Offshore Outfalls for Treated Municipal Wastewater Discharges, Florida - Admission/Application Essay Example

? Environmental Law Table of Contents E.I du Pont v. Train 3 2. Offshore Outfalls for Treated Municipal Wastewater Discharges, Florida 4 3. Biological Integrity of the Nation's Waters 5 4. Environmental Human Health Risk Assessment 6 5. NRDAR 7 6. Corrosion Proof Fittings v EPA 8 References 10 1. E.I du Pont v. Train The NPDES stands for the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, which is a system that enforces requirements for those who pollute the American waters to get permits for chemical discharges that they emit. This is a mechanism for the control of the chemical discharges under the supervision of the Environmental Protection Agency or EPA, emanating from the Clean Water Act. Either government agencies on the state level, or the EPA, has the right to issue permits that in effect allow the polluters a certain level of emissions for the chemicals for which the permits are issued. This is controversial in its many aspects, including those provisions that relate to exclusion, to the chemicals included for control and supervision, and to such aspects as the cumbersome nature o the application and permit granting processes. 1 The mandate for the EPA to undertake this comes from express provisions in the so-called 1972 Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments , which has given powers to the EPA Administrator to essentially flesh out the technical details relating to the implementation of the Amendment guidelines stated in there. 2 Du Pont v. Train is important in discussions relating to the NPDES program discussed above, as being foundational in the way it establishes the ground rules and the intricacies of the implementation of the program on the ground. This case is foundational for reasons that include that the courts affirmed the power of the EPA to set levels for discharges for chemicals from polluters, to limit the construction of future point sources of pollution, and to essentially that the standards are to be considered as absolute and not case by case, meaning that they are to apply to all polluters regardless of individual circumstances. 3 2. Offshore Outfalls for Treated Municipal Wastewater Discharges, Florida There are various considerations with regard to offshore outfalls for wastewater discharges from municipal treatment plants, in various localities and geographies, and those include the outfalls relative to the possible use of such discharge for recycling for various human and industrial uses, the outfalls relative to the impact of such discharges on the ecology and human health in particular, and the outfalls relative to the set limits as determined by EPA regulations, among others. Also included in the considerations with regard to the reuse of outfalls, after they have been processed and recycled, is with regard to intended use and the degree with which the population accepts or rejects such reuse. For instance, in Florida, studies indicate that there are wide levels of acceptance for the reuse of freshwater recycled from treatment plants for use in agricultural irrigation purposes. Costs of the processing of the wastewater versus the potential gains from reuse, versus, the costs to the environment and to human health of offshore outfalls are also prime considerations, with for example the case in Florida indicating that there are potential long-term hazards at even the allowed emission levels of wastewater offshore to the ecology, owing to the general proximity of the offshore outfalls to marine sanctuaries and important marine ecology assets. These are considerations that ought to weigh in on the decisions of various states to either allow or to disallow offshore outfalls. In the case of Florida, the literature notes that there are serious long-term considerations favoring the further limiting of offshore outfalls in favor of more intensive recycling of such outfalls for various human and agricultural and industrial uses. 4 3. Biological Integrity of the Nation's Waters The phrase is a key aspect of the Clean Water Act or the CWA, and refers in an aspect of to the integrity of American waters, with the other two aspects being physical integrity and chemical integrity. There are standards set with regard to such level of integrity of American waters as envisioned in the act, which have, for their minimum manifestations, that the waters have to allow for fishing and swimming wherever feasible. Fishable is a term that can be tied to the biological integrity clause of the CWA, which implies a level of protection of American waters that allow for the continued proliferation of biological life in those waters, to the extent that those waters remain teeming with fish enough for fishing to be a sustainable activity. This biological integrity clause is beefed and substantiated by strict standards for emissions of chemicals into American waters, with the assumption being that unrestricted and uncontrolled dumping of chemicals into water systems substantially harms the biological integrity of those waters. This also implies looking at the whole ecosystem in the affected waters, and the impacts of chemical emissions from polluters on the ecosystem, from the lowest organism in the water food chains all the way to the highest organisms in those water ecology food chains. 5 The EPA lists several programs regarded as being core to the pursuit of the biological, chemical and physical integrity of American waters. Those are standards establishment for success measurement; the identification of waters that have been polluted, and the pursuit of strategies for their restoration; the control of point sources of water pollutants; the pursuit of strategies for the control of discharges that are considered non-point, or secondary; the wetlands preservation and protection; the protection of the waters of the coasts, via the Program for the National Estuary; and programs to protect large ecosystems in the American waters. 6 4. Environmental Human Health Risk Assessment As the phrase suggests, an environmental human health risk assessment is an assessment of the potential and probable impacts of chemicals found in the environment on the health of humans, both in the present time, as well as moving into the near and far future. The assessment takes various factors into consideration, and the EPA has outlined the different steps in the conduct of such environmental human health risk assessments. Taking a step back, the assessments factor in various considerations, including types of health concerns, probabilities of contraction, levels of risk, degree of susceptibility of people to disease from various levels of environmental stressors, and others. 