Nitrogen from sewage-treatment plants, along with other nutrient
sources, are known to trigger plankton blooms that lead to
dangerous low-oxygen conditions in Puget Sound — a phenomenon that
has been studied for years.
Nitrogen sources used to
predict future water-quality in the Salish Sea Model
Map: Washington Department of Ecology
Now state environmental officials are working on a plan that
could eventually limit the amount of nitrogen released in sewage
effluent.
The approach being considered by the Washington Department of
Ecology is a “general permit” that could apply to any treatment
plant meeting specified conditions. The alternative to a general
permit would be to add operational requirements onto existing
“individual permits” issued under the National Pollutant Discharge
Elimination System, or NPDES.
The general permit would involve about 70 sewage-treatment
plants discharging into Puget Sound. Theoretically, an overall
nitrogen limitation would be developed for a given region of the
sound. Treatment plant owners could work together to meet that
goal, with the owner of one plant paying another to reduce its
share of the nutrient load.
UPDATE, Feb. 12
Northwest Environmental Advocates has taken its case to court in an
effort to obtain a new Washington state sewage-treatment standard
under AKART — “All Known, Available and Reasonable Treatment.” For
information about the case, refer to the
NWEA news release and the
lawsuit filed in Thurston County Superior Court.
—–
An environmental group, Northwest
Environmental Advocates, is calling on the Washington
Department of Ecology and Gov. Jay Inslee to invoke a 1945 law in
hopes of forcing cities and counties to improve their
sewage-treatment plants.
Large ribbons of the plankton
Noctiluca can be seen in this photo taken at Poverty Bay near
Federal Way on June 28 last year. Excess nitrogen can stimulate
plankton growth, leading to low-oxygen conditions.
Photo: Eyes Over Puget Sound, Department of
Ecology
In a petition to Ecology, the group says the state agency should
require cities and counties to upgrade their plants to “tertiary
treatment” before the wastewater gets discharged into Puget Sound.
Such advanced treatment would remove excess nitrogen along with
some toxic chemicals that create problems for sea life, according
to Nina Bell, executive director of NWEA, based in Portland.
Most sewage-treatment plants in the region rely on “secondary
treatment,” which removes most solids but does little to reduce
nitrogen or toxic chemicals. Secondary treatment is an outdated
process according to BOS and innovation
with Ecology needs to lead the way to a more advanced treatment
technology.
“It’s a travesty that cities around Puget Sound continue to use
100-year-old sewage-treatment technology when cities across the
nation have demonstrated that solutions are available and
practical,” Nina said.
State health officials have reduced shellfish-closure areas
around 20 marinas in Puget Sound, allowing more commercial
shellfish harvesting while inching toward a goal of upgrading
10,800 acres of shellfish beds by 2020.
In all, 661 acres of shellfish beds were removed from a
long-standing “prohibited” classification that has been applied
around marinas, based on assumptions about the dumping of sewage
from boats confined to small areas.
Poulsbo Marina // Photo:
Nick Hoke via Wikimedia
“We have seen pretty significant changes in boat-waste
management,” said Scott Berbells, shellfish growing area manager
for the Washington Department of Health, explaining how the
upgrades came about.
New calculations of discharges from boats in marinas and the
resulting risks of eating nearby shellfish have allowed health
authorities to reduce, but not eliminate, the closure zones around
the marinas.
All the pieces are falling into place for an upgrade of
Kingston’s sewage-treatment plant to produce high-quality reclaimed
water for irrigation, stream restoration and groundwater
recharge.
Kingston Wastewater Treatment
Plant
Photo courtesy of Golder and Associates
By the end of this year, a study by Brown and Caldwell engineers
is expected to spell out the location and size of pipelines, ponds
and infiltration basins. The next step will be the final design
followed by construction.
When the project is complete, Kingston’s entire flow of
wastewater will be cleaned up to Class A drinking water standards.
