Proposed Water Regulations Switch Focus to Runoff

Wayne Krieger says one of the biggest threats to his 57,000-tree farm near the Oregon coast is not drought or disease but proposed anti-pollution regulations that he believes are so broad they make the Endangered Species Act look like a minor inconvenience.

“It makes it real difficult to carry on your operation,” says Krieger, of Gold Beach, Ore. “You’d find yourself probably in violation of the law every time you turned around.”

The Environmental Protection Agency has spent nearly three decades cleaning up the nation’s waterways, largely by cracking down on sewage plants and industries that pump pollution through pipes into lakes and rivers.

EPA officials are still watching such polluters, but they are turning their attention as never before to farmers, loggers and other landowners who indirectly foul streams with runoff from their property.

The agency in August proposed expansive new rules that would require states to submit plans within 15 years to clean up every waterway that fails to meet water quality standards for fishing, drinking and swimming, among other categories.

That means states would have to commit to cleaning up some 20,000 water bodies nationwide--or about 40% of all lakes, rivers and streams--and potentially commit tens of millions of dollars to the effort.

States not only would be required to say how much pollution should be allowed from sewage and other direct polluters; they would have to set allowable pollution levels for indirect sources, such as farmers or parking lot owners who send polluted runoff into streams.

Landowners might have to change their ways to prevent the runoff. Loggers may need to place bigger tree buffers along streams, and farmers may have to use less fertilizer in fields.

“It would be fair to describe this as one of the most ambitious proposals to protect water quality in our nation’s history,” said J. Charles Fox, assistant EPA administrator for water.

But the proposed rules have received a cool reception from forest industry officials and Republicans on Capitol Hill. Even other federal officials are concerned, saying the proposed rules are unreasonable in some cases and overly expensive.

Timber industry officials say they are mostly worried about a part of the proposal that could require loggers and other landowners to get EPA permission to cut down trees or take other actions on their land.

The proposal could potentially handcuff tens of thousands of large and small timber lot owners in Washington state and Oregon, said Jim Geisinger, president of the Northwest Forestry Assn. in Portland, Ore.

“It is a very big deal,” he said.

EPA officials, however, say the forest industry is overreacting.

Landowners would be required to get a pollution discharge permit only if the EPA found they were contributing to nearby water quality problems, and if the state had failed to draft an adequate plan for improving the water quality, Fox said.

“We think the impact of this provision will be very, very minor around the country,” he said.

States have always had primary responsibility for identifying streams that fall short of water quality standards and making plans to clean them up under the 1972 Clean Water Act.

But many state water quality problems--especially those from runoff--were not addressed for years as states focused on more obvious pollution problems, such as industries that funnel pollution into waterways.

Environmentalists sued dozens of states--including Washington and Oregon--beginning in the 1980s for failing to live up to the Clean Water Act.

Washington state has since agreed to make plans to clean up roughly 1,300 waterways that don’t meet water quality standards, and Oregon has done the same for roughly 1,200 water bodies.

But progress nationwide has been slow.

From 1972 to 1998, states only approved 1,000 plans. The EPA estimates that about 40,000 plans will need to be done.

Prodded by the lawsuits and some successful cleanups, the EPA in 1996 began looking for ways to prod more states to take action.

President Clinton announced the proposed rules in August. After a comment period closes Jan. 20, the EPA hopes to finalize the new rules next summer.

Environmentalists are praising the EPA’s move to address polluted runoff.

David Bayles, conservation director for the Pacific Rivers Council in Eugene, Ore., said he is especially pleased that the EPA plans to hold other federal agencies responsible for polluted runoff in thousands of miles of streams nationwide.

The Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and other government agencies have fouled streams with timber harvests, grazing and other activities, he said.

“These are public lands, public streams,” Bayles said. “The idea [that] they are polluted by government-approved action is terrible.”

Forest Service officials embrace the overall goal of the rules, but say some requirements may be unreasonable.

For instance, the EPA standard for water coolness for fish streams may not be achievable in the Pacific Northwest because there is too much sunshine and not enough moisture in August, said Mike Lohrey, water resources program manager for the Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest region.

Agriculture Undersecretary Jim Lyons, who oversees the Forest Service, said in a letter to EPA Administrator Carol Browner that the proposed rules “will unnecessarily divert scarce resources to a top-down, process-oriented approach that may not work.”

Implementing the new rule could cost more than $100 million a year, the letter said.

Lyons later said that the letter is “stronger than I would have liked” and that the Agriculture Department is still fleshing out its official position.

He said the department still has “substantive concerns,” but he declined to discuss them.

Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) is a harsh critic, saying the EPA lacks authority under the Clean Water Act to draft the rules, which he believes would prompt major industry lawsuits.

He said it is scientifically impossible to assign responsibility for runoff to specific landowners.

“It’s a top-down, one-size-fits-all Washington approach that is not appropriate,” Goodlatte said.

Goodlatte chairs the Agriculture Committee’s department operations, oversight, nutrition and forestry subcommittee. The panel has already held one hearing on the proposed rules and plans to hold more this year.

Goodlatte hopes to persuade the EPA to back off the rules and seek legislation to make any changes instead.

Washington state and Oregon officials are still drafting their formal responses to the proposed rules, but they generally spoke favorably of them.

Mike Llewelyn, administrator of the water quality division for Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, said the additional rules aimed at the forest industry may not be necessary because the state already monitors forestry practices closely and has processes to improve state regulations if they are found to be ineffective.

Mary Getchell, a spokeswoman for the Washington state Department of Ecology, said the state may recommend a few specific changes to the proposed regulations. But “we do believe the rules will improve” the process for cleaning up state waterways, she said.