Legislature(1995 - 1996)
02/20/1996 10:07 AM House O&G
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* first hearing in first committee of referral
+ teleconferenced
= bill was previously heard/scheduled
+ teleconferenced
= bill was previously heard/scheduled
HB 342 - WATER QUALITY STANDARDS CHAIRMAN ROKEBERG announced that next on the agenda was HB 342 an act relating to water quality. Chairman Rokeberg, sponsor of HB 342, said he introduced this bill last session as an attempt to reduce the controversy around regulations issued by the last Administration. During the last interim, meetings were held between representatives of the Administration, industry, and environmental agencies resulting in a number of resolutions and changes in regulations. He said the issues of mixing zones and sediment were not addressed and it is those areas that he wished to address in HB 342. CHAIRMAN ROKEBERG added that he has an amendment which he will bring forth later in the meeting. Number 1975 NANCY HILLSTRAND, Pioneer Alaska Fisheries, testified via teleconference from Homer. She had hoped there would have been a short explanation of HB 342. She said water quality is her main concern as she is in the fisheries processing business. She hoped that the water in Alaska would stay at the highest quality. She stated that it was not good to enhance businesses at the risk of degrading the water supply. She added that her business seeks to maintain good water standards, and she would hope other businesses would strive to do so also. She said we will pay for the water quality in the long run and hoped that the legislature would honor the water quality that we deserve here in Alaska. Number 2065 SARAH HANNAN, Executive Director, Alaska Environmental Lobby, Incorporated, was next to testify. She said her organization is a coalition of 20 environmental groups across the state of Alaska. She said the organization has been incorporated for 15 years in Alaska working with the legislature and has a two-fold mission. She said this mission is to work not only on behalf of the coalition but to work with members of the coalition to give them skills in dealing with the legislature. She said they have month long lobbyist who come down from various parts of Alaska to learn about the process. She then introduced Shirley Buckholz, as one of their newest volunteers and said Ms. Buckholz has been working on the water quality issue. SHIRLEY BUCKHOLZ, Lobbyist, Alaska Environmental Lobby, Incorporated, read from a sponsor statement. "The Alaska Environmental Lobby, Incorporated, opposes HB 342, `An act relating to water quality.' Water that has been impaired by humans and their activity needs to be cleaned back up. An increase in the loading of the pollutants will move those pollutants further into other waters. We need to clean these waters up by starting at the original source and discharging higher quality water back into waters that we have previously damaged. HB 342 violates the intent of the Federal Clean Water Act to keep all waters fishable and swimable. HB 342 ignores the fact that additional dirty discharge will cause greater downstream impact, while treated water could improve downstream conditions. For example the Red Dog Mine background streams are not capable of supporting aquatic life in their natural state. The Alaska Clean Water Alliance (ACWA) is now working with the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) and Cominco to help facilitate new permits for the mine recognizing the fact they will not require the mine to discharge at pristine conditions. The Red Dog Creek didn't support aquatic life due to the natural metal content there, not prior human disruption. The current Alaska water quality standards allow the use of site specific criteria. This specifically deals with natural conditions and problems. Our current standards work. HB 342 allows our streams and rivers to be polluted. Please oppose it." MS. BUCKHOLZ then read from her own statement, "This language, `may not require a higher discharge water quality standard for water used than water received for use,' to me this means something like the Sitka Mill, which has been closed for a couple of years, would, if it had not been closed down, be able to dump dirty water. Originally when the mill started the water was clean but after years of dumping this is not the case. If this bill were in place, as written at the time the mill was closed, they would have been able to continue to operate while dumping poor quality water even though the water they were dumping into was clean when the mill originally opened. Since the water is now of poor quality they could continue dumping in water of poor quality. This would apply be it oil and gas, logging mills, placer mining or whatever. Mother Earth can only sustain so much of this. Doing away with laws requiring clean-up of water you have previously mucked up and allowing the poor quality dumping to continue is no better than having no laws regarding clean-up." Number 2228 REPRESENTATIVE OGAN clarified that Ms. Buckholz was his constituent and invited her to discuss issues of concern to her with him. He said it is of benefit to the state that citizens get involved with the legislative process. Number 2253 REPRESENTATIVE BRICE asked for background on the connection mentioned between the Red Dog Mine and the Alaska Alliance for Clean Water (ACWA) in their attempt to establish clean water standards. Number 2277 MS. HANNAN said the ACWA is one of the 20 member groups. She said the arrangement has come about through a suit placed against Cominco. The alliance is now in the settlement process, and is participating in facilitating their additional permits to operate. She said she would get the contact name and phone number of Gershon Cohen of the ACWA. Number 2317 ALICE BULLINGTON, UNOCAL, testified via teleconference from Anchorage. She read a statement into the record, "UNOCAL supports the goal of HB 342 which would establish state water quality standards that are no more stringent than the federal standards unless, on a case by case basis, scientific and economic evidence justifies more stringent state regulations. UNOCAL feels that the state water quality standards