The District
of Columbia

My name is John Finney and I come before you wearing two hats – one as representative from Advisory Neighborhood Commission 3D, an elected body that represents the northwest quadrant of our city nearest the Washington Aqueduct Water Treatment plant. The other as co-chair of CRUDD. I gather that some view CRUDD as a socially selfish, primordial vertebrate that spawns in the sewers of Georgetown. Le me assure you that is not the case. CRUDD is a coalition of neighborhood groups far removed from Georgetown. Its acronym stands for Coalition for Responsible Urban Disposal at Dalecarlia, and it was formed,-- could it be ten years ago?– when neighbors feared that EPA would force Dalecarlia to erect a noisy centrifuge and truck the dewatered sediment through our residential streets , polluting our air with diesel fume and lowering our quality of life. The same fear, reawakened by what I regard as a Draconian order by EPA, leads to my testimony this evening.

Let me first question the necessity for this proposed permit allowing no-discharges and whether it has a sound scientific justification. As you know, The National Environmental Policy Act–or NEPA–is our national charter for protection of the environment and establishes procedures for assessing environmental information. It specifies that scientific information used in making NEPA decisions must be of “ high quality” and reflect scientific and professional integrity. I have searched these documents in vain for the new scientific evidence that dictates a cut off of discharges by Dalecarlia. Indeed, on page four of 23 it approvingly quotes the results of two scientific studies that show that the aluminum bearing sediment “is neither acutely nor chronically toxic to fish” except perhaps on new born fish during the spring spawning season, and even that has not been proven..

So if the proposed stringent EPA permit does not rest on “high quality” scientific evidence, it must have some other basis, some other motive. I suspect the motive is political, and the basis a bureaucratic desire by the regional office of EPA to impose its will to achieve a satisfying uniformity among water treatment plants in the eastern region. The regional office of EPA has been taking political heat from conservatives, accused of showing favoritism to those east-coast liberals who drink the Aqueduct’s water and in the process endangering the snubnosed sutrgeon that has become our Loch Ness Monster which we stand on Chain Bridge seeking to spot as it swims up the swift waters to spawn. The sightings are so few as to be apocryphal but the fish still has entered the justification for the new permit. When the principal author of the permit was asked whether there was any evidence the sturgeon was present much less spawned in the stretches of the Potomac around Chain Bridge, she replied a fisherman had reported catching a snubnose sutrgeon near Fletcher’s Boat House. So the hearsay evidence for the permit rests in part on a fisherman’s tale.

Without directly saying so, the proposed EPA permit would bring an end to any discharge of sediments by setting standards, such as 30 milligrams of solids per liter, that would make it impossible for the Aqueduct to discharge the sediments except by diluting them with one quarter of its water supply, which even EPA would acknowledge would not meet its Standard for Good Management Practices. As for the permit’s requirement that 85 percent of the sediments be removed in water drawn from the Dalecarlia Reservoir, I don’t know how that could be accomplished except by a huge, costly centrifuge built on Aqueduct property and whirring away night and day in a residential neighborhood.

Now that EPA ha ruled no discharges, there is an disturbing urgency in its implementation of the new policy. The permit states it shall go into effect one month after its issuance by EPA, which it expects will be around the first of March. If carried out literally, that would mean 1 million residents in the Washington Metropolitan area would have their water cut off on March 1. But EPA appreciates that would be undesirable, so it specifies that the Aqueduct must comply with the permit by developing plans and building the plant for processing the sediments within four or five years. In its initial version of the permit, EPA had proposed that plans for processing the sediments be com-pleted within five years. Without any explanation from EPA, the revised permit before us demands that the processing method be in operation within four or five years.

There is a sense of urgency here that I find disturbing. As we all know from personal observations, four or five years is a short time for a government agency to come up with plans and then translates them into a working operation. Given this time pressure, my fear is that the Army Engineers will grab an existing plan off the shelf and build a multi-million centrifuge in the back pasture overlooking Brookmont and then truck the dehydrated sediments thought the residential streets of Northwest Washington and nearby Maryland.

