U.S. scientists detected mercury contamination in every fish sampled in 291 streams across the country, according to a U.S. Geological Survey study released today.  About a quarter of these fish were found to contain mercury at levels exceeding the criterion for the protection of people who consume average amounts of fish, established by U.S. EPA. More than two-thirds of the fish exceeded the U.S. EPA level of concern for fish-eating mammals.

Some of the highest levels of mercury in fish were found in the tea-colored or “blackwater” streams in North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Louisiana — areas associated with relatively undeveloped forested watersheds containing abundant wetlands compared to the rest of the country.

High levels of mercury in fish also were found in relatively undeveloped watersheds in the Northeast and the Upper Midwest. Elevated levels are noted in areas of the Western United States affected by mining. Complete findings of the USGS report, as well as additional detailed studies in selected streams, are available online.

For a national listing of fish advisories from U.S. EPA, click here.

Mercury, a neurotoxin, is one of the most serious contaminants threatening our nation’s waters. The main source of mercury to natural waters is mercury that is emitted to the atmosphere and deposited onto watersheds by precipitation. However, atmospheric mercury alone does not explain contamination in fish in our nation’s streams.

Naturally occurring watershed features, like wetlands and forests, can enhance the conversion of mercury to the toxic form, methylmercury. Methylmercury is readily taken up by aquatic organisms, resulting in contamination in fish.  USGS studied mercury contamination in fish, bed sediment and water from 291 streams across the nation, sampled from 1998 to 2005.

Atmospheric mercury is the main source to most of these streams — coal-fired power plants are the largest source of mercury emissions in the United States — but 59 of the streams also were potentially affected by gold and mercury mining. Since USGS studies targeted specific sites and fish species, the findings may not be representative of mercury levels in all types of freshwater environments across the United States.

All 50 states have mercury monitoring programs, and 48 states issued fish-consumption advisories for mercury in 2006, the most recent year of national-scale reporting to the EPA. The EPA regulates mercury emissions to air, land and water. In February 2009, the EPA announced that it intends to control air emissions of mercury from coal-fired power plants by issuing a rule under the Clean Air Act.

After EPA’s announcement that it was concerned about the adverse water quality impacts from mountain top mining, the agency faced a firestorm of criticism from industry and elected officals.  EPA then issued this clarification:

The Environmental Protection Agency is not halting, holding or placing a moratorium on any of the mining permit applications. Plain and simple. EPA has issued comments on two pending permit applications to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers expressing serious concerns about the need to reduce the potential harmful impacts on water quality. EPA will take a close look at other permits that have been held back because of the 4th Circuit litigation. We fully anticipate that the bulk of these pending permit applications will not raise environmental concerns. In cases where a permit does raise environmental concerns, we will work expeditiously with the Army Corps of Engineers to determine how these concerns can be addressed. EPA’s submission of comments to the Corps on draft permits is a well-established procedure under the Clean Water Act to assure that environmental considerations are addressed in the permitting process.

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection issued an administrative order to PPG Industries, requiring it to collect and treat contaminated water discharging unabated from the site containing decades-old waste from its former Ford City plant, and to restrict access to the site and to the section of the Allegheny River impacted by the discharge. DEP staff was contacted by Allegheny River Stewards to discuss the results of analytical field tests showed that the discharge from PPG dump site was raising the pH of the Allegheny River to unacceptably high levels.

The Allegheny River flows into the Ohio River.  The Ohio River supplies drinking water to many Kentucky residents, including almost all of those living in Northern Kentucky.

The PPG

PPG's old dump site is discharging alkaline wastewater into Allegheny River in Pennsylvania.

EPA announced groundbreaking for a water treatment facility that will remove perchlorate and other chemicals from groundwater near NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Superfund site.  Approximately 7,000 gallons per minute of perchlorate and volatile organic compounds will be removed from groundwater wells.  The treated groundwater will serve as drinking water for area residents. 

This move is quite a turnabout for NASA.  Three years ago, NASA released a study which concluded that the dumping of rocket fuel by the US Army some 50 years ago at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) did not cause pollution now making much of the city’s groundwater undrinkable.  Apparently NASA’s earlier study was somewhat erroneous because NASA is funding construction and operating costs of the treatment plant which NASA hopes to complete by 2010. The City of Pasadena will own and operate the plant

Approximately 120,840 people live within four miles of the site, and an estimated 68,000 people obtain drinking water from municipal wells within that area. Surrounding Pasadena water wells have been shut down due to perchlorate and volatile organic compounds contamination.

Perchlorate is a component of solid rocket fuel and certain types of fertilizers, and can affect the thyroid gland. Volatile organic compounds are used decades as industrial cleaning solvents, and can cause nose and throat discomfort, headache, allergic skin reaction, and liver, kidney, and central nervous system damage.

