RD17 - Toxics Reduction in State Waters State Fiscal Year 2008


Executive Summary:
This annual Toxics Reduction in State Waters (TRISWat) Report is provided pursuant to Virginia Code § 62.1 - 44.17:3. The primary objective of the TRISWat Report is to document the Commonwealth’s progress toward reducing toxics in state waters and improving water quality. This commitment includes three principal types of activities: (1) the prevention of contamination of the Commonwealth’s waters by toxics, (2) the continued monitoring of those waters for the presence of toxics and (3) the implementation of remedial measures to reduce and/or eliminate toxics found in the Commonwealth’s waters.

Prevention

Permitting: During state fiscal year 2008 (SFY08), The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality’s (DEQ’s) Toxics Management Program (TMP) included 307 reporting facilities with 749 outfalls that had active permit-defined toxics limits in their effluents, as recorded in DEQ’s Comprehensive Environmental Data System (CEDS) database. Less than 2% of the 8,484 reported individual parameter measurements exceeded permitted maximum concentrations and almost all of those were incidental elevations of total or dissolved metals in discharges from municipal wastewater treatment plants.

Pollution Prevention: The 2008 Pollution Prevention Annual Report is now available on the DEQ WebPages at http://www.deq.virginia.gov/p2/pdf/report07.pdf. Among the highlights of Pollution Prevention successes affecting reduction of toxics in state waters in the past year are the following:

* At the end of 2008 there were approximately 450 facilities in the Virginia Environmental Excellence Program (VEEP), 24 of which received special recognition during 2008. Virginia is still the only state in the nation to provide performance-based permit fee discounts (from 2 to 20%) for going beyond compliance. In 2008 over $43,000 in fee discounts were distributed among almost 100 VEEP facilities that implemented and carried out their Environmental Management System (EMS) Plans.

* A review of VEEP annual performance for 2008 reported a reduction of 628 tons in the use of hazardous materials and a decrease of 1,733 tons in the disposal of hazardous wastes. The use of recycled materials increased by 125,367 tons, 62,924 tons of which were non-hazardous materials.

* Total water use increased by 585 million gallons during the past year, but the use of reclaimed/recycled water increased by 23 million gallons.

* Releases to the atmosphere were also significantly reduced: toxics emissions were reduced by 19 tons, NOx emissions were reduced by 403 tons, SOx emissions were reduced by 3,640 tons, emissions of volatile organics were reduced 220 tons and particulate emissions were reduced by 2,400 tons.

* DEQ’s voluntary mercury reduction initiatives also have been successful. The “Virginia Switch Out” Project for the recycling of automotive mercury switches pledged the annual removal of 1500 switches, equivalent to five pounds of mercury. Numerous facilities have also pledged to recycle energy efficient fluorescent light bulbs, which also contain small quantities of mercury. (Refer to DEQ’s Mercury Reduction WebPages - http://www.deq.virginia.gov/p2/mercury/homepage.html.)

* Virginia’s 400+ members of the Businesses for the Bay (B4B) Program have been responsible for more than 750 million pounds of waste reduction and recycling since the program began, at a savings exceeding $12 million. Unfortunately, EPA’s Chesapeake Bay Program has suspended its financial support for the B4B Program. DEQ’s Office of Pollution Prevention will continue to support the B4B Program and its Virginia participants whenever resources are available.

* This year Virginia National Partnership for Environmental Priorities (NPEP) facilities have pledged to reduce priority chemical use by 6,420 pounds: 200 lbs of mercury, 5,020 lbs of PCBs, and 1,200 lbs of lead.

Monitoring

Toxics Release Inventory (TRI): The March 2008 Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) Report is available on the DEQ Website at: http://www.deq.virginia.gov/sara3. The TRI Report summarizes data from calendar year 2006, during which 467 facilities filed 1786 individual reports. Statewide toxic releases to the water totaled approximately 19.5 million pounds or 29% of the total onsite releases to all media during 2006. Nitrate compounds (19.02 million tons) represented 98.7% of the top ten TRI chemicals released to water. Nitrates, however, are of much more concern for their effect as nutrients than as toxics. Toxics criteria for nitrates in drinking water were not exceeded.

Water Quality Monitoring Programs: Periodic updates and revisions of the agency’s Monitoring (WQM) Strategy are necessary as part of the continual planning process within DEQ’s WQM and Assessment Program. The monitoring program has now fully implemented two major changes in the 2007 WQM Strategy that affected toxics monitoring and assessment, the adaptation of the monitoring program to the newly delineated sub-watersheds of the National Watershed Boundary Dataset (NWBD) and the realignment of the monitoring year to correspond with the calendar year rather than the state fiscal year.

The summer of 2007 (July – September) was the eighth year of DEQ’s estuarine probabilistic monitoring and the spring and summer of 2008 comprised the eighth year of its freshwater probabilistic monitoring (ProbMon). Because of resource limitations, the sampling and analysis for sediment organics was suspended at freshwater ProbMon sites in SFY07. The results of spring freshwater probabilistic sampling of sediment and dissolved metals for Monitoring Year 2008 are included in this report. Sediment chemistry (metals and organics) and toxicity sampling were continued at estuarine ProbMon sites during the 2007 season (SFY08) with resources provided by a probabilistic survey-targeted supplement to the federal §106 grant, complimented with Chesapeake Bay Program support.