Has EPA considered the environmental impact of such trucking upon those residential neighborhoods bordering the truck routes? No it has not and deliberately so. The EPA regional office on watersheds says it concern is limited to the Clean Water Act and it is up to other to consider the impact under, say, the Clean Air Act. What a bureacratic view of responsibilities. Furthermore, I would suggest the Philadelphia regional office of EPA is violating the spirits of NEPA, which has twin aims. The first aim, as defined in the case of Baltimore Gas and Electric versus Natural Resources Defense Council (462 U.S. 87,97 I983) is to place upon government agencies an obligation to consider every significant aspect of the environmental impact of a proposed action. And secondly NEPA requires that agencies will inform the public that they have thoroughly considered environmental concerns in the decision making process.

I would argue that the Philadelphia regional office of EPA has met neither of these aims in prposing this draconian permit and thus has violated the spirit, if not specific provisions of the National Environmental Policy Act.

Nor has EPA, in its zeal for uniformity, considered the costs that would be incurred in meeting its non-discharge standards. They would run into tens of million, perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars. For example, five or ten years ago, when thought was being given to centrifuge and trucking, the Aqueduct estimated the centrifuge would cost $60 million, not including operating costs. The cost is surely higher by now, as would be the costs for other alternatives being suggested, such as laying large new pipes that would pump the sediments for treatment to Blue Plains or water systems in Arlington or Fairfax county.

Does EPA in presenting the proposed permit consider who would pay the costs. No. And who would pay? Not the Army Engineers, nor the federal government. There is not a separate item in the federal budget for operating the Dalecarlia Water Treatment Facility. Rather the Army engineers depend upon their water authority partners for paying the operating costs. So the cost would be paid by the 1 million persons in the District, Falls Chruch and Arlington County in the fees they pay for the water, processed by the Aqueduct Authority and distributed by its wholesale partners, such as water authorities in the District, Arlington and Falls Church. The water fees, which in a way are taxes, would increase significantly for 1 million taxpayers within the Beltway to pay for the no-flushing edict of the EPA. What a delicious political irony. Here we have a conservative administration determined to cut taxes, and within its ranks is a maverick agency intent on increasing taxes of 1 million Washingtonians to please both its conservative and liberal special interest audiences.

And what is even more outrageous, EPA is proposing that Army Engineers finance eight research projects proposed by such agencies as the Fish and Wildife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service. The most egregious of these research projects, proposed by National Marine Fisheries Service, would require the Army Engineers to conduct a genetic study to determine if the shortnose sturgeon in the Potomac River are genetically identical to those found in the Chesapeake Bay and the Delaware River. What we are seeing is federal wildlife agencies venting some of their hostility by seeking to foist off on the Army Engineers projects they should pay out of their own budget. Perhaps in their greed these federal agencies did not know that the research projects would be paid for not by the Army Engineers but by the citizens of the District, Arlington County and Falls Church. But the regional office of EPA certainly knew that fact and it is illustrative of its cavalier attitude toward the water customers that it should blithely slip these research projects into its proposed permit. Shame on you, EPA! The very least you can do is to strip those research projects from your proposed permit.

And what else should EPA do? Of course, I would suggest it withdraw the permit until it can find scientific evidence to justify an end of the flushing of sediments into the Potomac. I would also suggest that before it issues a no-flushing permit, it determines whether other means for disposing of the sediments might have adverse environmental impact upon humans. I would also urge that EPA relax its stringent deadline, lest it drive the Aqueduct and the water authorities into adopting a disposal method, such as trucking, that would have a harmful impact upon our neighborhoods in Northwest Washington.

Before EPA issues a permit, I would suggest it follow the guidlelines contained in the National Environmental Policy act for making environmental decisions. The NEPA law specifies that the public officials “make decisions that are based on understanding of environmental consequences...” I don’t think EPA has met that guideline. The NEPA law specifies that federal agencies “shall utilize a systematic, interdisciplinary approach which will insure the integrated use of the natural and social sciences and the environmental design arts in planning and in decision-making which may have an impact on man’s environment.” I don’t think EPA has met that criteria in this case. The NEPA law specifies that agencies “shall identify and develop methods and procedures...which will insure that presently unquantified environmental amenities and values may be given appropriate consideration in decision-making along with economic and technical considerations.” If EPA has developed such methods and procedures, I don’t think it has applied them in this case.

What I fear is that if EPA proceeds with this permit, it will commit an irreversible act which may have unintended, unforeseen consequences. Far better that it follow the guidelines of NEPA, our national charter for protection of the environment, and determine first whether environmentally sound ways can be established for disposing of the sediments before ordering a stop to the flushing. It might even discover that controlled flushing is the best, least costly way of resolving an issue it created.

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