Residents of Greater Cincinnati and elsewhere will get to weigh in Feb. 14 at 9 a.m. as the Ohio River Valley Sanitation Commission — or ORSANCO — meets at the Embassy Suites in Covington and likely discusses moving away from many of the pollution control standards it has provided states along the Ohio River.
A majority of the commission has said many of its standards are redundant — rules from federal and state agencies are currently keeping water quality in the river at the level ORSANCO wants to see independent of its criteria, and the 20-employee organization could do other things with its limited resources. Critics of the deregulation, however, including a minority of the commission, say a significant number of the standards aren’t duplicated by federal or state agencies and that the commission needs to continue doing everything it can to ensure water quality, especially as the Trump administration works to roll back environmental regulations.
Dissenting commissioners point out that there are 188 instances in which ORSANCO has set pollution criteria that six of the member states and the federal EPA don’t have. Simply relying on the state and federal EPA standards “may not be adequate to protect the aquatic life and uses of the Ohio River,” the dissenting commissioners wrote in a report last year.
The commission began a regular review process of its standards last January with an ad-hoc committee and calls for public input.
The Ohio River has long ranked among the most polluted in the country thanks mostly to industrial runoff from power plants and other industry. And a 2017 University of Cincinnati study showed that higher levels of a chemical associated with that runoff found in tristate residents can likely be traced back to the river pollution.
Formed in 1948, Cincinnati-based ORSANCO has worked to make the Ohio River clean and safe in part by setting standards for the maximum levels of various pollutants in the river. The commission’s standards have long been used by states to ensure that the Ohio River is clean enough for recreation, drinking and other uses.
But now commissioners say that the federal EPA (founded in 1970), the 1972 federal Clean Water Act and state environmental agencies have made those standards redundant.
“The commission is considering this because, the thought is, with the robust state programs and the U.S. EPA’s program, there are better uses of our resources than really having a potentially redundant third layer of standards,” ORSANCO Executive Director Richard Harrison told WVXU last year. “Our compact is not changing. I’m confident that our commission is not going to move forward with something that will harm the water quality of the Ohio River.”
Environmental groups and a minority of the commission, however, have expressed “grave concern” with the move and argue that eliminating the body’s standards when it comes to ambient levels of various pollutants can only hinder efforts to maintain and improve the river’s health.
“ORSANCO, as a federally-sanctioned compact among several signatory states, possesses a degree of insulation from the vagaries of the political process, and is able to research, develop, propose and adopt standards tailored to the specific needs of the river in an atmosphere that stresses sound science and data-driven policy,” dissenting commissioners said in their minority report opposing the elimination of the rules.
The minority cited recent moves by Congress and the Trump administration that they say raise concerns about commitment to environmental protection. The elimination of the federal Stream Protection Rule and proposals by the EPA to revise guidelines for what counts as protected bodies of water, they say, “reflect that the standards and scope of the Clean Water Act and regulations adopted pursuant to that Act are neither static, nor necessarily as broad or protective, as might be needed to address the specific needs of the Ohio River Basin.”
There are roughly 600 permitted companies and other groups discharging into the Ohio River. The federal Clean Water Act, administered by the EPA, recommends maximum levels of pollutants these entities are allowed to discharge. States, however, make their own standards, which the EPA then approves.
ORSANCO’s standards exist alongside those state standards. While the state guidelines generally regulate what is coming specifically out of dischargers’ pipes, the commission creates guidelines for ambient pollution levels in the water as a whole.
This article appears in Jan 23-30, 2019.
