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Monday, August 29, 2005

Environment - A $17.1 million upgrade at Muncie's Water Pollution Control Facility; Great Lakes initiative; Tondu power plant

CSOs. The Muncie Star-Press reports today, in a story by Rick Yencer:

MUNCIE - A $17.1 million upgrade at Muncie's Water Pollution Control Facility could translate into a 19.8-percent rate hike for Muncie sewage utility customers.

"It is mandatory," said Phil Tevis, chairman of a citizens advisory group that recently signed off on the project.

Tevis was referring to federal clean water laws that require local communities to maintain wastewater treatment capacity while also reducing combined sewer overflows into the river.

The Muncie Sanitary District, which has raised sewage rates twice since 2000, is looking for another rate hike in 2006 to cover the WPCF project, which involves replacing older pumps, filters and grit removal equipment, while repairing buildings constructed with the original plant in 1938.

"We are ensuring we can take the flow that we are taking now and increasing the quality of water coming out of the plant," said Barb Smith, WPCF superintendent.

While the work will reduce some CSO flow, it won't be significant enough to meet clean water rules, Smith said. Another project will help eliminate CSOs and further increase plant capacity.

John Johnson, vice president of White River Watchers, said CSOs that dump raw sewage into the river had to be addressed.

"It effects us more because we are downstream," Johnson said about his Madison County-based group.

Johnson recalled how e-coli levels in White River near Yorktown spiked a few years ago. The environmental group organizes river cleanups throughout East Central Indiana.

Tevis said the sanitary district had been pro-active in separating combined storm and sanitary sewers and were ahead of many other communities that had done nothing.

Initial plans to build lagoons near the plant to handle excess overflow were scrapped, Tevis said, for improvements to better handle sewage inflow.

Great Lakes. "EPA urged to improve Great Lakes water" is the headline to this AP story published Sunday in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette Some quotes:
DETROIT – The U.S. Environmental Protection agency must work harder to ensure stringent water quality standards are fully implemented across the Great Lakes region, according to a report released Friday.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office, Congress’ investigative arm, said while some progress has been made in reducing Great Lakes pollution, more needs to be done to enforce the standards set forth in the Great Lakes Initiative.

The initiative, a set of water quality criteria issued by the EPA, is designed to control toxic materials and protect wildlife and human health. The eight Great Lakes states – Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – are responsible for implementing the criteria.

The GAO report found the initiative’s potential to improve Great Lakes water quality is limited because it focuses on point sources of pollution created by industry, which are regulated, rather than non-point sources such as urban and agricultural runoff.

The initiative also is limited because it allows the use of flexible implementation procedures, which lets facilities discharge pollutants at levels higher than those set by the initiative’s water quality standards, the GAO said.

See this ILB entry from last Friday on the GAO report.

Tondu power plant. The South Bend Tribune published an opinion piece yesterday on "the Tondu Corp. coal gasification plant proposed for New Carlisle," by Notre Dame professor Kristin Shrader-Frechette. A quote from the lengthy piece:

Industry-reported data from the U.S. Toxics Release Inventory show that more cancer-causing chemicals are released in our area than anywhere in the United States. Scientists reporting T.R.I. data to the International Air Quality Board call our area the U.S. "Cancer Alley." This narrow corridor includes Michigan's southern border and runs east toward Cleveland. It receives one-third of all U.S. toxic chemicals.

Just the Michiana route, from Chicago to Elkhart, is home to 10 of the Great Lakes' Top 12 toxic polluters. T.R.I. data show that each year the United States releases eight pounds of toxins for every American. Indiana residents average almost three times that amount. St. Joseph County receives even more.

Could using Tondu's gasification technology, touted as "new" and "clean coal," help us? Yes, it might. The problem is that, despite gasification's benefits, it may not be clean enough for "Cancer Alley." Its costs and experimental nature may make using it -- here and now -- premature. In fact, high costs and pollution stalled gasification in the 1940s. Until then, it produced most gas for U.S. residential and commercial use. Classified by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control as "public-health hazards," old coal gasification plants are now monitored as hazardous-waste sites.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on August 29, 2005 08:44 AM
Posted to Environment