Sludge Watch ==> Milwaukee dumped untreated and 'blended' sewage - more details

[maureen.reilly at sympatico.ca]

Sludgewatch Admin:

Milwaukee seems to be deep in the doo doo these days.  The study on sewage 
releases and children's health should be available for posting in a few 
weeks.  And here is more background
on problems with discharge of untreated and partially treated sewage into 
Lake Michigan.

In addition, the City decided not to line the deep tunnels that take in 
sewage and overflow and hold them for later treatment.  I hear that there is 
now fecal contamination of deep wells below the City.

.......................................................................................


May 3, 2006

Sewage issues warrant further study


Lynn Broaddus, PhD, MBA, Executive Director of Friends of Milwaukee's Rivers



Sewage blending - doesn't sound very appetizing, does it? The practice of 
'blending' partially treated sewage with fully treated sewage is a 
permissible, if controversial, practice under certain, limited situations.


The idea is that when its pouring rain and the sewage treatment plant is at 
full capacity, it's better to take a shortcut than to dump completely 
untreated sewage. But because of the rapid chlorination and the fact that 
the sewage misses the biological treatment, there is a higher level of 
viruses and bacteria entering the water.

This week we read about a preliminary study released by the Medical College 
of Wisconsin which found that the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin's 
Emergency Room saw an increased number of patients for diarrhea and related 
problems during two large 'blending' events in 2003 and 2004. (Full story)  
You may have read that the lead investigator is my husband, Dr. Marc 
Gorelick. What's that about?, you may ask.

Marc, who has been very candid about his relationship with Friends of 
Milwaukee's Rivers, has a long-standing research interest in the public 
health aspects of emergency room visits, including diarrhea and dehydration.
The solid research reputation that he has helped build for the pediatric 
emergency program was cited as one of the reasons the emergency room of 
Children's Hospital of Wisconsin was ranked as the #1 program in the country 
by Child, Inc. magazine.

It was entirely Marc's idea (not mine) to study the correlation between 
sewage blending and emergency room visits. Last year he asked me how to get 
the data on sewage blending. It's publicly available information, but it 
helps to know where to look. Cheryl Nenn, our Riverkeeper, helped Marc and 
coauthor Dr. Ryan Redman obtain the data and understand the sewage treatment 
process. Knowing that the results would be subject to extreme scrutiny, he 
brought medical statistician Daniel Eastwood onto the team to review their 
analysis.

As the newspaper headline states, his work raises a 'red flag'. It's not the 
final word, but it raises enough questions about this controversial practice 
that it certainly merits further investigation.

Which brings us to perhaps the most important revelation that has come from
this: how are we supposed to know when sewage spills occur? Today's paper 
carried a report about three 'blending' events from 2004 that turned out to 
be events that skipped the primary sewage treatment as well as the secondary 
sewage treatment. (Full story)  As you can see from MMSD's own website, this 
does not meet the definition of 'blending'.

The timing of these two stories is not unrelated. During the background work 
that Riverkeeper Cheryl Nenn did for the study, she noticed that the list of 
blending events were coded differently. As it turns out, these codes led us 
to the realization that MMSD was including on its report of 'blending' three 
events that skipped even primary treatment. This would seem to be a clear 
violation of the spirit of the water quality permit, even if it somehow fell 
through a loophole.

Friends of Milwaukee's Rivers, along with our partners at NRDC, Sierra Club, 
and Midwest Environmental Advocates, met with the Wisconsin DNR last week to 
get answers about this and a number of other issues regarding Wisconsin's 
sewage blending policies. We will continue to press for accountability and 
transparency on all issues that stand between the citizens and clean water.
If you have suggestions or additional information to share with us, please 
contact us. The more we know, the more we can help.




May 3, 2006

Dumping slips by officials

Members of the commission that governs the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage 
District say they were unaware that virtually raw sewage was dumped into 
Lake Michigan at least three times in 2004.

Journal Sentinel article

Dumping slips by officials
Nearly raw sewage dumped 3 times in '04
By MARIE ROHDE
mrohde at journalsentinel.com
Posted: May 2, 2006
Members of the commission that governs the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage 
District say they were unaware that virtually raw sewage was dumped into 
Lake Michigan at least three times in 2004.


