Clean Water Blog

Building on our 2011 Strategic Agenda, EPA’s Green Infrastructure Program is pleased to unveil our new website and to announce the availability of technical assistance to 10-20 partner communities.

Our new website repackages and expands upon our previous website to showcase EPA’s research on green infrastructure and to serve as a gateway to the wealth of resources developed by governmental agencies, academia, non-profits, and the private sector. Stakeholders will be able to consult our website for up-to-date information on green infrastructure publications, tools, and opportunities.

The first opportunity we are announcing through our website is the availability of direct assistance from EPA to facilitate the use of green infrastructure to protect water quality. Technical assistance will be provided through EPA contract support, and will be directed to watersheds/sewersheds with significant water quality degradation associated with urban stormwater. The total EPA assistance available is approximately $950,000, and will be distributed among 10-20 projects. The value of the assistance available to each project will be approximately $50,000 - $100,000. Letters of interest must be received by April 6, 2012.

http://water.epa.gov/infrastructure/greeninfrastructure/index.cfm#tabs-1
http://water.epa.gov/infrastructure/greeninfrastructure/gi_support.cfm#CommunityPartnerships

Source: US EPA

In an interesting and insightful piece in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal, David Owen laments that sometimes “it’s too easy being green.” In his commentary, Owen identifies a trend that I’ve seen played out time and again—the belief that “switching to an ostensibly more benign form of consumption turns consumption itself into a boon for the environment.” In other words “the Prius Fallacy.”

Owen’s examples of the Prius Fallacy in action—buying a new, more fuel-efficient vehicle, replacing a kitchen counter with a “greener” option, eating locally grown produce—remind me of one the simplest energy-saving tips I’ve ever heard: turn off the lights. In the end, buying a more efficient light bulb is not the solution—particularly if consumers use the increased efficiency as an excuse to sustain (or even increase) their current energy usage. Owen points to transcontinental travel as another example—“the environmental problem with modern flying isn’t that our airplanes are wasteful; it is that we have made flying so efficient;” and, thereby, made it much easier for folks to hop on that plane.

The solution is to increase awareness of the impact of our decisions and to move beyond the hype of living “green.” For example, what does have a larger impact on the environment, an old clunker—whose parts and labor have already been absorbed back into the community—or the shiny new hybrid, with high-tech components whose origins begin a continent away. Whether we’re talking about carbon footprints or water footprints, or some ethereal ideal we identify as “sustainability,” the truth is that our actions and purchases carry with them all of the resources—including energy, water, and GHG emissions—that went into their creation.

As Owens sums up, “we may believe that we care about the world’s deepening environmental challenges and are merely waiting for scientists, environmentalists, politicians, and others to come to their senses and implement effective solutions. But we already know more than enough, and we have for a long time. We just don’t like the answers.

To read the full article visit the Wall Street Journal:  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203889904577198922867850002.html

The Stearns County pharmaceutical drop boxes proved to be a successful way to manage unused drugs.  During the first 8 months that the drop boxes were up and running in 2011 the County collected 1513 POUNDS of pharmaceutical waste.   

Before this service was offered, all unused drugs were flushed down the toilet or tossed in the trash showing up in local waterways and groundwater.  These drop boxes don’t collect all of the waste, but it is a step in the right direction.   

Please help spread the word on this great new service and keep our waters safe.   

Drop Box Locations:

http://www.co.stearns.mn.us/LawPublicSafety/CommunityOutreach/MedicationDropBox

Or,is it a Green Event?

The Super Bowl which was incredibly exciting this year is over and a winner has been determined. But when your in the garbage business like me its always interesting to find out much additional trash a large event generates.

Most of you are are thinking that your alot more interested in the commercials, food and the actual football game; than the garbage. (I used to be the same way).

I find these tidbits to be very interesting: 400 additional trash containers were added and it is estimated that 500 tons of garbage was collected. A normal Colts game generates about 20 tons. The 2012 NFL Super Bowl Committee takes this very seriously and to be considered a success, half of the garbage must go to recycling centers.

After 18 years the NFL Environmental Program believes that Super Bowl XLVI was the greenest yet. 1,700 trees will also be planted in urban Indianapolis. Once these trees mature they will produce enough oxygen each month to sustain all 70,000 fans in Lucas Oil Stadium!

Information provided by Stearns Co. Household Hazardous Waste

EPA Releases New Tool with Information about Water Pollution Across the United States

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced the release of a new tool that provides the public with important information about pollutants that are released into local waterways. Developed under President Obama’s transparency initiative, the Discharge Monitoring Report (DMR) Pollutant Loading Tool brings together millions of records and allows for easy searching and mapping of water pollution by local area, watershed, company, industry sector, and pollutant. Americans can use this new tool to protect their health and the health of their communities.

“Transparency leads to greater accountability and better information about pollution in our nation’s communities,” said Cynthia Giles, assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance. “By making the data we collect available in easy to use tools, we are keeping Americans informed about the health of the environment in their neighborhoods.”

Searches using the DMR Pollutant Loading Tool result in “top ten” lists to help users easily identify facilities and industries that are discharging the most pollution and impacted waterbodies. When discharges are above permitted levels, users can view the violations and link to details about enforcement actions that EPA and states have taken to address these violations.

Facilities releasing water pollution directly into our nation’s waterways, such as wastewater treatment plants or industrial manufacturers, must receive a permit to discharge under the Clean Water Act. Each permit sets specific limits for how much can be discharged. It also requires the permittee to frequently sample their wastewater discharges and report the data to their state or EPA permitting authority.

A link to the new tool can be found on EPA’s Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO) website, which provides information about inspections, facility compliance, and state and federal enforcement actions. EPA has also released several new ECHO features, including a search for criminal enforcement cases and web developer tools that make it easy to tap into ECHO reports and maps.

DMR Pollutant Loading Tool: http://www.epa.gov/pollutantdischarges

ECHO: http://www.epa-echo.gov/echo

More information about new features in ECHO: http://www.epa-echo.gov/echo/recent_additions.html

Collectively, America’s 78.2 million dogs generate 10.7 million tons of waste, an amount that exceeds 6% of the staggering 165 million tons of waste that end up in U.S. landfills each year.

Let’s start with what you should not do: Don’t put dog poop in municipal compost bins. Why? Temperatures might not get high enough in compost facilities to kill pathogens, including salmonella, campylobacter, and toxocara.

Unless your city explicitly forbids or discourages either practice, dog waste should be put in a plastic bag and placed in the regular trash, or flushed down the toilet to be processed in the municipal sewage system. Though note: Dog waste should not be flushed into septic-tank systems unless installers and manufacturers verify that the system can handle it.

Of the two options, though, flushing may be preferable. This is partly because you can just deploy a reusable scooper to pick up each canine deposit instead of one-time-use plastic bags. Also, more sewage plants now digest sewage to produce methane that’s then burned to create electric power or produce sewage sludge that’s used as fertilizer.

But there is no simple answer, partly because some landfill facilities do burn methane from dumps to generate electric power, while others incinerate the waste itself to make energy. On top of these quandaries are questions about all these processes, which include concerns about dangerous toxics in sludge and emissions that result from burning garbage.

Do a quick web search and you’ll find various other methods for dealing with dog doo, from home composting devices to bulk flushers attached to sewer clean-outs to simply interring the stuff at a specified depth in your backyard. I can’t vouch for these approaches any more than I can certify a lot of whatever else is bobbing on the turbid sea of the internet.

Information provided by the Sierra Club’s Mr. Green.