Clean Water Advocates Praise Local Municipality Efforts to Protect Water Quality

Prairie Rivers Network and the Salt Fork River Partners are praising the Urbana Champaign Sanitary District for agreeing to disinfect the wastewater discharged from their Northeast Sewage Treatment Plant in Urbana.  The plant is currently exempt from federal disinfection requirements.

The plant, which treats domestic and industrial wastewater from the Cities of Champaign and Urbana, as well as tributary areas of Champaign County, discharges its treated wastewater to the Saline Branch of the Salt Fork River.   The federal permit required to discharge this wastewater—known as an NPDES permit—is currently undergoing a once every five year review and renewal.  The agreement regarding disinfection came during the public process associated with the renewal process.

“We are very pleased that the Sanitary District took the time to listen to the concerns of local residents and worked with us to address those concerns,” said Jean Flemma, Executive Director of Prairie Rivers Network.  “This is the kind of cooperative public process that the Clean Water Act fosters, allowing us to improve water quality and our communities.”

Under the Clean Water Act, municipal dischargers are required to disinfect their wastewater, which can include pathogens and other bacteria, unless they receive an exemption from doing so.  In the late 1980’s, Illinois EPA began exempting many, if not most, municipal dischargers from the disinfection requirement because of the concern that that commonly used disinfection methods of dumping chlorine into wastewater was having significant impacts on aquatic life in the streams where discharges were occurring.  In addition, IEPA concluded, frequently erroneously, that people were not using the streams where discharges were occurring so human exposure to pathogens was not a concern.

In the case of the Urbana Champaign plant, the exemption from requirements to disinfect has been in effect since 1988.  When the NPDES permit came up for public review this year, Prairie Rivers Network, the Salt Fork River Partners, and local citizens questioned whether the exemption was still appropriate for several reasons.

Of particular concern, many people were known to recreate on the Saline Branch and further downstream in the Salt Fork.  Several residents submitted comment letters to IEPA to that effect, as did a 4-H group that conducts water testing in the river.  At the same time, new techniques that have been developed mean that heavily chlorinated wastewater, which would harm fish and other aquatic life, need not be discharged as a by-product of disinfection.

Based on concerns expressed by Prairie Rivers Network and Salt Fork River Partners, the public input, the new disinfection techniques, and discussions with IEPA staff, the Sanitary District has concluded that it is appropriate to disinfect wastewater during most of the year, except during winter months when people are unlikely to be in or on the water.