EPA: N.J. needs $8B fix to antiquated sewer systemsUpdated: Sunday, September 25, 2011, 4:10 PM
By Christopher Baxter/Statehouse Bureau
Mitsu Yasukawa/For The Star-Ledger
Sandbags are piled in an attempt to block sewage pipes in Jersey City along the Hackensack River. A sign warning people about the sewage flowing into the water is also in place.JERSEY CITY — His eyes fixed on the Jersey City shoreline of the Hackensack River, Bill Sheehan nosed his pontoon boat toward the end of a metal pipe where it juts out into the choppy brown water.
"Most people wouldn’t have any idea what this is," said Sheehan, the head of a nonprofit group that watches over the river, "but come out here enough and you’ll figure it out. You’ll smell it."
At more than 200 spots like this in New Jersey, outdated sewer systems pour more than 23 billion gallons of raw sewage into the water each year, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
And residents — including those who boat, kayak and fish these waterways — are usually never told when the sewage is flowing, officials say.
It doesn’t take a hurricane for the sewers to surge. Even small rainfalls can cause a dirty cocktail of bacteria to spew from 224 nondescript pipes that are mostly in northern New Jersey, EPA says, posing a serious health risk to anyone who touches the water.
Frustrated by the state’s lack of progress, the federal agency is pressuring the Christie administration to fix the long-standing problem, which EPA estimates could cost more than $8 billion.
And environmentalists say they will soon take the state to court, arguing the permit it issues that allows municipalities to dump the sewage violates the federal Clean Water Act.
"New Jersey has the worst program in the country to deal with this problem," said Christopher Len, staff attorney for the nonprofit NY/NJ Baykeeper, which is challenging the permit with Sheehan and others. "It’s laughable."
The state Department of Environmental Protection has rejected NY/NJ Baykeeper’s claims and said it plans to unveil revised rules in six months that would require better public notification and other basic and less expensive improvements. The state says nine of the 224 spill points have been eliminated since EPA’s last count.
But the DEP said it will not yet require cities to implement long-term plans to fix the problem. Instead, it intends to hold another round of meetings and ask cities and towns to again study what changes they can afford.
Federal officials said in a recent letter to DEP that the state "has all the data it needs to tackle this long-term challenge."
Jeffrey Gratz, chief of EPA’s clean water regulatory branch overseeing New Jersey, said in an interview that unless the state’s next set of rules puts municipalities on a schedule to address the problem, EPA will have a "serious issue with it."
"I think in general we’ve got a longer way to go with New Jersey than other states," Gratz said.
COMPLEX PROBLEM
Sewage is allowed to spew into the environment because of antiquated sewer systems across the stateCombined sewage systems are designed to transport sewage, industrial wastewater and rainwater runoff in the same pipes to water treatment plants. But when they overflow during heavy rains, raw sewage is being directly discharged into our water systems. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, more than 23 billion gallons of raw sewage enters the New Jersey environment annually. In most cities and towns, separate pipes carry sewage to the treatment plant and stormwater to rivers, streams and the ocean. But in older municipalities, the same pipe carries both stormwater and sewage to the treatment plant.
When it rains, those combined pipes quickly fill past capacity, threatening to back up into homes and basements. So they were designed with pipes that allow the sewage to overflow directly into the water.
Over the past three years, the problem has gained more attention from EPA, which has cracked down on cities and towns that fail to act.
Contact with the bacteria-laden water most often causes diarrhea and nausea, but it can also cause more serious infections such as hepatitis. No one knows exactly how many people get sick from the spills each year.
"There’s a pipe on the Passaic River where I’ve actually seen people washing their clothes in the sewage," Sheehan said.
A lot of the sewage flows through the rivers and streams first and then spills into the New York-New Jersey Harbor.
LITTLE NOTIFICATION
As Sheehan motored his pontoon boat along the shore of the river Wednesday, small, yellow warning signs could be seen where pipes emerge from the ground. The U.S. Department of Justice recently forced Jersey City to install them as part of an agreement settling charges that officials allowed sewage to spill during dry weather, which is not allowed.
WHERE RAW SEWAGE FLOWS
The federal Environmental Protection Agency says there are 224 places* in New Jersey where partially treated or raw sewage pours directly into streams, rivers or the ocean during heavy rain, polluting the water with bacteria and posing a public health risk. It estimates it would cost $8.2 billion to upgrade or eliminate these outfalls. Here are towns, and how many places in each where the sewage flows.