During the summer, the water will be sold to the Suquamish Tribe
for irrigating White Horse Golf Course. During the winter, most of
the flow will drain into the ground through shallow underground
pipes. Some of the infiltrated water will make its way to nearby
Grover’s Creek, boosting streamflows and improving water quality in
the degraded salmon stream.
Another major benefit of the project will be the elimination of
42 million gallons of sewage effluent per year — including about
3,000 pounds of nitrogen — which gets dumped into Kingston’s
Appletree Cove. I wrote about the effects of nitrogen and what is
being done to save Olympia’s Budd Inlet in five stories published
this week in the Encyclopedia of Puget
Sound, as I described in
Water Ways on Thursday.
The Kingston project, estimated to cost $8 million, has been
under study for several years, and Kitsap County Commissioner Rob
Gelder said he’s pleased to see the effort coming together.
“The Kingston Recycled Water Project is pivotal, and I’m very
happy to be partnering with the Suquamish Tribe,” Rob said in an
email. “The best thing we can do for our environment and to enhance
water availability is to not discharge treated flows into Puget
Sound. We are uniquely positioned to benefit from strategic
investments of this nature in the coming years.”
The Kitsap Peninsula is essentially an island where the
residents get 80 percent of their drinking water from wells. North
Kitsap, including Kingston, could be the first area on the
peninsula to face a shortage of water and saltwater intrusion —
which is why new strategies like recycled wastewater are so
important.
The latest feasibility study was launched last October under a
$563,000 contract with Brown and Caldwell. The work includes a
detailed study of soils and analysis of infiltration rates,
according to Barbara Zaroff of Kitsap Public Works who has been
coordinating the project. The location of the pipeline and ponds
for storing water near White Horse Golf Course also will be
determined.
Funding for the study includes a $150,000 grant from the U.S.
Bureau of Reclamation with $150,000 from the Suquamish Tribe.
Kitsap County recently received a loan for up to $558,000 to
support the study.
I last wrote about the Kingston Recycled Water Project in
Water Ways three years ago, when I also discussed a similar
project in Silverdale, where recycled water will come from the
Central Kitsap Wastewater Treatment Plant.
The long-running controversy over Washington state’s water
quality standards for toxic chemicals is nearly over. We will soon
know just how pure the water must be to get a clean bill of
health.
We still don’t know whether the Environmental Protection Agency
will approve the new state standards adopted this week or impose
more stringent standards that EPA developed for several key
pollutants. The EPA has already taken public comments on its
proposed standards.
“We believe our new rule is strong, yet reasonable,” said Maia
Bellon, director of the Washington Department of Ecology, in a
news
release. “It sets standards that are protective and achievable.
With this rule now complete, we will continue to press forward to
reduce and eliminate toxics from every-day sources.”
For more than two years, much of the controversy focused on the
fish-consumption rate — an assumption about how much fish that
people eat. The FCR is a major factor in the equation used to set
the concentration of chemicals allowed in water before the waterway
is declared impaired. (See early discussions in
Water Ways, Nov. 11, 2010.)
Initially, after plenty of debate, the state proposed increasing
the FCR from 6.5 grams per day to 175 grams per day — a 27-fold
increase. The initial proposal counter-balanced the effect somewhat
by increasing the cancer-risk rate from one in a million to one in
100,000 — a 10-fold shift. Eventually, the state agreed to retain
the one-in-a-million rate.
As I described in
Water Ways last October, some key differences remain between
the state and EPA proposals. Factors used by the EPA result in more
stringent standards. The state also proposes a different approach
for PCBs, mercury and arsenic, which are not easily controlled by
regulating industrial facilities and sewage-treatment plants — the
primary point sources of pollution.
PCB standards proposed by the EPA make representatives of
industry and sewage-treatment systems very nervous. Water-quality
standards are the starting points for placing legal limits on
discharges, and EPA’s standard of 7.6 picograms per liter cannot be
attained in many cases without much higher levels of treatment,
experts say.
