State representative John H. Wills talks about water quality efforts in Spirit Lake in May 2016. The Register
(Photo: Zach Boyden-Holmes/The Register)
How much money is too much to cut water pollution?
Donnelle Eller, deller@dmreg.com 7:38 p.m. CDT June 27, 2016
Water quality efforts in Spirit Lake
In the past five years, Clarion residents' water and sewer bills have more than doubled, thanks to $6.8 million in upgrades at the north Iowa town's wastewater treatment plant.
Dustin Rief, the city administrator, said it has been tough for the town's 2,850 residents. Almost 15 percent struggle with paying their bills on time.
But a recent judge's ruling says Clarion and other Iowa communities potentially should pay even more to protect the environment as they make changes to their wastewater treatment.
A district court judge ruled in March that the state of Iowa and Clarion failed to adequately weigh the environmental benefits that would have come if the city had spent an additional $3.2 million over two decades to remove nitrogen and phosphorus pollution.
Clarion's wastewater discharge eventually makes its way into the Des Moines River, one of two sources of drinking water for the Des Moines metro area's 500,000 residents.
"We have an urgent issue with water quality that's connected to nutrient pollution," said Susan Heathcote, water program director at the Iowa Environmental Council, which challenged Clarion's wastewater treatment permit.
Rief said Clarion's residents are already investing heavily to improve water quality and shouldn't be asked to carry more costs. "Our citizens can’t afford" a nearly 50 percent increase in the treatment plant’s costs, he said.
Opponents want rules change
Iowa businesses, cities and towns have responded quickly to the March court ruling, asking the Iowa Environmental Protection Commission to change the state's rules, capping wastewater plant cost increases linked to environmental benefits at 115 percent of base costs, already an informal guideline.
Otherwise, the groups say, they could face "excessive, burdensome costs." A public hearing is scheduled on the proposed rule Wednesday in Des Moines.
"How much do you force people to spend to get pollution reductions," said Tim Whipple, an attorney at the Iowa Association of Municipal Utilities, a group representing about 540 cities with electric, gas, water and other utilities. "There's a point of diminished returns, where you can keep adding millions and millions in additional costs for smaller and smaller benefits."
The opposition to the court ruling raises concerns about the state's commitment to improving water quality, said Josh Mandelbaum, who brought the lawsuit against the Iowa Department of Natural Resources on behalf of the Iowa Environmental Council.
The proposed rule "clearly undermines the Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy," said Mandelbaum, an Environmental Law & Policy Center attorney. The voluntary strategy guides the state’s approach to cutting nitrogen and phosphorus pollution that can choke Iowa waterways.
"We face record numbers of beach warnings and drinking water challenges to dozens of communities," Mandelbaum said. "Changing the standard to remove consideration of environmental benefits is … a large step backward."
Pollution vs. development
In 2015, Mandelbaum filed a lawsuit claiming that the Iowa Department of Natural Resources failed to properly apply the federal anti-degradation law when it issued a permit for Clarion.
The law requires cities, towns and businesses that are expanding their wastewater treatment operations to protect existing water quality by preventing new pollution unless “allowing lower water quality is necessary to accommodate important economic or social development in the area.”
Cities, towns and businesses that increase their pollution discharges are required to weigh "non-degrading or less-degrading options," Mandelbaum said in his lawsuit.
But the state failed to require cities to weigh the environmental benefits when looking at those options.
"The comparison was simply on a cost basis, saying well, if it's more than 115 percent, you don’t have to implement it," Mandelbaum said. "They weren’t looking at the environmental benefit."
Jon Tack, the DNR's water quality chief, said the state doesn't know how it would "assign a value to environmental benefits." That uncertainty, he said, trickles over into enforcement.
"It’s easy to quantify the costs side," Whipple said. "We know the financing costs, the technology, engineering, consulting. But how do you objectively quantify the environmental benefit? And then, what's reasonable" when a city or town looks at weighing whether to pay for it?
What's a reasonable cost?
Heathcote, the Iowa Environmental Council's water leader, finds it difficult to believe that the state agency is unable to assess a plant's environmental benefits.
"They said, 'Tell us how you think we should do this.' This is the Department of Natural Resources asking us how to weigh environmental benefits versus costs. They do that all the time," she said.
“We recognize it’s somewhat subjective as to what’s an environmental benefit, and what’s a reasonable cost to bear in order to achieve that benefit,” Heathcote said. But that's the kind of analysis the state needs to develop, she said.
Heathcote disputes whether Clarion is truly unable to afford providing the additional environmental benefit.
Clarion’s cost would have been 143 percent above the plant’s base costs to meet pollution standards, well beyond the state's 115 percent guideline. Most of that added cost is annual operational expenses.