Elizabeth: 34
Camden: 31
Bayonne: 28
Paterson: 24
Jersey City Municipal Utilities Authority: 21
Newark: 17
Perth Amboy: 16
North Bergen Municipal Utilities Authority: 10
North Hudson Sewerage Authority, Hoboken: 8
Ridgefield Park Village: 6
Gloucester: 7
Harrison: 7
Kearny: 5
North Hudson Sewerage Authority, West New York: 2
Fort Lee: 2
Hackensack: 2
Guttenberg: 1
East Newark: 1
Trenton Sewer Utilities Authority: 1
Camden County Municipal Utilities Authority: 1* The state Department of Environmental Protection said nine places where spills occur have been eliminated since EPA’s last count, but could not identify which nine. Source: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
But DEP does not require labeling where sewage overflows so that people know they might be approaching raw waste spilling into the water. The department also does not require residents be notified of when or where the spills occur, making it difficult for anyone to know if the water is safe on any given day.
The state regularly monitors only the water at beaches it has designated for swimming. But there are many other beaches where people swim.
"If people knew they shouldn’t go anywhere in the harbor or rivers whenever there’s a heavy rain, they would be screaming for action," said Jeff Tittel, head of the New Jersey Sierra Club. "There’s no one in those areas who’s going to stand idly by who knows raw sewage affects their property."
Other places in the country do far more to inform residents. New York State requires municipalities to create a public notification system to alert those who may come in contact with the water that a sewage overflow has occurred. DEP officials said they will consider a similar mandate in the future.
NO CHEAP FIX
In the short term, municipalities are supposed to make sure their pipes are clear and that spills are strained to catch "floatables," such as human waste and other debris that may have washed into storm drains.
But eliminating the spills will require much more expensive sewer improvements, such as laying new pipes to separate stormwater and sewage, as well as installing storage tanks to prevent spills from happening.
New York City built storage tanks to hold sewage during rainstorms rather than let it overflow. When the water subsides, the tanks drain the waste to a treatment plant. The city is also promoting "green infrastructure" that captures and reuses stormwater to keep it out of sewers.
DEP officials say the problem in New Jersey is more complex. With more than two dozen systems serving a large number of municipalities, they say the state needs to speak with local leaders to determine what they can afford to do.
In April, DEP Commissioner Bob Martin said in a letter to EPA that he was concerned the two agencies "are not on the same page," and that the feds were pushing "costly" short-term fixes without focusing on eliminating the spills, something he said requires more meetings with communities.
"I also question whether this current enforcement effort is the best use of taxpayers’ dollars," Martin wrote, urging EPA to stop issuing fines and penalties and instead make more money available to stop sewage spills.
With the estimated total price more than $8 billion, EPA officials will be hard-pressed to persuade cash-strapped municipalities to make sewer upgrades a priority, said Elizabeth Mayor Chris Bollwage.
Mitsu Yasukawa/For The Star-LedgerSandbags are piled in an attempt to block sewage pipes in Jersey City along the Hackensack River. A sign warning people about the sewage flowing into the water is also in place."Unless they actually restrict building permits or take some other serious action, nobody’s going to follow through and do this," Bollwage said.
EPA says there are 34 places in Elizabeth where raw sewage spews during heavy rains. Bollwage said the city has done a lot in the past few decades to capture sewage debris and upgrade parts of the system, but fears a long-term solution could cost hundreds of millions of dollars. "Should it happen? Absolutely," he said. "But nobody has the money to do it."
Some towns have acted. Rahway completed a four-year project in 2004 worth more than $3.3 million to separate stormwater and sewage into different pipelines. The city also sealed overflow pipes in the Rahway River. EPA, however, says only five of the state’s 30 problem sewer systems have been fixed.
While state environmental officials said they are sensitive to the cost of upgrades, EPA officials take a stricter stance.
"The statement that it costs too much to fix is obviously something we don’t listen to," said Doug McKenna, chief of EPA’s water compliance branch overseeing New Jersey. "However, when someone says it costs a heck of a lot and it’s going to take us time to pay, that is something we do consider. But ultimately, it has to be fixed and compliance needs to be achieved."
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