“Available data indicate that most state waters would not meet
the EPA proposed criteria and that most (federally permitted)
wastewater treatment plants will have to apply membrane filtration
treatment and additional treatment technologies to address PCBs,”
according to a
letter from five industrial organizations and a dozen major
businesses (PDF 3 mb).
Entities in Eastern Washington are in the midst of planning
efforts to control pollution in the Spokane River, and major sewer
upgrades are under consideration, the letter says.
“If Ecology were to follow the same approach on Puget Sound that
it has on the Spokane River, this would amount to a range of
compliance costs from nearly $6 billion to over $11 billion for
just the major permits identified by EPA,” the letter continues. “A
more stringent PCB criterion is also likely to impact how
stormwater is managed, as PCB concentrations have been detected in
stormwater throughout the state.”
For pulp and paper mills using recycled paper, the primary
source of PCBs is the ink containing the toxic compounds at
EPA-allowed concentrations, the letter says. Other major sources
are neighborhoods, where PCBs are used in construction materials,
and fish hatcheries, where PCBs come from fishmeal.
The letter points out similar problems for EPA’s proposed
mercury standard, calling the level “overly conservative and
unattainable in Washington (and the rest of the United States), as
the levels of mercury in fish are consistently higher than the
proposed criterion.”
When water-quality criteria cannot be attained for certain
chemicals using existing water-treatment technology, facilities may
be granted a variance or placed under a compliance schedule. Both
environmentalists and facility owners have expressed concern over
uncertainties about how the agencies might use these
approaches.
Despite the uncertainties, environmentalists and Indian tribes
in Washington state generally support the more stringent standards
proposed by the EPA.
“Tribes concur that water quality discharge standards are only a
part of the toxic chemical problem in the state of Washington and
that more efforts toward source control and toxic cleanup are
needed,” writes Lorraine Loomis of the
Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission. “However, the standards
are an essential anchor for determining where and how to deploy
toxic reduction efforts and monitor enforcement.”
When I said this controversy is nearly over, I was referring to
a time schedule imposed this week by U.S. District Judge Barbara
Rothstein, who ruled that the EPA missed its own deadlines for
updating water quality criteria.
Rothstein, responding to claims from five environmental groups,
imposed a new deadline based on EPA’s own suggested dates. Because
the state has finalized its rule, the EPA now has until Nov. 15 to
either approve the state’s criteria or sign a notice imposing its
own standards. Checkout the
judge’s ruling (PDF 494 kb).
The new criteria won’t have any practical effect until applied
to federal discharge permits for specific facilities or in
developing cleanup plans for specific bodies of water — although
state inspectors could use the new state criteria for enforcing
state laws if they discover illegal discharges.
A record number of sewage-treatment plants in Washington state
fully complied with state water-quality requirements in 2014, with
128 plants winning the coveted Outstanding Performance Award from
the Department of Ecology.
The number of sewage-treatment
plants recognized for meeting all water-quality requirements grew
from 14 in 1995 to 128 last year.
The awards program has reached its 20th year, and the Manchester
Wastewater Treatment Plant in South Kitsap remains ahead of the
pack. It’s the only plant with a perfect score every year since the
program began.
In the first year of Ecology’s awards program, only 14 plants
across the state were recognized as doing everything right, but
that number has grown nearly every year.
Last year, 128 winning treatment plants — more than a third of
all the plants in the state — passed every environmental test,
analyzed every required sample, turned in all reports and allowed
no permit violations.
“The talents of our professional operators are critical to
successful plant operations and protecting the health of
Washington’s waters”, said Heather Bartlett, manager of Ecology’s
Water Quality Program, in a news release. “It is
an honor to recognize their contributions with these awards.”
Kitsap County officials are rightly proud of the perfect record.
Five years ago, in an article in Treatment
Plant Operator magazine, lead operator Don Johnson said the
success of the Manchester plant could be credited to the dedicated
wastewater staff and support from all levels of county government.
Don, who retired last year, has been replaced by Ken Young.
