Letter: Water District Offers Rebuttal
Dear Editor:
Edward “Ed” Lillywhite Norton, played by Art Carney in “The Honeymooners,” used to say when asked his profession, “I work in sewage.” You have to be humble to do that. I don’t know if the job makes you that way, or you start out being so, but you must be humble to spend your life working in sewage (sometimes literally), converting it to a resource that can be enjoyed as part of a healthy environment.
That is likely the reason that the clean water community doesn’t spend a lot of time bragging about its accomplishments. But we felt we needed to set the record straight in light of an op-ed published by the Worcester Business Journal on Oct. 11.
In that op-ed, Jonathan Stone of Save the Bay seems unaware that since January 2010 the Upper Blackstone Water Pollution Abatement District (WPAD) has voluntarily produced water that averages 4.9 milligrams per liter of total nitrogen — equal to the standard that Save the Bay wishes to see imposed on us.
Far from being “behind the curve,” as Mr. Stone claims, we are within approximately 4 percent of attaining the nitrogen limit that Mr. Stone advocates.
In fact, unlike Save the Bay and the regulatory agencies whose praises are sung by Mr. Stone, the WPAD has spent more time and effort studying Blackstone River water quality than any other agency in the past six years. We have sponsored the most comprehensive and scientific sampling and analysis programs ever undertaken for the river. We have sponsored the creation of a computerized model of the river by the University of Massachusetts that provides comprehensive information on its state and on how its water quality may be improved, and have made the model available to all who are interested. As a spinoff of that project, we have compiled a comprehensive electronic library and database on the river that will be made available on the Internet soon. We sponsor ongoing citizen monitoring of the river. It was the abatement district that paid for installation of a U.S. Geological Survey monitoring station in Millbury, and it is also the abatement district that pays for its annual upkeep. Finally, it is the abatement district that is providing the in-kind services needed to assure funding of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers work related to habitat restoration on the Blackstone.
Our studies have shown that even if the WPAD ceases to discharge any nutrients, the river’s water quality standards cannot be achieved as currently defined without either properly managing or removing the numerous impoundments along its path, as well as the sediments behind them.
To meet the standards we currently achieve, the WPAD has spent more than $170 million in the past 14 years, and is spending another $30 million in improvements, resulting in an overall rate increase of over 400 percent to date. Now, before we have even finished our current improvements, regulators and non-government groups are screaming for the WPAD to achieve much lower standards — even though achievement of those standards will not improve the water quality of the Blackstone River. To achieve the lower standards imposed by our 2008 discharge permit, including the 4-percent reduction in total nitrogen demanded by Save the Bay, the WPAD will need to spend an additional $200 million. But that is only a part of the picture. Achieving these more stringent goals will also entail countless other costs, including the purchase of added electricity (enough to power 600 homes), natural gas, methanol and chemicals like ferric chloride and sodium hydroxide.
Far from spewing partially treated wastewater into the Blackstone, the WPAD is providing highly treated water to the upper reaches of the Blackstone, which has seen vast improvement since the WPAD initiated treatment in 1976, and it will only continue to improve in the future. We believe that we are fulfilling our obligation to the river, and that our employees and ratepayers should be proud of what they have accomplished for both the Blackstone River and Narragansett Bay.
Tom Walsh
Engineer-Director/Treasurer, Upper Blackstone Water Pollution Abatement District
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