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Down
and Dirty
Virginia
is a nice place, but don't drink the water. More
than half of our rivers and streams are polluted.
Though
a huge hit for Charlottesville’s Dave Matthews
Band in 1998, the song “Don’t Drink the
Water” wasn’t written to judge the health of
rivers, streams, lakes and estuaries in Virginia.
Still, looking at the maps of impaired waters in
the Commonwealth put together by the Virginia
Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) that
show polluted waters in red rather than blue, the
band’s closing line, “There’s blood in the
water,” certainly rings true.
Water
quality in Virginia, all blue and sparkling on a
sunshiny day, isn’t that bad, is it? There
is some good news in DEQ’s 2004 Water Quality and Impaired Waters Integrated Report: Virginia’s
120 miles of Atlantic Ocean coastal waters fully
support all designated uses, from aquatic life to
fish and shellfish consumption to swimming and
wildlife. But from there, according to the data
gathered from 1998 to 2002, things get down and
dirty.
Over
70 percent of estuarine waters are impaired by
excessive nutrients for aquatic life. Almost 75 percent of lakes and
reservoirs are impaired because of dissolved
oxygen depletion and PCBs. Over half of Virginia
river and stream miles actually assessed by DEQ
are impaired.
“The
leading cause of impairment of designated uses in
Virginia’s rivers and streams,” DEQ reports,
“is violation of the bacterial standards.” For
biologists that means fecal coliform, E. coli and
enterococci. Others use a shorter name.
Abstract
philosophers against taxes and any notion of a
public interest should take a swig of the water
quality report to discover why funny tastes linger
in the
water, the fish and the oysters. A
starvation budget given DEQ has left the
department without the staff or funds even to
gather sufficient data on almost 74 percent of
river and stream mileage in Virginia; 37,319 miles
are un-assessed and water quality unknown in this
report.
All
Virginians share in the water impairment.
Agricultural practices seem to be a primary source
of the bacteria, but urban runoff, leaking
sanitary sewers and failing septic tanks all
contribute. There were unsafe fishing advisories
six times for mercury last year, eleven times for
PCBs and once for kepone -- all legacies of industry.
Acid rain and nitrogen emissions from cars, trucks
and factories also pollute rivers and bays.
Where
DEQ assessments show impairment, follow-up
monitoring to build better data and remediation
plans are required. But “as resources allow”
is the only DEQ plan in another minimalist budget
year, even though it will take $60 million more
just to complete the 640 total maximum daily load
(TMDL) studies Virginia already is under a court
order to perform. Implementing water quality
management plans will take hundreds of millions of
dollars more over decades. Revising its major
water monitoring strategy this summer will be no
substitute for major increases in DEQ resources.
“We
are never going to be able to assess all our
waters,” DEQ briefers sighed at one of four
public meetings on the report to be held around
the state before the end of March. “We may not
be able to get all waters of concern into this
cycle. To accelerate our response would take a
several fold increase in our funding and in our
people.”
And
Virginia is just on the front end of the TMDL
process. Improvements in water quality have been
sufficient in 76 different areas to prompt
Virginia to petition the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency to take 369 miles of rivers,
2,929 acres of lakes and 33 square miles of
estuaries off the violations list. Another 24
areas were de-listed in 2003. But DEQ has 297 new
listings of water impaired areas to report in
2004, including 1,583 miles of rivers and streams,
4,222 acres of lakes and 308 square miles of
estuaries. Virginia is adding water non-attainment
areas three times faster than it is documenting
attainment of standards.
DEQ
puts the best face it can on the problem, arguing
that the new impairment figures may represent
better measurements, not just worsening
conditions. PCBs are a legacy problem and natural
stratification in lakes can diminish dissolved
oxygen levels.
But
Virginians now know their rivers, streams and
estuaries are dirtier, not cleaner. In the
insidious world of budget politics, however, the
more DEQ investigates, the more remediation may
cost. So funding DEQ at a level where it can only
learn as much as the budget can support
perpetuates a cruel hoax about water quality.
Ignorance becomes preferable to neglect. What
Virginia doesn’t know about water quality
can’t hurt us, right?
Since
the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission
found in 2002 that Virginia was last in the United
States in spending for parks and protecting
natural resources, the Commonwealth held up its
awards for having the best parks despite the
minimal investments. Virginians even approved a
new bond issue to foster further park
improvements. On the natural resources side,
unfortunately, Virginia’s water quality has
continued to flow downhill with no awards or
dramatic new investors on the horizon. In the
phrase of the week in Washington, D.C., clean
water has been "important" but not
"urgent" in
Virginia since the federal Clean Water Act was
adopted more than three decades ago.
Yet,
few things are as basic to the public interest as
clean water. Tremendous gains in public health
trace back directly to investments in clean water
and sewer systems since the 1800s. Tourism,
commercial fishing and water sports thrive where
water quality is high.
By
the end of March, DEQ will have conducted four
public meetings on its water quality findings. The
public has until April 23 to comment. But gross
under-funding in the Commonwealth’s budget in
this area may be the biggest comment about
stewardship and the public interest. A
complementary course in that case may be to draft
staunch anti-taxers as safety tasters of water,
fish and oysters in DEQ’s red zones -- a modest
proposal.
--
March 29, 2004
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