The magazine article may tell you more than you want to know
about the design and operation of the Manchester plant. The plant
was a modern facility when Ecology’s awards program was launched 20
years ago, and it has been kept up to date through the years.
Johnson stressed that treatment-plant operators should always be
prepared for new developments.
“My advice is for them to remain adaptable and up to date,” he
said. “There are many changes in the industry, and it’s important
to pursue energy efficiency and create reusable resources.”
Reaching the 20-year mark deserves some kind of celebration for
the Manchester plant. I would suggest organized tours of the
facility, public recognition for all the plant workers through the
years and maybe a slice of cake. So far, I’m told, no specific
plans have been made.
Port Townsend’s treatment plant has had a perfect score for 19
of the 20 years, missing only 1997. Meeting the perfect standard
for 16 of the past 20 years are two plants owned by the city of
Vancouver — Marine Park and Westside.
Kitsap County’s Kingston plant has received the award for nine
straight years. The county’s Suquamish plant, which is regulated by
the Environmental Protection agency because it is on tribal land,
has met all permit requirement for 15 years straight. (EPA does not
issue awards.)
The historic town of Port Gamble is about to get a new-fangled
sewage-treatment plant, one that will allow highly treated effluent
to recharge the groundwater in North Kitsap.
The old treatment plant discharges its effluent into Hood Canal,
causing the closure of about 90 acres of shellfish beds. After the
new plant is in operation, those shellfish beds are likely to be
reopened, officials say.
The new facility will be built and operated by Kitsap Public Utility
District, which owns and manages small water systems throughout
the county. The Port Gamble plant will be the first wastewater
operation to be managed by the KPUD, which views the project as a
step toward reclaiming more of Kitsap County’s wastewater by
putting it to beneficial use, said manager Bob Hunter.
The PUD already manages the Port Gamble water system, which will
undergo a future renovation, he said. Dealing with the community’s
sewage is the next logical step.
“Nobody can do reclaimed water without the sewage-treatment part
of the equation,” Bob told me, “and it seems potentially more
efficient to have one entity do it.”
In a related development, the district is expected to ask Kitsap
County voters for authority to own the plant as well as operate it.
Under its current authority, the district can own water utilities
but not sewer utilities.
A $2-million state grant to eliminate the discharge of sewage
into Hood Canal requires that a public entity own the sewer system.
To comply with that requirement, Mason County PUD 1 will take over
ownership until Kitsap PUD obtains the needed authority, Bob
noted.
The KPUD commissioners are expected to decide on Tuesday whether
to place a measure on November’s ballot. Hunter said he doesn’t
expect opposition, but he hopes to address any concerns people may
have. The commissioners meet at 9:30 a.m. in their Poulsbo
office.
The new treatment plant will be a membrane bioreactor, a type of
filtering system capable of producing effluent close to the quality
of drinking water. The plant, which comes assembled, will treat up
to 100,000 gallons of sewage per day. That’s enough capacity to
serve the existing homes in Port Gamble. And if the town’s
redevelopment is approved
(Kitsap Sun, Jan. 24, 2013), as proposed by owner Pope
Resources, the plant could serve up to 350 homes — provided the old
sewer pipes are replaced to reduce the amount of stormwater that
leaks in.
The plant will be located on 1.3 acres near Carver Drive, south
of Highway 104. Effluent will be pumped to a new drainfield at the
top of a nearby hill. Eventually, water from the plant could be
used to irrigate forestland or else lawns and ballfields in the
town.
Construction is expected to get underway soon, with the system
operational by May of next year. The entire project, including the
treatment plant, pumping system, pipes, drainfield and site work,
is expected to cost $5 million with most of the cost paid by Pope
Resources.
The KPUD has no plans to operate other sewer systems at this
time, Hunter said, but the district hopes to be in a position to
respond to community needs, as it as done with failing water
systems. Small sewage-treatment plants could be feasible where a
lot of septic systems are failing, he noted, but state law
precludes the use of sewers in rural areas except during a health
emergency. Even then, the systems must serve only existing needs,
not future growth, he noted.