Perchlorate, a rocket fuel component pollutes nine of Pasadena’s 16 underground drinking wells, can affect function of the hormone-producing thyroid gland — important for a healthy metabolism in adults and essential to skeletal and nervous system development in infants and fetuses.

Ancient groundwater being tapped by the Country of Jordan, one of the 10 most water-deprived nations in the world, has been found to contain 20 times the radiation considered safe for drinking water in a new study by an international team of researchers.  The radioactivity is primarily due to 228 radium and 226 radium – the two long-lived isotopes of radium.  The scholarly paper is published in a peer-reviewed journal, Environmental Science & Technology.

The paper is online at http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es802969r.

Water experts say the minimum needed to meet the basic human needs of drinking, cooking and hygiene is 20 liters (five gallons) of clean water per person per day. It’s far from enough to ensure health and well-being-just enough to get by. For comparison, that’s about the contents of an average water cooler.

Yet even that that amount would seem like an abundance to the many people on Earth living under conditions of extreme water scarcity. Those people routinely have less than five liters (1.3 gallons) a day available for use. How much is that? Less than one flush of a low-flush toilet.  Let’s hope scientists can find a solution to this vexing problem.

Kentucky’s Department for Environmental Protection (DEP) has lifted the drinking water consumer advisory issued Feb. 16 for Letcher County. Laboratory analysis of water samples taken last week at the Whitesburg drinking water treatment plant and in the Whitesburg and Letcher County distribution systems confirm that the water is safe. 

Laboratory results indicated there were no measurable levels of diesel fuel in the water produced by the plant. The produced water has been cleared for drinking and all other uses. The advisory was put into place Feb. 16 due to diesel oil seeping into the North Fork of the Kentucky River from a site approximately four miles above the plant’s raw water intake. The Kentucky Environmental Response Team was activated to respond to the emergency.

Immediately after the spill, samples were taken from the river confirmed the presence of excessive levels of diesel fuel. Water that contains diesel fuel can be harmful if it is consumed, inhaled or comes into contact with the skin and eyes.

While water use resumes and is safe, consumers are still advised to flush pipes for 10 minutes if they detect an unusual odor to the water. If the odor persists, they should contact their water company for assistance. As a precaution, food and drinks prepared with water produced prior to the consumer advisory being issued should be discarded.

Cleanup activities at the site of the diesel fuel seepage are continuing and an investigation is underway. Test sampling will continue daily at the treatment plant and at numerous points in the river until remediation of the spill site is complete.

Public notices of Kentucky Division of Water (DOW) agency actions are now available for review on the DOW Web site at www.water.ky.gov. This tool is designed to facilitate public participation and provide easier access to documents.

Kentucky Division of Water is required to provide public notice of certain agency actions such as individual NPDES (National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System) draft discharge permits, general permit letters of coverage, total maximum daily load calculations, water quality certifications and other actions.

The proposed agency actions have historically been advertised through a notice published in local newspapers. The notices advise readers how to reach DOW to obtain copies of the application, fact sheets, draft permits and other related documents.

The Kentucky Division of Water cited Mr. Don Childers, the owner of Childers Oil Inc. in Whitesburg, Kentucky after state investigators found oil seeping from a plastic-lined pit on his property into the North Fork of the Kentucky River, about a mile from the Whitesburg water plant’s intake.  According to the state regulatory agency, the company put down a sheet of plastic at a construction site located off of U.S. 119 South, and then dumped an oily waste sludge on top of the plastic sheet.  To little surprise, the oil quickly ate through the plastic sheet and the oily sludge migrated into the Kentucky River.

The state charged Mr. Childers with multiple violations of the Clean Water Act, including degradation of the river, failure to obtain a pollutant discharge permit, unauthorized release of a petroleum product into waters, disposal of waste at an unpermitted facility, failure to notify officials of a petroleum release and endangering the public welfare.  State officials will set up a meeting with Mr. Childers to find out why the contamination occurred.

Officials discovered the mess after residents called on November 1 to complain that their drinking water smelled like gasoline.  State and local officials quickly shut down and then cleaned the Whitesburg water plant, which serves about 2,000 residents throughout Letcher County.

At the site of the oily discharge, state inspectors dug a trench to keep the oily waste from flowing into the river and removed soil contaminated with the waste.  Because of the oil, the state issued a drinking water advisory warning residents not to consume the water or use it for anything other than flushing toilets.  The state lifted the ban on November 6.

To absolutely no surprise to anyone watching the final days of the Bush Administration wind to a conclusion, EPA made a preliminary determination for perchlorate in accordance with the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA). The federal agency determined that a national primary drinking water regulation (NPDWR) for perchlorate would not present “a meaningful opportunity for health risk reduction for persons served by public water systems.”

