By Jacque Day
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wkms/local-wkms-925663.mp3
Four Rivers Region, Ky. – Forty-one years ago, Ohio's Cuyahoga River caught fire. Cleveland residents looked on as black smoke poured from the oil slick and debris atop the water. The incident served as a wakeup call. A few years later, Congress passed the Clean Water Act. And we as a nation set about a monumental reversal. In the last four decades, we've made progress in cleaning up America's waterways. Jacque Day brings us this report on some of today's concerns related to our region's waters, with a focus on a term that may be new to some of us: Nonpoint source pollution.
Water-wise, we've been on a wild roller coaster. Cities under water in May, crop-crippling drought conditions this summer. We try to control water. We dam it, straighten the streams. But water is ultimately untamable. In January 2009, we witnessed firsthand the power of water in solid form. Many of us have a healthy respect for water. We try to treat it as sacred. Or do we?
Maybe, for instance, you're among those who throw lit cigarettes into the Ohio River from the Metropolis Harrah's casino boat deck. Not to pick on smokers, but chances are you've put out a cigarette in a parking lot, or somewhere on your own property, like your driveway. It takes a few more steps, but that cigarette may very well also end up in the Ohio.
"The most important thing to stress is, think about it before you dump it on the ground. Could this cause water pollution? Are my actions going to have any unintended consequences?" Jeff Boyle is an environmental scientist and water quality expert based out of Ludlow, Kentucky. He focuses on Ohio River issues. "Our water is cleaner than it was 30 years ago. But things like this can accumulate, can concentrate in water. And if we are not aware of what we do as individuals, we can cause some pretty significant contamination."
So how does a cigarette butt make its way from your yard, or the parking lot or the stretch of road where you tossed it out the car window: how does it get from there, into the Ohio River, down the Mississippi and eventually, into the Gulf of Mexico? All it takes is a little rain. Out of sight, out of mind, and that stogie's on its merry way.
"Water eventually all flows downhill. This isn't my opinion. This is the way Mother Nature designed it. Everything is ending up in a waterway somewhere."
We're in the Ohio River watershed, an area, Boyle says, that covers more than 200-thousand square miles. According to a U.S. Geological Survey map, the watershed extends through the entire Pennyrile region, several counties in the Purchase, all of southeastern Illinois, as well as the Tennessee counties of Montgomery and Stewart, and part of Henry County.
But before we look ahead, let's take a little trip back in time, for context. Jeff Boyle says, "Back in the 1930s, the Ohio River had become a cesspool." He's not kidding. Before regulations, cities from Pittsburgh to Paducah systematically and over many years dumped waste into the river. Boyle says, this led to the formation of ORSANCO: the Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission. "ORSANCO recognized that water contamination generally came from upstream. And they started preparing an effort to regulate water pollution. This regulation, regulatory response was strengthened pretty greatly when Congress passed the Clean Water Act of 1972."
The Act required facilities to monitor and treat, and generally be responsible for any water discharge through pipes and trenches from their properties. "These discharge points are considered to be point sources. Essentially everything else is a Nonpoint source."
At the heart of this particular discussion lies the distinction between point and Nonpoint pollution sources. Maggie Morgan is the basin coordinator for the Four Rivers Region. She works with groups throughout this area, helping communities do things like develop watershed plans. She breaks it down for us. "Point source pollution comes from a direct discharge into a stream, a pipe that goes directly into a stream. Nonpoint source pollution, it doesn't have a specific discharge point. It runs across the land, so as it rains, water runs across the land and that water picks up the contaminants that the land contains, and it goes into a stream."
So you begin to see the problem. Point sources are traceable. They can be regulated. "Nonpoint source pollution is not regulated at this point in time because it's really, really hard to regulate something when you have no idea what the source is."
Morgan, in essence, is the answer to this dilemma. The Kentucky Division of Water has placed coordinators in each of the commonwealth's major river basins to help the public develop cleaner water practices. Oil on your driveway, for instance, runs off into the streams. Let's consider the source of our drinking water. "Everywhere in the Jackson Purchase except the city of Paducah gets their drinking water from groundwater." She says Paducah, like many river cities, gets its water from the Ohio River.
Morgan is working with city of Murray's stormwater and drainage engineer James Oakley on a water quality workshop for high school seniors. Oakley's job includes Division of Water compliance to decrease stormwater pollution. He says, through enforcement and permitting, the days of "burning water," a reference to the Cuyahoga River that caught fire in the late 60s, are behind us. "What we are concerned with now is the citizens, getting them aware, getting them the education that they need to make sure they don't use too much pesticide, fertilizers, things like that. How to take care of pet waste, where to wash your cars."
Failing septic systems pollute groundwater with bacteria. And then there's grandma's fertilizer. "Always use the proper application. Do not over fertilize your yards, because we're getting into high doses of nitrogen."
And pet waste. How often do we scoop it, bag it and put it in the trash, or just leave it on the ground? "Oakley: I've got two dogs.' Jacque: What is the best way to dispose of that?' Morgan: Pick it up and flush it down your toilet.' Oakley: That would be the best way.'"
Individual work though can get discouraging, fighting the fight for the environment when industry and commercial farms can so easily throw efforts. Jeff Boyle says power plants are required to have a permit to monitor discharges. But here's what he says about farms. "If you have a large animal feed lot with many numbers of animals and then you have a heavy rainfall, they're going to be washing a lot of nutrients into the river. And those nutrients are a very serious contaminant, and agricultural activities are not required to monitor their discharges, not required to have that national pollutant discharge elimination system permit."
Nevertheless, Maggie Morgan speaks with some excitement about a progressive movement among some farmers in the Four Rivers Region. "They have really embraced the precision agriculture so that they don't use any more chemicals than they need to use for their land." She says, one way to keep farm pollutants from entering the direct stream is to install vegetative buffers around field borders. "Some kind of grass that you don't mow down as often as maybe your field. And it will trap some of the sediment and some of those nutrients from the field before they can get into the stream."
James Oakley says he's also seen a greater presence of concern at the individual level. "People coming into our office, asking what they can do, looking at more avenues. I've seen a whole lot more of the community coming out and trying to control the pollutants that could go into the storm sewer system."
At the bottom line, says Jeff Boyle, clean water is an investment. What is clean water worth? "The rates for treatment are going up because we're requiring more treatment for those things that we're now aware of, that we weren't aware of years ago. But you know when your water and sanitary bills come in, and see those 10, 12, 15 percent rate increases, you've got to consider this. What am I paying for my cable bill, for example? And how important is that to me in relation to clean water? Which one is something I can live without?"
Boyle emphasizes that as our technology improves, we become more and more aware of water pollutants in smaller concentrations. For instance, this summer, a study revealed dozens of chemicals and pharmaceuticals antidepressants, veterinary hormones, even cocaine in the Ohio River. Boyle says as we grow more aware of these contaminants, we may be adding treatment systems to eliminate them. That will come at a cost to the consumer. At times like that, the cable bill comparison can come in mighty handy.
How to Get Involved
Four Rivers Watershed Watch