Although federal, state, and municipal officials are involved in a broad range of activities to regulate and control Combined Sewer Overflows, CSOs continue to pose a serious environmental and public health threat, according to the Environmental Protection Agency is a recent Report to Congress.
In late January, EPA sent to Congress its report on the Implementation and Enforcement of the Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) Control Policy. The report identifies progress made in implementing and enforcing CSO controls as a result of the 1994 CSO Control Policy.
There are 772 CSO communities with a total of 9,471 CSOs that are identified and regulated by 859 NPDES permits. Combined sewer systems are found in 32 states (including the District of Columbia) and nine EPA Regions. For the most part, the systems are regionally concentrated in older communities in the Northeast and Great Lakes regions.
According to EPA, all 32 states have developed CSO strategies, and most have adopted the key provisions of the CSO Control Policy. The report discusses successful investments made by communities to reduce CSOs and improve water quality, as well as areas that need improvement.
The Report outlines EPA's plans for reducing the public health and environmental threats still remaining from CSOs. EPA was required by the Wet Weather Water Quality Act of 2000 to write the Report. The Act also required a more extensive report from EPA on the environmental and public health impacts of CSOs and SSOs due in December 2003. The Report is available on EPA's NPDES web site at http://www.epa.gov/npdes.
Grumbles to Take Senior Post at EPA
Benjamin Grumbles, a long time Congressional aide, has been appointed the new Deputy Assistant Administrator for the Office of Water at EPA, effective Feb. 4. The post is the second most senior political position at the water office behind current Assistant Administrator for Water G. Tracy Mehan.
Grumbles most recently served as Deputy Chief of Staff for the House of Representatives Science Committee and was a long time counsel to the House Water Resources and Environment Subcommittee of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
In his new position, Grumbles will work closely with Mehan to shape the water policy for EPA including coordinating the agency's relationship with Congress. He is a graduate of Wake Forest University and earned a J.D. degree from Emory University and an LLM degree from George Washington University in environmental law.
EPA Releases New Ecosystem Modeling Software
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announces the release of the freshwater ecosystem simulation model Aquatox. The system is designed to predict the fate of various pollutants, such as nutrients and organic toxicants, and their effects on the ecosystem, including fish, invertebrates, and aquatic plants. The model is a tool for ecologists, biologists, water quality modelers, and anyone involved in performing ecological risk assessments for aquatic ecosystems.
The Aquatox software is a PC-based ecosystem model that simulates the transfer of biomass and chemicals from one compartment of the ecosystem to another. It does this by simultaneously computing important chemical and biological processes over time. It can predict not only the fate of chemicals in aquatic ecosystems, but also their direct and indirect effects on the resident organisms. Therefore it has the potential to help establish the cause and effect relationships between chemical water quality, the physical environment, and aquatic life.
