|
EPA website on the 301(h) waiver was apparently last updated in 1994.
www.epa.gov/OWOW/oceans/discharges/301list.html
The following are listed as current "waiver" holders under Sect. 301(h):
Maine:
Bayville, Boothbay Harbor, Bucksport, Eastport, Eastport/Quoddy,
Jonesport, Lubec, Milbridge, Newton Highlands (Squirrel Isl.),
North Haven, Northport Village (Belfast), Searsport, Wintersport
"...Maine
is a predominantly rural state, and relies heavily on decentralized sewage
disposal facilities..."
Mass.:
Glouchester, Gosnold
New Hampshire:
Portsmouth
California:
Goleta, Morro Bay, Orange County (San Diego, exemption to the filing deadline)
Hawaii:
Sand Isl. and Honouliuli (Honolulu)
American Samoa:
Fafuna (Pago Pago) and Utulei
Guam:
Agana, Agat and Northern Dist. (Dededo) Palau (Koror) Trust Territory
Alaska:
Anchorage, Haines, Ketchikan, Pelican, Petersburg,
Sitka, Skagway, Whittier, Wrangell
|
|
15,088 discharge districts do NOT have a waiver. Orange County is the biggest, by far,dwarfing all
others except San Diego, which has the excuse of treating Tijuana's sewage. |
"Secondary is not a perfect system", it's the first, minimum step. |
HISTORY OF THE WAIVER: "EPA received 208 301(h) waiver applications... 45 applicants and permittees
remain, including 36 waiver recipients and 9 applicants with decisions pending..." |
"The majority of 301(h) waiver recipients are small ... discharge less than
5 million gallons per day (MGD)... the flows from these ... represent only 4 percent of the 620 MGD of wastewater
under the 301(h) program..." |
Orange County Sanitation District uses 240MGD, dwarfing the majority of the other dischargers, which
are mostly located outside the continental US. Our "mass loading" of fecal solids is 20,000 metric tons
per year, twice that of San Diego!
"...Less than half of the [waiver] 45 applicants/permittees are located
within the continental United States...". |
The waiver was intended for places, such as Anchorage, where the "good bugs" and digestion
might die of cold, and where the population (253,000) is about what OC was before 1960... or else in places like
Palau, which not too many reading this can even place on a map, or even on which side of Ocean. |
Secondary treatment is NOT full treatment -- it is the MINIMAL LEVEL
of treatment considered acceptable for protection of the public health. |
The Orange County Health Care Agency and the Regional Water Quality Control Board (RWQCB) allows OCSD to
monitor itself. This means researchers get continued employment only if they do not find the outfall to be a problem.
Instead, perhaps researchers should be paid only if they find problems. |
This is not a new issue. In 1985, Dr. Jack Skinner predicted that the sewage would come back to
shore. In 1987, there was proof, which OCSD now claims they did not make public because they perceived "no
interest" in the public over the issue. |
If this study had been made generally available, would the 1988 waiver application have been granted?
Possibly NOT, which might explain why it was not trumpeted
about. |
According to OCSD, "...looking back... we should have made it more public..." instead
of allegedly attaching this important study, validating Dr. Skinner, to some buried annual report in 1992. |