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End sewage dumping

Monday, July 16, 2007

Great Lakes polluters must be held accountable. Congress should support new legislation that increases the fine for sewage-dumping cities and demands greater transparency. There needs to be a sense of urgency about protecting the water supply.

Cleaning up the Great Lakes is a costly endeavor but it has to be done. Grand Rapids is a good example of how aggressive communities need to become. This bill, with a faster implementation time, could help.

More than 24 billion gallons of human waste and disease-causing organisms are dumped into the Great Lakes each year. Too many cities along the Great Lakes do not have the infrastructure needed to divert sewage overflows during times of heavy rainfall or snow melt. The bill would nearly quadruple the current low fine that is cheaper for cities to pay than upgrade their systems. To be a deterrent fines have to hurt.

Under the legislation sponsored by Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., those who violate Environmental Protection Agency regulations would face a maximum $100,000 fine for every day they are in violation, instead of $25,000. The increased fines would take effect in 2027. Twenty years is too long to wait for the stiffer fines. Mr. Kirk said the timeline was a compromise. Lawmakers need to come up with a timeframe that reflects the true impact dumping has on public health, the environment and the economy. Funds from violators would go into a cleanup fund for such things as habitat protection.

The provision in the bill requiring greater transparency for volume and occurrences of sewage dumping by states surrounding the Great Lakes would kick in soon after enactment. Information would have to be posted on a searchable database available through the Internet. The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality already has an online database. But in some states information about spills is not as accessible.

Sewage dumping contributes to elevated levels of E. coli bacteria -- the primary reason for beach closures. Closing a beach on Lake Michigan could result in economic losses of as much as $37,000 per day. Michigan had 234 beach closings in 2005, compared to 255 in 2004, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. The 8 percent drop is attributed to better sewer system infrastructure.

But Detroit dumps more than 13 billion gallons of sewage per year. Grand Rapids was in the 12 billion range in the late 1960s but has spent more than $210 million since 1991 overhauling its system. In 2005, around 50 million gallons of mostly treated sewage was released. That's 4.5 percent of the more than 1 billion dumped into the Grand River from all sources. More work is needed, but Grand Rapids has shown that reductions can be significant for cities willing to make the investment. One of the biggest factors leading to pollution problems are cities that have old, combined storm and sanitary sewers that aren't large enough to handle both during heavy rains.

Rep. Vernon Ehlers, R-Grand Rapids, reintroduced a bill this spring that would help to upgrade old sewer systems as well as stop invasive species and other threats to the Great Lakes.

Congress has to make protecting the Great Lakes a top priority. That means approving, with more urgent timelines, this and other legislation that complement each other in the quest to stop the pollution. Cities have to be better environmental stewards of our most precious resource -- water.