Commit Clean Water Acts: Please send an email to the Department of Health asking for more time for public review of the Hawaii Water Quality Report
The State Department of Health has released the 2008/2010 State of Hawaii Water Quality Monitoring and Assessment Report. Download it here
This important report that sets water quality priorities for the state came out between Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays... The comment period closes today and many people may not be aware of it.
Please submit comments in writing by 12/13/2011 to:
CleanWaterBranch@doh.hawaii.gov
Alec Wong, Clean Water Branch, Department of Health
919 Ala Moana Blvd., Room 301
Honolulu, Hawaii 96814
Quick Summary
The State Department of Health has released their water quality assessment and impaired waters list for public review .The Clean Water Act requires that states monitor the quality of water in streams, lakes, wetlands, and oceans. Every two years the Hawaii Department of Health is required to provide an assessment of whether or not water bodies are meeting water quality goals and report to Congress the list of impaired waters that are not supporting legally protected uses due to water quality issues. If waters are impaired studies are required to establish the Total Maximum Daily Loads for the pollutants causing the loss of the use (such as fishing or swimming or growing coral reefs).
The Hawaii Department of Health failed to submit this report to Congress during 2008, so this is the first update since the 2006. The report however does not consider any new monitoring locations since 2006, but instead updates the assessment using the data from January 2006 to December 2009. The state changed the water quality goal for recreational uses of water (swimming, surfing, snorkeling, diving etc.), increasing the allowable fecal indicator bacteria concentration in the water. The geometric mean criterion is now 35 colonies/ 100 ml of water verses the former 7 colonies/ 100 ml. There appear to be 10 beaches that were taken off the impaired waters list due only to the change in criteria (as opposed to data showing water quality improvement).
For Maui the assessment delists (removes the recreational use impairment ) Kahului Harbor, Kalama Park, and Kalepolepo Beach Park. This means these areas will not have priority for funding actions to reduce bacteria and improve water quality. These are some of the most polluted areas on Maui where there are known sewage effluent plumes. DOH and Maui water quality specialist Robin Knox have found bacterial levels that are higher at these sites than at most other coastal recreational water sites. Robin says that the effluent plume areas test higher for many kinds of bacteria, including fecal indicator bacteria. The Department of Health allows the County of Maui to inject treated sewage effluent into the ground water that seeps into the ocean in these areas. Robin believes that the increased nutrients associated with the sewage serves as food for bacteria and algae. The increased algal and bacterial growth clouds the water , increasing turbidity and blocking the sunlight that would kill disease-causing bacteria. To make matters worse, although the sewage is partially treated, it is NOT treated to kill disease causing bacteria and viruses. So we are injecting human waste that has not been disinfected into an environment that supports the growth of elevated concentrations of microbes. This seems like a big risk to take with people’s health and our economy, not to mention coral reef health. If the current decision-making rules take these sites off of the impaired waters list when we know there is a reasonable potential for a problem, then maybe we need some public review and discussion of the rules and the decisions. DOH needs to provide more information and a “layman friendly” explanation to the public, and then allow adequate opportunity for public discussion and comment.
UPDATE 12/29/11: Thanks to a lot of emails, the deadline to comment has been extended to January 31, 2012.
