Lisa Jackson, Environmental Protection Agency chief for the Obama Administration, asserted today at a forum for the PBS Frontline documentary “Poisoned Waters” that new legislation is needed to strengthen the EPA’s authority to control pollution and protect local rivers, streams and wetlands across America.
Jackson, speaking at the National Press Club, said that court decisions had left “murkiness” about the EPA’s authority to enforce some mandates of the Clean Water Act. She said EPA would seek new legislation to “clarify” its authority to take action on smaller waterways.
The two-hour documentary, to be aired on PBS on April 21, shows sobering evidence of America’s failure over the past 35 years to contain water contamination from agricultural waste, stormwater run-off, and now, a new wave of chemicals, known as endocrine disrupters, most of which have no safety standard set by the EPA. The danger to human health from these chemicals in the environment and in drinking water systems was underscored Dr. Robert Lawrence of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.
“There are five million people being exposed to endocrine disrupters just in the mid-Atlantic region,” Dr. Lawrence told Frontline Correspondent Hedrick Smith, “and yet we don’t know precisely how many of them are going to develop premature breast cancer, going to have problems with reproduction, going to have all kinds of congenital anomalies of the male genitalia, things that are happening, we know they’re happening, but they’re happening at a broad low level so that they don’t raise alarm in the general public.”
In nationwide survey of water sources for urban drinking water systems, the U.S. Geological Survey has reported finding dozens of endocrine disrupters. At intakes for the Washington, DC water system on the Potomac River, USGS teams found 85 chemicals on its watch list and said two-thirds of them got through filters into the city’s tap water. USGS scientists said they found similar results across the country.
EPA’s Jackson told Smith that, in a break from Bush Administration policies, the Obama EPA is pushing to require pollution discharge permits from industrial-scale animal feeding operations near Chesapeake Bay and other national waterways. The purpose is to regulate contamination from excess animal waste.
“Poisoned Waters” shows that industrial scale chicken farms generate 1.5 billion pounds of chicken waste annually – more than the human waste from four cities, New York, Washington, San Francisco and Atlanta, put together. Jackson said this waste problem has to be brought under regulation.
Smith, a Pulitzer Prize-winning former New York Times reporter and Emmy Award-winning producer, expressed concern after 18 months of reporting on water pollution. “I really wonder whether or not our grandchildren or great grandchildren are going to be able live on this earth, unless we start to change things fast.”
“Poisoned Waters”, will air on PBS Frontline, Tuesday, April 21st from 9-11 PM. Check your local listings. It is a Frontline co-production with Hedrick Smith Productions. See the entire interview and preview at www.pbs.org/frontline/poisonedwaters
April 9th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
EPA never implemented the Clean Water Act as was intended and promised, mainly because of a worldwide incorrectly used pollution test, developed in 1920.
As early as in the seventies EPA had problems with enforcing the pollution laws, as the test showed that sewage treatment plants were out of compliance with their permits, while in fact they treated the sewage better than was required by their permits.
In 1984 EPA acknowledged the problems, but in stead of correcting the test, it allowed the addition of a special chemical to the test, that specifically kills those bacteria that feed on nitrogenous (urine and protein) waste and by allowing this, not only 60% of the treatment plants got into compliance, but at the same time EPA officially ignored the pollution caused by nitrogenous waste and allowed open water to be used as giant urinals. This, while this waste, just like fecal waste, not only exerts an oxygen demand, but also is a fertilizer for algae and thus contributes to eutrophication of open waters often resulting in red tides and dead zones.
Everybody involved, including the environmental groups were aware, but as people at EPA’s head quarters in Washington D.C. told a water attorney (1987 High Country News article) that the test and regulations should be corrected, but also told him that such correction would be impossible because it would require a re-education and re-tooling of an entire industry, that is happy with the status quo. The fact, that much better sewage treatment was not only available, but actually at lower cost, may also have been a factor.
Most involved in water pollution have down played the impact of faulty testing and have been successful in doing so, but nature can not be fooled, as we now see what excessive algae growth is causing, while at the same time EPA is covering up again by initiating TMDL (Total Maximum Daily Load) programs diverting the attention to storm waters and excessive fertilizer runoffs from farmers.
Furthermore most people have no idea what impact this faulty test had on the designs of sewage treatment plants, as it still is not possible to evaluate the real performance and what its waste loading is on receiving water bodies, while it is also possible that many plants were designed to treat the wrong waste in sewage.
During the past 30 years the media, including the public media, has shied away from even discussing this issue, so we’ll have to wait and see with what type of program they will come this time.
The financial establishment and the media successfully covered up liar-loans and we now witness the results. Sadly the same has been going on in the environmental field and hopefully now something will happen. The fact that it takes 30 years to correct an essential test should be unacceptable.