Why NC Water-Quality Plans Must Include SolarBee as Pollution Prevention

Jordan Lake has always been impaired. As a reservoir built on low-lying, nutrient-rich farmland and filled with water that can take more than a year to traverse it, the lake has high nutrient levels and stagnant water that enable detrimental blue-green algae to dominate the beneficial algae at the base of the aquatic food web.

Reservoirs such as the 14,000-acre Jordan Lake are built to control water quantity, not quality. Developing a cost-effective plan to improve Jordan's water quality requires addressing these questions: What is federal policy? Is it working well? If not, how can we do better?

Federal freshwater policy requires implementing the Clean Water Act's watershed management programs, which reduce pollutants such as phosphorus that promote the algae "blooms" that stress water, reduce biodiversity and deplete dissolved oxygen during die-offs, causing fish kills. Current policy does not, however, require implementing the act's waterbody management program to improve quality by treating the reservoir itself. In fact, the EPA de-emphasized waterbody treatments - such as the use of SolarBees that began in Jordan Lake this week - to focus on watershed management without scientific and economic justification. Current policy prescribes "preventive medicine" but not "supportive therapy."

Nationally, 64 percent of lake and reservoir acres are impaired, and only 7.9 percent of about 55,000 freshwater bodies listed as impaired prior to 2003 are restored, mainly small waters fed by pipes (point source) rather than runoff (nonpoint source). And the problem is increasing. Whereas the EPA estimated in 1972 that 10 to 20 percent of lakes and reservoirs were eutrophic, the agency now estimates that about half are. EPA river-and-stream data indicate those with excessive phosphorus increased from 47 percent to 66 percent between 2004 and 2009.

No eutrophic waterbody of at least 1,000 acres and with 90 percent of its nutrient input from runoff has ever attained water quality standards. Jordan and other large, impaired waterbodies will stay impaired as long as policy focuses on watershed management only.

Current "preventive medicine" policy fails because it lacks a sound scientific and economic basis. Point-source pollutants are now only 5 to 10 percent of total inputs nationally, and runoff inputs are increasing. The "best management practices" for runoff are difficult and expensive to implement over large areas, and many are only marginally effective.

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Source: News Observer

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Taxonomy

• Policy
• Environment
• Lake Management