The SDWA requires EPA to make determinations every five years of whether to regulate at least five contaminants on the Contaminant Candidate List (CCL). EPA included perchlorate on the first and second CCLs that were published in the Federal Register on March 2, 1998 and February 24, 2005. Most recently, EPA presented final regulatory determinations regarding 11 contaminants on the second CCL in a notice published in the Federal Register on July 30, 2008.

EPA will make a final regulatory determination for perchlorate after considering comments and information provided in the 30-day comment period following this notice. EPA plans to publish a health advisory for perchlorate at the time the Agency publishes its final regulatory determination to provide State and local public health officials with technical information that they may use in addressing local contamination.

DATES: Comments must be received on or before November 10, 2008.

ADDRESSES: Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OW- 2008-0068, by one of the following methods:

    • www.regulations.gov: Follow the on-line instructions for submitting comments.

    • Mail: Water Docket, Environmental Protection Agency, Mailcode: 2822T, 1200 Pennsylvania Ave.,   NW., Washington, DC 20460.

    • Hand Delivery: Water Docket, EPA Docket Center (EPA/DC) EPA West, Room 3334, 1301 Constitution Ave., NW., Washington, DC.  Such deliveries are only accepted during the Docket’s normal hours of

operation, and special arrangements should be made for deliveries of boxed information.

Direct your comments to Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OW-2008- 0068. EPA’s policy is that all comments received will be included in the public docket without change and may be made available online at www.regulations.gov, including any personal information provided, unless the comment includes information claimed to be Confidential Business Information (CBI) or other information whose disclosure is restricted by statute. Do not submit information that you consider to be CBI or otherwise protected through www.regulations.gov or e-mail. The www.regulations.gov Web site is an “anonymous access” system, which means EPA will not know your identity or contact information unless you provide it in the body of your comment.

If you send an e-mail comment directly to EPA without going through www.regulations.gov your e-mail address will be automatically captured and included as part of the comment that is placed in the public docket and made available on the Internet. If you submit an electronic comment, EPA recommends that you include your name and other contact information in the body of your comment and with any disk or CD-ROM you submit. If EPA cannot read your comment due to technical difficulties and cannot contact you for clarification, EPA may not be able to consider your comment.  

Let me see if I can accurately predict the future on this issue.  EPA will fast track this Bush agency decision before the upcoming change of a Democratic administration.  In the meantime, a national environmental group will challenge this decision in federal court and eventually obtain a decision that EPA’s determination not to regulate perchlorate was without a sound scientific basis and contrary to the plain meaning of the Safe Drinking Water Act.  The court will remand the matter back to EPA.  In the meantime, the members of the public will consume several additional years of perchlorate contaminated drinking water before EPA has an amended regulation adding perchlorate as a regulated contaminant under the Safe Drinking Water Act. 

In another wild-ass-guess, I also see U.S. EPA Administrator, Stephen Johnson, going to work for the API, as a lobbiest, or a large lawfirm in Washington D.C. that represents industrial clients in regulatory matters pending before U.S. EPA.  Does the old revolving door sound familiar to anyone else?

U.S. EPA currently regulates more than 90 contaminants in our public drinking water supply. The Safe Drinking Water Act (“SDWA”) includes a process that EPA must follow to identify and list unregulated contaminants which may also require regulation.  By law, EPA must periodically publish a list of new list of potential contaminants and decide whether to regulate them under the SDWA. This list is called the Contaminant Candidate List (“CCL”).  If EPA selects a contaminant from the CCL, EPA will publish a National Primary Drinking Water Regulation to control the contaminant in our public drinking water supply.

EPA published its second CCL (CCL 2) in 2005. In May 2007, EPA published a Federal Register notice announcing and requesting comment on its preliminary determinations for 11 of the 51 CCL 2 contaminants. This month, EPA announced its final determination not to regulate 11 contaminants on the second drinking water contaminant candidate list (CCL 2).

EPA concluded that these 11 contaminants do not occur nationally in public water systems, or occur at levels below a public health concern.  The 11 contaminants include naturally occurring substances, pesticides, herbicides, and chemicals used (or once used) in manufacturing. While none of the contaminants were found nationally at levels of public health concern in public water systems, EPA is updating health advisories for seven of the contaminants to provide current health information to local officials for situations where the contaminants are present.

After a lot of review and study, here is what EPA decided for the 11 potential candidates.  EPA is updating health advisories for boron; dacthal mono- and di-acid degradates;1,3-dichloropropene (Telone); 2,4-dinitrotoluene, and 2,6-dinitrotoluene; and 1,1,2,2-tetrachloroethane.

EPA has determined that updated or new health advisories are not needed for 1-dichloro-2,2-bis(p-chlorophenyl) ethylene (DDE); s-ethyl propyl thiocarbamate (EPTC); Fonofos; and Terbacil because the national monitoring data showed almost no occurrence at levels of public health concern.

For more information go to:  http://www.epa.gov/safewater/ccl/reg_determine2.html.