MMSD Dumping
Recent Coverage
4/26/06: Accidental dumping of sewage still a mystery
3/31/06: Dumps violated MMSD permit, DNR says
3/30/06: Partially treated sewage flows into lake in testing mishap

Archive Coverage
Archive: Previous coverage of MMSD and local sewer issues.

Preston Cole, a commissioner who heads the commission's Operations and 
Maintenance Committee, said Tuesday that he is demanding an explanation of 
whether he and others were misled when they were told that the dumping of 
about 12 million gallons of sewage was "blending," a term commonly used to 
describe a process allowed under rare circumstances of partially treating 
sewage at treatment plants.

"Am I concerned about this?" asked Cole, superintendent of environmental 
services for the City of Milwaukee. "You bet I am. I doubt that anyone on 
the commission believed that the effluent received less than partial 
treatment."

Cole said he would demand that officials from MMSD and United Water Service, 
the private firm that operates the sewer system, come before his committee 
Monday and explain what happened.

Kevin Shafer, the sewerage district's executive director, said Tuesday the 
district reported the incident as quickly as possible.

"It never was our intent to hide anything," Shafer said. "In hindsight, 
maybe we could have done it better."

Described as 'blending'
As recently as last week, district officials described the incidents as 
"blending" and made no distinction between those events and others where the 
sewage was partially treated.

The dumping in question occurred in 2004 on March 28, June 19 and June 21 
during relatively dry weather.

During emergency situations - such as heavy rain - the district is allowed 
to dump up to 60 million gallons a day of sewage that skips a portion of the 
treatment process to avoid releasing sewage that has no treatment or to 
avoid the damage that sewage backing up in homes or overwhelming the 
treatment system would cause. The process is commonly known as blending.

"It was definitely not blending," said Charles Burney, a top state 
Department of Natural Resources official who oversees the district. "It 
didn't meet any of the conditions in their permit."

But Burney struggled to describe exactly what happened because a "glitch" in 
the district's 66-page permit never anticipated such an event.

Thus, the DNR was not able to cite the district for the dumping, he said. 
Instead, the DNR issued a letter in December 2004 reprimanding the district 
for not testing the untreated effluent in a timely manner for chlorine, E. 
coli and its pH level before mixing it with fully treated waste, then 
chlorinating it before releasing it into Lake Michigan.

The state Department of Justice brought a lawsuit against MMSD regarding the 
dumping of untreated sewage during heavy storms in May 2004, but the 
"blending" events were not included in the lawsuit.

Both MMSD and officials from United Water maintain that the mere mixing of 
the undiluted waste with the treated effluent constituted blending.

"What happened was disclosed," said John Cheslik, the United Water project 
manager in Milwaukee. "It was all in a document that was sent to the DNR."

Four members of MMSD's governing commission - Cole, West Allis Mayor 
Jeannette Bell, Rep. David Cullen (D-Milwaukee) and Rep. Pedro Colón 
(D-Milwaukee) - apparently never got the document. They said they understood 
that all of the so-called blending events skipped only one step in the 
treatment process.

"If all it got was chlorination, it should have been reported as an 
overflow," Cullen said.

While Burney described the three incidents as dry weather events, John 
Jankowski, the MMSD official in charge of making sure that United Water 
complies with its contract, said it was raining on two of the days.

The flow at the treatment plant was at its highest on June 19 at 120 million 
gallons, less than half of its capacity of 300 million gallons a day.

As much as 10% of the daily flow received no treatment other than 
chlorination but when combined with the sewage that was treated, all of the 
state standards for the effluent were met, according to the DNR.

Investigation began in late '04
The incidents were undetected until September 2004 when district and United 
Water officials began an investigation of an anonymous letter that made 
several allegations, including that sampling reports at the treatment plant 
were cooked "to disguise the true level of human waste entering Lake 
Michigan." While the allegations were never proven, United Water discovered 
the three instances in September.

The incidents were blamed on a faulty piece of equipment in an underground 
channel in June.

Cheslik and Jankowski said they thoroughly explained the mishaps at the Oct. 
25, 2004, commission meeting. A review of the videotape of the meeting shows 
that the two consistently referred to the incidents as "blending" events and 
did not differentiate them from events where the sewage was partially 
treated.