Heathcote said the state asks cities and towns to go through an affordability test, and Clarion's assessment showed that taxpayers could afford it. Moreover, Heathcote said, the environmental assessment is triggered only when a community is expanding.
"We’re not looking at some small town in rural Iowa that’s losing population, that’s struggling just to get by," she said. Otherwise, "they wouldn’t be expanding their discharge."
Clarion's wastewater upgrades
The DNR's Tack said Clarion was required to upgrade its wastewater treatment facility to meet stricter standards for ammonia nitrogen, which is harmful to aquatic life, and E. coli, a bacteria that's harmful to humans.
Part of that assessment required Clarion to design a plant that could handle growth over the next 20 years. With the upgrade, Clarion’s plant will be considered a major facility, pumping 1 million gallons or more of waste a day.
Clarion would need to grow considerably before it would increase the amount of pollutants entering Iowa's waterways, experts say.
The town has lost about 7 percent of its population since 2010, despite having some strong companies such as Hagie Manufacturing, which makes high-clearance sprayers.
"We're like most rural towns," Rief said. "We've got an aging population. It's hard to get young people to come back after they leave for college.
"We'd like to grow, but we'd at least like to stop the bleeding."
Who should pay?
The court ruling — and proposed rule change — has renewed the debate on who should pay how much to clean up the state's water: "point-source" polluters such as cities and businesses, or nonpoint-source polluters such as farmers and livestock operators who struggle with nutrient losses from fields and feedlots.
Des Moines Water Works brought the debate to a boil last year when it sued drainage districts in three north Iowa counties, saying that underground field tiles act as a conduit, funneling high nitrate levels into the Raccoon River, the city's other source of drinking water. It seeks federal oversight of rural drainage districts and, indirectly, farmers.
Mandelbaum and Heathcote say the proposed rule change weakens the state's ability to cut nitrogen and phosphorus losses from urban and rural areas by 45 percent, as outlined in Iowa's voluntary Nutrient Reduction Strategy.
"The state has major nutrient pollution problems," Mandelbaum said. "It has a whole strategy devoted to reducing nutrient pollution.
"So maybe that's an indicator that there's a high environmental benefit" to asking cities, towns and businesses to spend a little more to cut that pollution, he said.
But Whipple said the amount of nitrogen and phosphorus that a small community such as Clarion would remove through added treatment is “a drop in the bucket” compared with agriculture’s impact.
Ninety-two percent of nitrogen and 80 percent of phosphorus losses comes from nonpoint sources, according to the nutrient reduction strategy.
"Say a small community does take out nitrogen and phosphorus. It's not going to have the kind of impact we need," Whipple said.
“That’s $3 million for no discernible benefit," he said. "There’s a real-world impact for ratepayers in Clarion who have to pay for that infrastructure."
Heathcote said the state’s nutrient reduction strategy asks cities, businesses, farmers and homeowners to all share the burden for making improvements.
“All of them could make that same argument … ‘I shouldn’t have to do anything, make someone else do it,’” Heathcote said. With that approach, “we’d never make any progress on this issue.”
Progress takes money
Adam Schnieders, the DNR's water quality coordinator, said the state estimates that it would cost Iowa cities, towns and businesses $1 billion to meet stricter 2006 water quality standards that are expected to improve Iowa's rivers and streams. And it will cost $1.5 billion more for towns and cities to incorporate the nitrogen and phosphorus goals outlined in the Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy.
The strategy also outlines conservation practices that farmers should take to cut phosphorus and nitrogen levels that contribute to the Gulf of Mexico's dead zone, an area about the size of Connecticut that's unable to support aquatic life each summer.
Farmers, ag groups and businesses, and the state are investing millions of dollars in several initiatives to cut nutrient losses.
Schnieders said the proposed change to the anti-degradation rule doesn't change the state's commitment to the Iowa Nutrient Strategy. Nearly 150 cities, towns and businesses are targeted to cut nitrogen and phosphorus losses from their wastewater plants over time.
Clarion is among them. Tack said the north Iowa community will be required to look at adding phosphorus and nitrogen removal with its next permit.
"It's a question of when, not if," Tack said.
And Tack and Schnieders said several cities are adding nutrient reduction along with meeting stricter discharge standards. Among them is Clinton, Grinnell and Orange City.
"It takes many years for these things to take place, just like it's taking many years to get the ammonia and disinfection equipment in plants,” Schnieders said.
Rules hearing
There will be a public hearing at 1 p.m. Wednesday in conference room 2 North, second floor, of the Wallace State Office Building, 502 E. 9th St., Des Moines. Public comments will be accepted through that date.