CRWA in the News

EPA says Charles River pollution must be cut
Affirms state findings on phosphorous

By Peter J. Howe, Globe Staff 

Boston Globe, Friday, October 19, 2007

Federal environmental regulators have concluded that phosphorus pollution washing into the Charles River needs to be cut by 54 percent, a policy that could lead to major changes in the design of sewers, streets, and parking lots and potentially restrictions on some homeowners using lawn fertilizer.

Phosphorus pollution comes from sources ranging from septic tanks and leaking sewers to leaves and grass to the residue of gasoline exhaust that gets washed by the rain from streets into the river. Once in the Charles, excess phosphorus can cause problems including toxic algae blooms that make the river unsafe for swimming or boating, inadequate oxygen levels for fish, and growth of plants that slowly choke off the river.

In a report to be released today, the US Environmental Protection Agency affirms a Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection study concluding that current phosphorus levels in the Charles are 117 percent above levels allowed by the Clean Water Act.

The document, called a "total daily maximum load" finding, doesn't set a specific deadline by which phosphorus pollution must be cut, officials said. But it requires that all water-pollution permits and regulations issued by state and local governments begin immediately to incorporate measures aimed at slashing phosphorus pollution within the 297-square-mile watershed zone from which rainfall and melting snow flow into the Charles. The Charles River watershed encompasses 36 cities and towns along the river from Boston to Hopkinton, including parts of Milford, Natick, Needham, and Westwood.

"There's a really serious pollution problem in the river caused by phosphorus," Ken Moraff, director of enforcement for the New England EPA office, said in an interview yesterday. "The whole ecosystem is in trouble because there's too much phosphorus in the water."

 Christopher Kilian, a senior attorney with the Conservation Law Foundation, a Boston environmental group that has lobbied environmental officials to adopt the phosphorus cuts, said the plan for the Charles could become a national model. "We're going to need an aggressive and sustained set of retrofit measures for existing parking lots and roads and rooftops to meet these standards," he said.

But David Begelfer, president of the Massachusetts Association of Industrial and Office Properties, a trade association for landlords and office-park developers, said the EPA policy is unlikely to have a major effect on private developers and big landowners. "The earth is not going to shake on this one," he said.

Begelfer said that in many areas around Boston and the western suburbs, building codes for developing or redeveloping large commercial or industrial areas have recently adopted measures that will go a long way toward reducing phosphorous runoff. For example, some now include requirements for pavement that allows rainfall to trickle into the ground, where it is filtered by the soil, rather than being washed into storm drains.

Constructing "rain gardens" - plantings of trees and shrubs in exposed soil at low spots where rainfall gathers - along streets, driveways, and parking lots is another way to capture and naturally clean phosphorus from water before it returns to the ground.

"The state does not have an ability to reach to existing owners and say you have to do something," Begelfer said, who added that he thinks "it will put pressure on the municipalities" to revamp roads, sidewalks, and storm drains, and find other ways to cut phosphorus pollution.

Geoffrey Beckwith, executive director of the Massachusetts Municipal Association, which represents local governments across the state, said he was concerned that the EPA move could amount to an expensive new "unfunded mandate" - a policy required by the federal government that local governments must pay for. Beckwith said his group would review the policy closely.

Based on where it is most feasible and cost-effective to reduce phosphorous pollution, the EPA is mandating varying reductions according to the kind of terrain. In some forested areas, no reductions are required while commercial and industrial zones and residential zones with apartments and homes on lots of less than one acre must make cuts of 65 percent.

"We're trying to come up with the most realistic targets possible," Moraff said.

High-density residential neighborhoods, defined by the EPA as apartments, multifamily homes, or homes on lots up to 15,000 square feet, and commercial and industrial areas each account for about one-quarter of the phosphorus pollution being washed into the Charles, Moraff said.

Nothing is definite, but Moraff said one of "a whole range of practices" for reducing phosphorus pollution could be local restrictions on using phosphorus-containing lawn fertilizer, especially in more densely populated neighborhoods near the Charles.

Robert L. Zimmerman, executive director of the Charles River Watershed Association, an environmental group that had to cancel a 2006 swimming race after a bloom of the toxic algae, said it will take months or years to figure out the best ways to cut phosphorus pollution.

"I'm not sure yet that anybody's on top of exactly what to do," Zimmerman said. "People assumed that it's all lawn fertilizer, but it's not, really. It's pollution that comes from parking lots and roadways." Some of the most effective solutions, Zimmerman said, include planting more trees and replacing hard surfaces with grass and vegetation.