's office released a statement saying: "The Administration looks forward to receiving the findings of the congressional investigation related to the 2003 lead reporting between DOH and the CDC and, once reviewed, we will use its findings to better serve D.C. residents." Recent research at Children's National Medical Center indicates that children who lived in neighborhoods with the highest concentrations of lead in the water -- Capitol Hill, Columbia Heights and northern sections of Ward 4 -- were much more likely to have elevated lead in their bloodstream. Blood test results are collected when doctors and labs report the results to the city health department, which monitors children to try to reduce their exposure to lead. Fetuses and children younger than 6 are particularly vulnerable to lead exposure, and high levels can cause a permanent loss in IQ, motor coordination and the ability to communicate. In 2001 and 2002, the health department had collected results from 16,042 children and 15,755 children, respectively. But in 2003, results from only 9,229 children were on file with the department. After the lead problem was reported in January 2004, Brown and her deputies from the CDC questioned city health officials about why they had fewer tests. They responded that some labs did not report test results of low lead levels. Brown told The Washington Post this year that she believed that the missing data would probably not affect the findings in her paper because they did not involve high lead readings. On Monday, CDC officials said that Brown did not ask for the data because labs are required to report to the District. "CDC has no authority to require that laboratories report directly to it," according to the CDC statement. John Rosen, a pediatric expert on lead and the head of the lead-poisoning prevention program at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, expressed surprise that officials drew conclusions based on data they knew was incomplete and did not seek the missing data from the labs. "This is unacceptable science, and it's unacceptable public health, and the losers are the children who may suffer a lifetime from elevated lead exposure," he said. The 2003 test results suggested that the incidence of dangerous lead exposure was falling in the District, a decline cited in a George Washington University paper. William Walker, the chairman of the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority board, said that he could not comment about data he had not seen or how health agencies performed in 2003 but that he is eager to learn more about the House panel's findings. "If this is true -- that there are a lot more kids with elevated lead -- it's of great concern to us," Walker said. "We're going to look at the data and see what the committee comes out with in their investigation and respond accordingly."