Editorial: Effluent's Fate: Sooner or Later, It Reaches the Sea

posted in: Editorial, October 1992 | 0

In Maui County, water is in short supply. The county is scrambling to develop new sources to keep pace with the development that is under way and planned. At a recent briefing of the state Commission on Water Resource Management, in fact, Jimmy Kumugai, president of an engineering firm employed by Maui County to prepare a water use and development plan, said it might even be necessary for the county to build desalination plants to ensure that freshwater supplies would be sufficient to meet demand. (The consultant, M&E Pacific, operates the desalination plant at Campbell Industrial Park — the only one in the state, so far.)

Whoa! Desalination?

That’s a hugely expensive process. It requires enormous amounts of power. In addition, the jury is still out as to whether removal of significant amounts of brackish water will affect the quality or quantity of fresh groundwater supplies.

What if the county instead took the effluent from its wastewater plants and cleaned that up to the point where it could be recycled as potable water? The treatment systems already in place clean the effluent to levels far exceeding state requirements for irrigation. If the county could get a handle on personnel problems (getting better qualified staff in place) and add a few more treatment steps to its wastewater plants, the final product — pure water — could, and should, be recycled into the county’s potable water system.

Consider the alternative scenario: Nutrient-laden effluent from sewage treatment plants continues to be dumped into injection wells. Algae thrive on the nutrients, causing blooms to foul the water and the shore. Injection wells continue to clog, forcing the county to spend more and more money maintaining them and drilling new ones. Desalination plants begin to dot the shore, causing more power plants to be built, requiring more miles of pipe to be installed and maintained, and possibly jeopardizing freshwater supplies to boot.

It may be an engineer’s dream (small wonder an engineer would propose it). But economically and environmentally, it’s a nightmare.

An Impermeable Curtain?

The root causes of the algae blooms that have plagued Maui in the last several years are not well understood. But it is reasonable to believe they are linked to nutrients borne in the wastewater effluent.

Few argue that the effluent does not eventually work its way to the sea. Injection wells are supposed to be cased to a point below brackish water, so that whatever is pumped into them is not released until it is well into the saline water below. However, because the effluent is more buoyant than the saline water, it floats upward in a gradually spreading, conical plume as soon as it leaves the well bore. According to a study done for the county, the injected effluent moves “upward without significant change until it eventually intercepts the seaward flow of freshwater.” After that, it’s a free ride to the ocean.

How long this process takes may not be well known, but that is immaterial. Once the flow begins, so long as the wells continue to be used, the flow is constant.

Precisely where the effluent enters the ocean also is a matter of little consequence. The fact that researcher Steven Dollar may not find entry points directly downslope of the Lahaina treatment plant cannot possibly be taken as evidence that the effluent does not enter the sea. Indeed, to argue this, one would almost have to postulate the existence of an impermeable curtain hanging, what, from the Earth’s surface to its very core? Sooner or later, at one point or another, the effluent will out. And when it does, the nutrients, however dilute, will be there for the algae to nosh on.

If heavy rains fill the channels and drainage ditches, and bring to the sea nitrogen that was supposed to green up the ninth hole fairway, the result could well be more out-of-control blooms.

It is possible that precise, comprehensive knowledge of the mechanisms that trigger algae blooms will never be attained. The biological processes at work are surely intricate and manifold. They may well escape our inherently limited ability to understand the world.

But our limited knowledge should not preclude action based on simple common sense. Yes, nutrients in the effluent reach the sea. Yes, algae thrives on such nutrients. Yes, such nutrients may also exist naturally, but that does not mean that anthropogenic contributions are thereby excused. To the extent that control is possible, control should be exercised. Anything less is unconscionable.

State Sanctions

The state’s regulatory approach toward injection wells is flawed. Rules covering injection wells are designed to protect groundwater sources of drinking water. Offshore water quality is nothing more than an afterthought, even though, from an environmental perspective, considering as a whole the health of the island’s natural resources, offshore water quality is of paramount importance. The idea that Hawai`i can surround itself with a sea of sewage and escape any consequence is preposterous.

Even at that, the state’s regulatory scheme for underground injection wells pays enough attention to other environmental laws and regulations so that injection wells may be held to be in violation of state rules if they violate any of the other statutes and rules that govern pollution of surface waters. If convincing evidence is obtained linking injection wells to offshore pollution, the operation of those wells can be stopped by the Department of Health.

Similarly, under the state’s rules for wastewater treatment plants, it is a violation for such treatment plants to pollute “the waters of any beaches” or to “give rise to nuisances” — and there can be little argument that the algae blooms have been nuisances of the first order. But here again, establishing a link between the sewage treatment plants, or their injection wells, and algae blooms is something that remains to be done, however much circumstantial evidence points to a conviction.

The federal Environmental Protection Agency has lately jumped into the picture, threatening to force regulation of injection wells under the federal Clean Water Act if enough of a link is established between ocean pollution and the effluent.

As crippled as the EPA has become under 12 years of withered budgets, it may still turn out to be a better environmental enforcer than the state’s Department of Health. Over the past several years, the Health Department’s anemic enforcement efforts have prompted some critics to suggest that the federal government revoke the state’s delegated authority to administer federal pollution control laws.

Mounting Evidence

Actually, the EPA itself has provided the public with enough evidence to justify a challenge to the state’s ability or interest in enforcing the delegated powers. In August 1989, an EPA audit limned in depressing detail the state’s poor record of penalizing polluters and of monitoring expenditures of federal funds for public pollution control projects. A review of enforcement actions taken against Maui County would suggest things have not improved much since then.

There’s the $10,000 fine levied in 1989 for a spill of sewage at Napili, still “being negotiated,” according to the county. There’s the DOH’s accommodation of the Maui mayor’s request for a preview of a notice of violation against the Kahului plant in 1992. There’s spill after spill of sewage along the West Maui coast, reports of which seem to fall into a black hole at the DOH, eliciting not so much as a reprimand, much less a fine.

Perhaps most distressing is the way in which Maui County appears, with the state’s blessing, to have let politics intrude into the very management of its wastewater plants. Operators with experience and skill are denied opportunities to advance, while those who show favor with administrators are given special consideration, even to the point of being allowed opportunities for advancement that, under state regulations, should not be theirs.

This came to a head recently with the firing of one operator — Bill Carroll — after he brought to the attention of the state board that certifies wastewater plant operators the fact that one Maui County employee was allowed to take an operator certifying test without having acquired the requisite experience. (The county says it fired Carroll for disclosing confidential employee records. What Carroll disclosed was a list of the several positions in county government occupied by the employee whose qualifications to take the operator Grade IV test Carroll challenged. Such work history, especially for government employees, is hardly classified material. Nothing of a confidential nature — performance evaluations, salary, or other information of a personal nature — was part of Carroll’s disclosure. The certification board has dismissed Carroll’s complaints as those of a disgruntled, passed-over employee.)

Although Carroll’s union is filing a grievance on his behalf, it would be appropriate also for the highest levels of the Health Department to use this incident as a cue to look more closely at the operations of the certification board.

Carroll’s charges of cronyism are only the most recent indications that something is rotten in the operation of this body. Two years ago, unheard-of pass rates for operator tests prompted the national certification board, which develops the tests, to question what was going on in Hawai`i. As it turns out, someone had distributed copies of the test in advance to certain of the operators as part of a test preparation course. The state was required to disregard the results and retest everyone who sat for the first test.

Volume 3, Number 4 October 1992