SierraScape October - November 2005
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provided by Ted Heisel, Missouri Coalition for the Environment

On Wednesday of this week, the Missouri Clean Water Commission gave its final approval to a water quality rule that will significantly improve protections for most streams around the state. The new rule upgrades numerous standards designed to protect human health and aquatic life. Nearly all of the items in the rule were required to be adopted pursuant to the Coalition's settlement agreement reached with EPA last December.

But along with its approval of the rule, the Commission pulled a dirty trick on residents of the St. Louis area and exempted three prominent St. Louis area streams. The Mississippi River south of the Chain of Rocks, the River des Peres, and Maline Creek were all exempted from recreational use standards (i.e., sewage will not have to be disinfected to kill dangerous pathogens.)

What makes this last minute decision particularly troubling is that the public was provided no notice or opportunity to comment. For the past six weeks, the Department of Natural Resources' web site had proclaimed that these streams would benefit from the protections of the new rule. Other streams were identified for exemptions, but not these. Thus, the Coalition and other members of the public were lulled into a sense of complacency by wrongly placing their trust in statements of the Missouri DNR.

Moreover, shortly before the Commission voted to exempt these three streams, it was counseled by representatives of the U.S. EPA that such an action would violate federal water quality regulations. These regulations state very clearly that the public must be notified before such exemptions are granted. Not to be deterred, the Commission ignored this advice, setting up a showdown with the EPA, which must approve or disapprove provisions of the rule by early next year.

The exemptions amount to a huge break for the Metropolitan Sewer District of St. Louis (MSD), which still releases billions of gallons of raw sewage mixed with stormwater into these streams each year. There remain hundreds of locations around the St. Louis area where raw sewage gushes or bubbles out of MSD's aging and failing system during periods of rainfall. The exemptions will relieve some of the pressure from MSD to clean up its act.

Fortunately, EPA must yet approve the water quality rule and, based on statements its staff made to the Commission, it is unlikely to approve exemptions where there was no opportunity for public comment. Since the public was not notified of these exemptions in advance, the Commission's action was not based on an accurate assessment of the types of human use of these water bodies. Had a public comment period been held, it would have been discovered, for example, that people regularly kayak on the Mississippi at the Chain of Rocks and that kids often play in River des Peres.

The Coalition will be encouraging people who may use these three water bodies to provide input to the EPA Region VII in Kansas City as it prepares to make its decision. Specific comments about particular uses (i.e. swimming, wading, kayaking, etc.) are most important. Please contact our office for details on the most effective way to provide your input.