In the 2008 Clean Water Act 305(b)/303(d) Integrated Water Quality Assessment Report sediment chemistry, sediment toxicity and benthic taxonomic results from DEQ’s Estuarine Probabilistic Monitoring Program were used for a toxics-related “Weight-of-Evidence” assessment of aquatic life use at 100 estuarine sites. These results, primarily from minor tidal tributaries, complement those from the Chesapeake Bay Program’s benthic probabilistic monitoring program, which emphasizes the mainstems of major tidal tributaries and the Bay itself. The corresponding Estuarine ProbMon results from 2006, 2007 and 2008, an additional 150 sites, will be incorporated into the 2010 Integrated Report. An additional line of chemical evidence, based on the solubility of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) present in the sediment, has now been added to the weight of evidence assessment procedure.

The 2008 workplan for the Fish Tissue and Sediment Monitoring Program identified 85 tentative sampling sites, from which results will become available next year. Analytical results from the program’s 2007 sampling are now available. In all, a total of 842 individual or composite fish tissue samples were collected. To date, 581 results have been returned for tissue metals, 471 for PCBs, and 231 for pesticides. No PAH analyses were carried out in 2007-2008. Although sediment samples were collected in association with each of the sampling sites, they have been archived as frozen reference samples and will only be analyzed if fish tissue results indicate a serious local problem. The most recent data and planning updates on this program are available at http://www.deq.virginia.gov/fishtissue/.

Thirty-five years of monitoring have revealed that the distribution and concentrations of toxics vary greatly among samples, whether they are nearby duplicates collected on the same day or sequential samples collected over various time spans. No definitive long-term trends have been detected to document consistent changes in toxics-related water quality. The probabilistic monitoring of toxics during the past seven years has demonstrated that statewide, concentrations of dissolved trace metals and organics in ambient waters are generally representative of global background levels, except near confirmed or suspected point sources. Periodic reports on the probabilistic results will provide a baseline for future comparisons. Recent developments of more efficient sampling designs, sampling technologies and analytical methods offer promise of more effective documentation of short-term changes and mid-term trends in the near future.

Assessment and Remediation

Assessment: The 2008 Integrated Report identified 2,448 miles of rivers, 111,384 acres of lakes and reservoirs, and 2,084 square miles of estuaries impaired by specifically identified toxics. Of these, over 99% were listed for fish consumption advisories, primarily for PCBs (41.6% of toxics-impaired rivers, 64.9% of lakes, 99.0% of estuaries) or mercury (54.9% of rivers, 34.6% of lakes, <0.4% of estuaries). Because the number of segments united into each TMDL varies with the hydrography and the extent of the impairment, the exact number and schedule of toxics-related TMDLs to be developed and implemented is not certain. DEQ’s PCB Strategy (2005) establishes priorities for TMDL development and discusses various options for remediation. Analyses of the 2010 Integrated Report will begin in the spring of 2009, and any new PCB-impaired segments will be integrated into the Strategy.

Remediation / Reduction: The agency’s TMDL history, current status and development plans are available on the DEQ WebPages at http://www.deq.virginia.gov/tmdl/. A number of individual toxics-related TMDLs have been developed and approved since 2002 – two in 2002, three in 2004, and 16 in 2007, all for PCBs in the Shenandoah (five) or in other Virginia tributaries to the Potomac (16), and two for benthic impairments with toxic stressors (copper + zinc, and lead + PAHs). The sixteen Potomac tributary PCB TMDLs were incorporated into the interstate Potomac River PCB TMDL developed under the auspices of the Interstate Commission for the Potomac River Basin. This TMDL was submitted in November 2007 and was subsequently approved by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Several additional toxics-related TMDLs are in development. Four TMDLs for PCBs in the Roanoke River are scheduled for completion in 2009, and an additional four (also for PCBs) in the New River Basin, will be completed by 2010. In November 2008 EPA requested additional funding (total of $3.7 million) for the cleanup of one former West Virginia industrial site in the Bluestone prior to completing the TMDLs in the New Basin. Seven VDH fish advisory (mercury) TMDLs are scheduled for 2010, three in the Shenandoah and four in the North Fork Holston basins. Benthic TMDLs for 11 PAH-impaired segments in the Tennessee/Big Sandy Basin and a single benthic TMDL in the Roanoke Basin (toxicant unknown) will be developed by 2010.

As these TMDLs are completed and scheduled for implementation, and others are added, follow-up monitoring will be initiated to evaluate their effectiveness in reducing toxics contamination. The effective implementation of these TMDLs should result in measurable reductions of contaminants in a number of the state’s watersheds within a few years.

Continued Commitment

DEQ continues its commitment to toxics reduction by the prevention of contamination, continued water quality monitoring, and the implementation of remedial measures. The Virginia Pollutant Discharge Elimination System and the Pollution Prevention Program join with other agencies, programs and stakeholders to control and reduce toxics release. The Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) and various water programs constantly monitor and document the release to, and the presence and movement of toxics in aquatic environments. Close coordination between monitoring and assessment activities will identify new sources of contamination as they occur and document the effectiveness of load allocations and other remedial measures developed and implemented by the TMDL Program. The agency anticipates significant reductions of toxics in the state’s waters as a result of continued TMDL implementation.