Without snowpack, Kitsap Peninsula is entirely dependent on the
amount of rain that falls on the peninsula. With limited storage,
future water supplies can be bolstered by recharging the
groundwater with high-quality sewage effluent or by using effluent
to replace drinking water used for irrigation and industrial
processes.
The Central Kitsap Wastewater Treatment Plant, which produces an
average 3.2 million gallons of water each day, is undergoing a
major upgrade to produce water that can be used for a variety of
uses in nearby Silverdale. In preparation, Silverdale Water
District has been installing a new piping network to bring the
reclaimed water into the community.
“We have been talking for a long time about getting water into
the ground instead of dumping it into Puget Sound or Hood Canal,”
said Bob Hunter. “With this project in Port Gamble, we can learn
and be prepared when other situations come along.”
Kingston’s sewage treatment plant could provide irrigation water
for the nearby White Horse Golf Course and possibly other uses
under a plan now in development.
Kitsap County commissioners recently signed a $325,000
“predesign” contract with Brown and Caldwell engineers. The firm
was hired to answer a host of questions about the feasibility of
producing high-quality effluent at the plant and then putting the
clean water to good use.
“We’re just starting to look at the whole project,” said Barbara
Zaroff of Kitsap County’s Wastewater Division. “We just had our
kickoff meeting two weeks ago, and now Brown and Caldwell will be
going out to collect data.”
I peppered Barbara with questions that she could not answer at
this point, because the detail work is yet to be done. But we know
from a previous study by
Golder Associates (PDF 18.2 mb) that producing high-quality
effluent in Kingston is more than a random thought.
Golder found benefits from using the water for supplementing
flows in nearby Grover’s Creek while recharging much-needed
groundwater in that area of the county. The Suquamish Tribe, which
owns White Horse Golf Course, has expressed interest in acquiring
the water if various issues can be resolved.
The Kingston treatment plant, completed in 2005, produces an
average of 150,000 gallons of effluent per day, currently
discharged into Appletree Cove. As population grows, the plant can
be expanded to about 300,000 gallons per day.
It appears it would be cost-effective to treat the water to
tertiary standards with sand filters, although other technologies
will be explored. A pond could be built on or near the golf course,
which would store the water for irrigation and allow infiltration
into the ground. The available water should provide the needs of
the course with plenty of water left over.
Discharging into a wetland that feeds into Grover’s Creek is
another idea, along with providing irrigation at the county’s North
Kitsap Heritage Park. Unused water might still be discharged into
Puget Sound, particularly in winter months when irrigation water is
not needed.
One question that always arises with reclaimed water is what
happens to trace amounts of chemicals that pass through the
treatment process, such as pharmaceutical drugs that mimic
hormones. We know from studies that some of these chemicals can
affect the growth, development and metabolism of fish in some
situations.
An analysis by
Golder Associates (PDF 18.2 mb) concluded that future treatment
processes in the Kingston plant would remove between 80 and 97
percent of endocrine disrupting compounds coming into the plant.
Environmental conditions where reclaimed water is discharged would
degrade the chemicals further, so the overall risk would be low for
salmon and other fish, according to the report.
The new study is expected to look further into the risks.
Meanwhile, the state Department of Ecology is continuing to work on
a new
reclaimed-water rule that could improve permitting and
monitoring by producers of reclaimed water.
The Kingston project would be similar to what is happening at
the Central Kitsap Wastewater Treatment Plant near Brownsville,
where construction is adding sand filters as part of an overall
upgrade to the plant.
Work continues at the Central
Kitsap Wastewater Treatment Plant // File photo: Kitsap Sun,
Feb. 4, 2014
The nearby Silverdale Water District has installed about 15,000
feet of “purple pipe” for reclaimed water on the major arterials of
Silverdale, including Silverdale Way. The project is part of the
water district’s major pipe-replacement project. Another 2,000 feet
will be added as part of the Bucklin Hill Bridge project, General
Manager Morgan Johnson told me.