7 The steps in the conduct of an environmental human health risk assessment are as follows: planning; the identification of the hazards; an assessment of dose vs. response; an assessment of exposure; and the characterization of risk. In the planning step, the EPA researches and plans the assessment process. In the second step, the EPA identifies stressors and their potential impact on people. In the third step, the EPA gauges how dose or exposure relates to human effects, for the identified stressors/chemicals/pollutants. In the third step, the EPA assesses timing, exposure levels, and other relevant contact data between stressors and humans. In the final step, the EPA determines the risk profile for the stressor versus the population subjected to the stressor. 8 This assessment is differentiated from ecological risk assessments, which are assessments of the impact to the ecology of pollutants/chemicals. 9 5. NRDAR NRDAR stands for Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration, and it is a program that as its name connotes is about the restoration of natural habitats and resources that have been severely negatively affected by the contamination of hazardous materials and such things as oil spills. The foundation of the program is to be found in various American laws, with the power resulting from such laws including powers to go after the polluting parties for reparations, via lawsuits, and making use of proceeds from such legal actions to fund restoration programs, among others, and at the very least to fund further work related to assessing the damage and the amount of work to be done to restore the affected natural resource or ecology. A key legal underpinning of the NRDAR is the Oil Pollution Act. 10 One such NRDAR site is the South River site in Virginia, where DuPont has been working in tandem with the legal authorities to complete a thorough assessment of the ecological damage done by the contamination of the river by mercury coming out of a DuPont facility there that was in operation from the 1930s to the 1940's. The authorities and DuPont have basically combed through the differing species in that ecology and assessed mercury levels in those varying species, to assess impact to the overall ecology. The next steps include exhausting the ecology members and determining mercury levels in them, and to be able to come up with a quantified assessment of the overall damage to the ecology, en route to correcting the damage. 11 6. Corrosion Proof Fittings v EPA In Corrosion Proof Fittings v. EPA, the matter that was decided related to the validity of the EPA directive to ban the use of asbestos in manufactured products for human use, arguing that the results of a multiple-year study showed that there are essentially proven adverse health effects to the use of asbestos in such things as pipes for water and other human structural uses that outweighed the potential benefits to their continued use. The EPA made reference to the Toxic Substances Act to justify its so-called Asbestos Ban and Phase Out Rule, or ABPO. The objection from the industry of asbestos brought about a ruling by the Fifth Court of Appeals Circuit that basically negated most of the provisions of the ABPO. There was a failure on the part of the EPA, the court noted, with regard to the provision of a regulation that was had the least burden and was the most reasonable, key qualifiers that were stipulated under the TSCA. This failure stems, in turn from the failure on the part of the EPA to conduct a cost-benefit analysis of all the possible alternatives in the regulations in the TSCA; and two, from the failure of the EPA in undertaking a complete analysis of the availability, and the toxicity, of the materials to be used in place of asbestos. 12 The court, in citing the data about toothpicks, was highlighting the kind of reasoning that could have gone into a reasonable cost vs. benefit analysis that should have gone, according to the court, in the determination by the EPA of the basis for banning asbestos for human use basically. The court was basically saying that where the EPA thinking was to be followed, then banning toothpicks would make sense, because it would save more lives, at less cost, than banning asbestos, which would be far more costly. This citation is with regard to the strict quantification of costs versus benefits in order to justify a ban. The court deems this relevant, but only in the narrow sense of following the strict logic of the arguments presented by the EPA. On the other hand, where the adverse effects have been demonstrated, then the reaction would be to approve the ban. I agree with the EPA valuation and its logic, and disagree overall with the court ruling, which argued its own decision based on technicalities of logic rather than on the overall soundness and intent of the EPA ban, which is to save precious human lives. 13 References Ben Koopman et al. Ocean Outfall Study. University of Florida Department of Environmental Engineering Sciences. (April 18, 2006). http://www.dep.state.fl.us/water/reuse/docs/OceanOutfallStudy.pdf Corrosion Proof Fittings v EPA, 947 F.2d at 1201 n.23. http://www.invispress.com/law/environmental/corrosion.html E.I du Pont de Nemours & Co. v. Train- 430 US 112 (1977) (1977) http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/430/112/ Gale Encyclopedia of Small Business. Clean Water Act. Gale Encyclopedia of Small Business (2013). http://www.answers.com/topic/clean-water-act LexisNexis. NOTE: Corrosion Proof Fittings v. EPA: Asbestos in the Fifth Circuit--A Battle of Unreasonableness. LexisNexis. (1993). https://litigation-essentials.lexisnexis.com/webcd/app?action=DocumentDisplay&crawlid=1&doctype=cite&docid=6+Tul.+Envtl.+L.J.+423&srctype=smi&srcid=3B15&key=4c6e6d06a574fd2f711d2547ea8f24ab US Department of the Interior. Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration Program. Bureau of Land Management. (20 October 2009). http://www.blm.gov/wo/st/en/prog/more/hazardous_materials0/natural_resource_damage.html US Fish and Wildlife Service. NRDAR. Virginia Ecological Services. (6 December 2012). http://www.fws.gov/northeast/virginiafield/contaminants/NRDAR.html United States Environmental Protection Agency. Ecological Risk Assessments. US EPA. 9 May 2012). http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/ecosystem/ecorisk.htm United States Environmental Protection Agency. Human Health Risk Assessment. US EPA. (August 1, 2012). http://www.epa.gov/risk_assessment/health-risk.htm United States Environmental Protaction Agency. The Clean Water Act: Protecting and Restoring Our Nation's Waters. US EPA. (September 20, 2012).http://water.epa.gov/action/cleanwater40/cwa101.cfm http://water.epa.gov/action/cleanwater40/cwa101.cfm Read More