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DNR seeks comments on Marmaton River protection plan
The Missouri Department of Natural Resources is inviting the public to comment on a plan to protect the Marmaton River in Vernon County. This is the second invitation to comment on this issue, which originally was designed to gather comments on the plan which involved both the Marmaton River and Little Drywood Creek.
Little Drywood Creek has since been dropped from the plan and the pollution reduction goals for the Marmaton River have been revised, so the DNR has requested public comment on the plan in its revised state.
According to a DNR press release, "the department has determined that the Marmaton River does not meet water quality standards due to low dissolved oxygen and has placed it on Missouri's 2008 list of impaired waters."
This public input notice is being sent out because of the Total Maximum Daily Load, which proposes limits of total suspended solids including "total phosphorus, total nitrogen and biochemical oxygen demand, which will be established to achieve a minimum level of dissolved oxygen of 5 mg/l [milligrams per liter] throughout the river."
The TMDL information sheet available on the DNR Web site lists several beneficial uses of the river and specifically says the "protection of warm water aquatic life" is impaired. The same information sheet says that 35. 7 miles of the river is impaired and that the sources of pollutants causing the impairment are unidentified.
Thousands of samples were taken from the Marmaton River just downstream from Fort Scott between 2001 and 2009. About a dozen samples showed low dissolved oxygen during time.
Along the way, some changes in what's put back into the Marmaton have taken place. In 2002, the city of Fort Scott built a new, $8 million mechanical treatment plant to supplant its lagoon system which dates back to 1984, and "since the new plant's has been running, we've never been out of compliance," with Kansas Department of Health and Environment guidelines, said Richard Cook, Waste Water Treatment Plant supervisor at the Fort Scott facility.
Cook says he runs an efficient and immaculately kept facility that tests its output every day. His technicians do some of the testing in house, but independent laboratories also do some of the tests. The sophisticated, computerized facility monitors every step of the process and Cook can back up his claim to compliance with hard data from all that testing.
"We're trying to make this as good as we can," Cook said.
It's important to him, because, "I fish in this river," he said. "I feel like we're helping the river."
No testing sites are identified along the 35. 7 miles of the Marmaton River in Missouri, on the site map provided with the TMDL information sheet. All of the testing sites for Little Drywood Creek listed on the TMDL sheet are south of Nevada -- before it runs into the Marmaton or is influenced by the output from the Nevada Waste Water Treatment Plant.
During the first invitation for public comment issued by the DNR, the city of Nevada hired a consulting firm to assess the TMDL and how it would affect the city and it's new wastewater treatment plant. Every time the plant comes up for a new license the requirements it has to meet can be different.
"The parameters are changing at a rapid rate," said Roger Beach, superintendent of the Nevada Waste Water Treatment Plant.
With the knowledge that the new plant is "under a microscope" Beach approached Nevada City Manager J.D. Kehrman, and Geosyntec Consultants of Columbia, Mo., was hired to review the TMDL. The price of the consult was somewhere between $7,000 and $8,000. Kehrman didn't have the exact figure in front of him but said that with the help of the consulting firm, the city had "a big victory with the DNR."
Faced with this challenge to the way the study was conducted, the DNR decided to remove Little Drywood Creek from the TMDL and revise the "pollutant reduction goals for the Marmaton River," according to a letter from the DNR to the consultants and obtained from Kehrman.
The letter also says that "the TMDL process indicates that the Nevada Waste Water Treatment Plant is not the sole cause of low dissolved oxygen (DO)" in either stream. "DO measurements in Little Drywood Creek upstream of Nevada WWTP indicate that nonpoint sources of pollutants are also contributing to low DO within these watersheds."
No testing sites downstream from the WWTP can be found in the TMDL information sheet, although Bill Whipps of the DNR says that the Environmental Protection Agency took samples at the confluence of the Marmaton and Little Drywood Creek.
The letter received by the city manager also documents the fact that the DNR says "language in the TMDL also acknowledges the issues regarding low DO as a natural background condition in prairie streams in this ecological region."
In addition, the federal Environmental Protection Agency uses the federal Clean Water Act to establish a list of waters that need improvement and develops plans for improving them. then dictates those clean water requirements to the DNR. The state agency, in turn, passes, that on to WWTP's and private industry.
After the comments by the city's consultants to the DNR about the methodology used in the study, the DNR has made some changes and even "went to bat for us at the EPA" said Kehrman. They stood behind the new plant even though some of the future requirements that treatment plants may be asked to meet are out of the realm of possibility with current technology.
But, then again, as stated in the letter to the consultants and Kehrman "TMDL WLA development is conducted without consideration of wastewater treatment technology or cost."
The old Nevada Waste Water Treatment Plant is and has been in compliance with the DNR requirements.
According to Beach, the water is tested as it leaves the plant and upstream from the plant.
"The water we're putting into the river is better than the water in the river," he said.
Just like Cook, Beach has a stake in the work he does. "I live here, I own land along this river," he said.
The new plant coming on line will be state of the art technology and has no new requirements. The TMDL lasts through the permit period into 2012 at which time it could change. Whipps of the DNR said that was dependent on several factors. One of those is the non point sources identified as contributing to the problem of low dissolved oxygen. Fertilizers deposit phosphorus and nitrogen into the soil, and some of it likely makes it into the watershed through runoff which inhibits the waters ability to hold dissolved oxygen.
Whipps said his agency has no regulatory power and can only "work with farmers and make recommendations using best management practices" to try and limit the effects of agricultural runoff. Whipps said there would be several agencies involved in the implementation stage of the TMDL when all of the factors and possible solutions are examined.
This is a complex issue that has a tremendous capacity for affecting the city and the entire Vernon County community. The whole thing is kind of muted now, but it will come back up in about two years and everyone should expect it when it happens. "We shook them off this time," but during the next permit cycle something different may come up, said Kehrman.
In the meantime, the DNR will continue to monitor the watersheds, the managers at the treatment plants will continue to keep their facilities up to standards above those required and the non point sources and natural proclivities of prairie streams will continue to be a factor in the health of the Marmaton River.
Public comment on this topic is encouraged, to address concerns or provide positive comment on this study.
Written comments will be accepted through Aug. 22 2010.
Comments should be sent to the Department of Natural Resources, Water Protection Program, Water Quality Assessment and Protection Section, P.O. Box 176, Jefferson City, MO 65102-0176.
John Hoke will be out of the office for the next two weeks, but for those wishing to comment electronically, send e-mail comments to johnhoke@dnr.
mo.gov., include name, mailing address and phone number of the sender.