Much of the new commercial construction in Silverdale is being
designed to use reclaimed water for irrigation, and some buildings
are being plumbed to use reclaimed water for flushing toilets and
other secondary uses. Ballfields in the area could get some of the
water.
A public-outreach program is being planned to educate the public
about reclaimed water and to answer questions that people may have.
Under the current schedule, the reclaimed-water valve would be
turned on in 2020, but that date may be pushed back, Morgan
said.
In Kingston, it will take about a year to put the information
together and identify a preferred alternative, Barbara told me.
Final engineering and design will follow under a new contract if
things go as expected.
The current contract will examine pipeline routes to convey the
water to the potential users. Costs for building and operating the
system will be explored.
Yet to be determined is how costs and benefits of the reclaimed
water will be shared between the county, which owns the treatment
facilities, and those who will use the water. That goes for both
Kingston and Central Kitsap.
Many golf courses across the country — especially in the arid
Southwest — are using reclaimed water for irrigation. In a few
places where water is in extremely short supply, water systems have
begun adding the clean effluent straight into their drinking water.
Check out reporter Emily Schmall’s story for
the Associated Press.
While water is still somewhat plentiful in the Puget Sound area,
it only makes sense to find uses for freshwater that would
otherwise be dumped into salty Puget Sound.
When I first reported that Silverdale Water District was
preparing to install a system of purple pipe for water reuse, it
seemed the district was far ahead of everyone else in Kitsap
County. Recall my story in the
Kitsap Sun March 31, 2008, and the
Water Ways entry that followed on April 2.
A new headworks at the
Central Kitsap Wastewater Treatment Plant is part of major sewer
upgrade designed to reuse the efflent.
Kitsap County commissioners started talking to Silverdale Water
District commissioners a couple months later. See
Kitsap Sun from June 2, 2008, and
Water Ways from June 3.
Now the county commissioners are about to approve a six-year
plan to design and install equipment capable of producing 3.5
million gallons of highly treated effluent every day, as I reported
in
Sunday’s Sun. That’s a lot of water, enough to irrigate
ballfields throughout Silverdale with water to spare.
Now the ball is in the court of Silverdale Water District.
District manager Morgan Johnson told me today that if the district
can be assured of getting treated effluent from the Central Kitsap
Wastewater Treatment Plant, it will move forward on building a
backbone of purple pipe right into the heart of Silverdale.
If the county commissioners on Monday approve the six-year sewer
plan and move ahead with a $41 million bond issue, it will be time
for county officials to begin negotiations with those from
Silverdale Water District. Tying up all loose ends about how much
water will be provided as well as who will pay for what will be
necessary to create one of the largest water-reuse systems in the
Puget Sound region.
Morgan Johnson told me that he was surprised at how quickly the
county commissioners embraced the notion of reusing treated
wastewater, starting with that meeting more than two years ago.
“I was surprised that they’re taking this approach as
aggressively as they are,” Morgan said. “We just need to know what
the county’s schedule is.”
The county commissioners keep saying they are quite serious
about their year-old
“Water as a Resource” policy. Every county department must
report annually about how they are advancing the effort to save and
reuse as much water as possible. In a
sidebar to my main story Sunday, commissioners Steve Bauer and
Charlotte Garrido talked about how this policy can protect the
water resource while saving the county money.
Stella Vakarcs of the Kitsap County Wastewater Utility said she
would like to hold a “water summit” that would bring water and
wastewater officials together to discuss the future of the
effluent.
In addition to the CK plant, county officials are considering
uses for treated effluent from the county’s plant in Kingston.
Meanwhile, officials with West Sound Utility District, which
already produces high-quality effluent near Port Orchard, are
getting ready to use that water for irrigation.
It will take about a year to design the upgrades at the CK
plant. Construction is planned to begin in the summer of 2012, and
the system should be completed about 2016.
If things go well, the purple pipes could be in the ground by
then and ready to be charged with reused water.
