Poor Mon River Water Quality May Prompt "Impaired" Label
Pittsburgh Business Times
3 December 2010
By Anya Litvak
Total Dissolved Solids measurements provided by Paul Ziemkiewicz,
director of West Virginia Water Research Institute at West Virginia
University.
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection may ask the
federal government to designate parts of the Monongahela River as
impaired, a tag that would jump start a government effort to curb
companies’ discharges into the
river.
The state agency plans to send recommendations to the Environmental
Protection Agency early next week on ways to trim sulfates and total
dissolved solids in the Mon River, according to spokesman Michael
Smith. He declined to say if
the DEP will ask for the "impaired" designation, but Ken Zapinski,
senior vice president of transportation and infrastructure for the
Allegheny Conference on
Community Development, said the agency indicated as much in a heads-up
letter sent to the conference on Tuesday.
In that document, according to Zapinski, the DEP said it would be
mailing its suggestions to the EPA about improving water quality on the
section of the river near the Elizabeth Lock and Dam the next day.
Smith said that has been delayed
until next week.
“We were able to talk to them and persuade them that they needed to
have further discussion,” Zapinksi said.
If the EPA designates that section of the river "impaired," the DEP
would have to place restrictions on discharges made into the river that
would bring the water quality up to standard. According to the
Allegheny Conference,
companies discharging water into the area of the Mon around the
Elizabeth Lock and Dam include United States Steel Corp., Allegheny
Energy Inc., CONSOL Energy Inc.
and Eastman Chemical.
The Allegheny Conference is asking its members to contact the
regulatory agency and argue against an impairment designation. In a
memo prepared for businesses, the conference says the designation
“would severely threaten
industrial, commercial, real estate and even municipal development
along the Mon River, creating a severe economic disadvantage for the
Mon Valley versus other
watersheds."
The conference is questioning the method used by the DEP to calculate
TDS, which must be below 500 parts per million to stay within drinking
water quality.
According to Paul Ziemkiewicz, director of the West Virginia Water
Research Institute, which has been measuring Monongahela River water
quality every two weeks for the past year and a half, the TDS count
around the Elizabeth
Lock and Dam over the past six months was between 289 ppm (on June 24)
and 491 (on Aug 19).
DEP’s Smith said the agency is still working out its recommendations.
"We are looking at the issues certainly, and the Mon is among them,"
Smith said. "We’re spending this week evaluating the data we have on
hand, and we will make our decision next week.
"It’s important to note that early in this process, the Allegheny
Conference expressed concerns over our samplings methods," Smith
continued. "We worked with them and revised our techniques to resolve
many of their concerns."
Anya Litvak covers energy, transportation, utilities, gaming and
accounting for the Pittsburgh Business Times. Contact her at
alitvak@bizjournals.com or (412) 208-3824.