Beach-goers
won't be able to find out whether or not any of the Combined
Sewer Overflows in NJ have bypassed raw sewage from their 217
outfalls until 2016.
The
25 new CSO permits that were signed
off in January have pushed back mandatory Public Notification.
The
Effective Date of Permit (EDP) for the 25 permits is July 1, 2015.
Warning signs on outfalls won't be required for 6
months, until January 2016. Web pages (or hotlines) wont be
required until
July of 2016.
New
York's Sewage
Right-To-Know
law was enacted May 1, 2013. Governor Christie pocket
vetoed a similar NJ bill (S-831)
in January
of 2014.
Public
Notification is part of the EPA's
Nine Minimum Controls for CSOs. These have to be implemented
first. The Long
Term Control Plans have 5 years. This assumes there are no
extensions. Not a good bet. CSOs date back to the mid-nineteenth
century, when they were a good idea.
Part
of the trash from CSOs that lands on beaches in Monmouth and Ocean
counties - when
the wind and currents are blowing our way - are whitish-gray
clumps called “grease balls” or "sewage
cakes". They are the Fats, Oil, and
Grease (FOG)
that have hardened
into "soap"
that is scoured off CSO pipes when it rains. They have tested
higher
than 160,000 bacteria colonies. Currently, beaches close when
there are more than 104 colonies of enterococcus bacteria.
It's
not just about bacteria. Fats are made of organic carbon that easily
adsorbs chemicals. In 2008, the New
York-New Jersey Harbor Estuary Program
reported that the average concentrations of PCBs, pesticides,
dioxins/furans, cadmium, and mercury were higher in the CSO and
stormwater discharges than in treated sewage effluents. The USGS
found that CSOs can also be an important
source of hormones and other wastewater micropollutants. Similar work
Europe
found that CSOs contained numerous priority
pollutants.
Some
CSOs bypass sewage into the Hudson-Raritan Estuary when it rains as
little as one-tenth
of an inch.
Meanwhile, If You Are So Inclined
You
can sign up for email alerts about NY CSOs here,
or you can just look at the most current reports in
this spreadsheet. The list goes back to the beginning of the
program in May of 2013.
There
is also a little known, convoluted, quirky, effective gauntlet you
can run through if you really, really want to find out if there has
been a CSO sewage bypass in NJ: NJDEP's online database, Data
Miner. Here's how
you would use it.
