The Iowa Chapter of the Sierra Club has been deeply involved in the following
both the lawsuit requiring the antidegradation rule and the campaign by Steve
Veysey and others for public comment on attainable uses for river and stream
segments.
----- Forwarded Message ----
From: "Lynn Laws, Iowa Environmental Council" <[log in to unmask]>
To: Charles Winterwood <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thu, July 8, 2010 11:02:52 AM
Subject: Iowa Water Quality
Iowa Water Quality
Update on Water Quality Protections More Info
You Voice Makes a Difference
Dear Action Alert Volunteers,
Thought you would like an update on Iowa Water Quality Protections. But first a
little background information ...
Background...
The Clean Water Act states that the water quality in ALL waters of the nation
should be protected, at a minimum, for aquatic life and recreational uses. After
years of working to bring Iowa into compliance, Iowa passed new water quality
standards in March 2006 which provided protections for aquatic life and
recreational use in ALL 26,186 miles of perennial streams in Iowa (36 percent of
the total stream miles in Iowa).
However, in response, Iowa legislators also passed a law in 2006 that requires
Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to conduct stream assessments (called
UAAs) of all of the perennial streams prior to requiring any wastewater
treatment plant to upgrade their treatment processes to meet the new water
quality standards. Since 2006, the Iowa Environmental Council has monitored this
arduous assessment process and encouraged community involvement to make sure
streams that are used for recreation do not get unfairly downgraded and exempted
from needed protections. As an action alert volunteer, we've sometimes asked you
to participate in that process.
Because nearly 1000 river or stream segments (affecting over 400 wastewater
treatment facilities) were scheduled to be assessed, the process was divided
into four rounds.
The DNR makes recommendations after each round of UAAS and submits the
recommendations to the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for
approval.
Recent Action...
On June 29, 2010, the EPA completed their review of the first round of DNR
recommendations, which the DNR submitted to EPA in August of 2008.
The 2008 submittal consisted of 385 stream segments. Even after making some
changes in response to public comments, the DNR recommended that 281 (73%) of
the segments be downgraded from A1/A3 primary contact recreation (full body
contact recreations such as swimming, canoeing and kids play) to A2 secondary
contact recreation (accidental or incidental contact with water such as fishing
or boating). The EPA's review of the assessment information and the public
comments resulted in approval of downgrades for only 98 (25%) of these 281
stream segments. The EPA disapproved 164 downgrades and deferred a final
decision on 19 of the stream segments.
The EPA's reasons for disapproving the Iowa DNR recommendations to lower
recreational use protections was based on comments from the public and the lack
of sufficient justification for removal of primary contact recreation
protections including documented stream depths capable of supporting
swimming. Public comments that indicated that primary contact recreation is an
attainable use were the main justification for EPA disapproving 61 of the
proposed downgrades.
Your voice makes a difference!
Thank you for being an action alert volunteer!
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