should be consistent with federal requirements, regulations should require only EPA approved measurement methods, and allowances should be made for discharge waters to match the quality of receiving waters. The state is required to amend its regulations only when changes to federal regulations result in more restrictive standards. The state should also be required to change its standards when the federal regulations become less stringent. UNOCAL encourages agencies to develop efficient methods of modifying existing regulations to reflect changes in federal standards. And finally, UNOCAL feels that there should be established review criteria for evaluating the merit of the argument for having state regulations that would be more stringent than federal requirements. Thank you for the opportunity to provide testimony on the proposed bill." Number 2390 REPRESENTATIVE GARY DAVIS asked if Ms. Bullington would elaborate on her company's utilization of mixing zones and the studies of producing downstream sediment. Number 2404 MS. BULLINGTON said recently UNOCAL has gone through a rigorous process to determine what the impact of our mixing zones are in the Cook Inlet, including permanent mixing zone studies. She said they have found that there has not been an impact on the water of Cook Inlet from their continuing operations. She added that UNOCAL has done the most rigorous studies in the state of Alaska. She said these studies have incorporated over 800 modeling runs in an effort to determine what the worst case scenario would be in the Cook Inlet. TAPE 96-11, SIDE B Number 000 CHAIRMAN ROKEBERG asked if she had any comments about the language of HB 342 involving the water quality criteria and standards. Number 015 MS. BULLINGTON said the initial draft of HB 342 is very good. She said she was aware of the discussions on how to change the language and expressed her willingness to help form a final draft of HB 342. Number 045 SUSAN BRALEY, Chief, Technical Services and Program Development, Division of Air and Water Quality, Department of Environmental Conservation, was next to testify. She read a statement into the record, "among other things, our section is responsible for managing and administering the Alaska Water Quality Standards, which are regulations designed to protect the water quality of the state of Alaska. I am here today to testify on behalf of the department on HB 342, an act relating to water quality. The department has concerns with this legislation because the statutory changes it proposes are difficult to interpret and would unduly limit the flexibility of establishing water quality criteria or permiting limits for the measurement of sediment, and also for waters already polluted or impaired. Some of our concerns include: just overall the language in HB 342 appears to incorrectly using the terms for water quality criteria, water quality standards, and effluent limit discharges." She said she would be willing to explain how those terms are used and why the legislation is confusing. "This leads to difficulty in interpreting the legislation and how it relates to the existing Alaska Water Quality Standards regulations. As read, it is not clear what the intent of HB 342 is. For example in Section 3(a), it appears to be to limit the measurement of sediment to determine water quality in the water quality standards, but this change would also affect other regulations that the department has, for example, in our waste water regulations the efficiency of some treatment processes such as classical sewage treatment are historically described in terms of suspended solids. Because this bill would require that you could only measure in terms of settleable solids, it would prohibit the ability to use suspended solids as a monitoring tool or a measurement tool. Subsection (b) is also difficult to interpret. In the instance where it appears to say that the department cannot apply an effluent limit that is more restrictive than federal water quality standards. The language also suggests that the effluent limit can not be more strict than the quality of the intake water, although it may also be interpreted to mean the upstream water or receiving water. The bill does not recognize that some waters are already polluted. This bill would limit the ability to clean the waters back up to their original condition, since the language suggests that an effluent limit cannot be more strict than the quality of the intake water. I would like to note that the department already has the flexibility in existing statutes and regulations to deal with situations where the natural quality of the receiving water is above applicable receiving water quality. As a final note, there has been some interest at the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to assume the federal National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permitting program, since it appears the DEC could implement the program with more flexibility that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is willing to use. If language in HB 342 were included in the DEC statutes, the department would not be able to assume the NPDES program, since it would prohibit application of EPA effluent limitation guidelines for suspended solids effluent limits and therefore EPA would not agree to allow DEC to take over the NPDES program. The department appreciates the opportunity to testify on HB 342." MS. BRALEY said she would be available to answer any questions and would be happy to work with the legislators on HB 342. Number 177 REPRESENTATIVE OGAN said the intent of HB 342 is to bring some common sense into the regulatory schemes. He said several of his constituents, miners in particular, have had problems with needing to have water that was cleaner than the water upstream. He asked if DEC reviews situations on a case by case basis. He again referred to the case of water that goes through a heavy metal area before it reaches the mining area, but that the miners are required to clean up the water at a cost prohibitive rate. Number 228 MS. BRALEY said the situation faced is that miners are required to get a federal NPDES permit, which creates limitations are outside the DEC's ability to do anything. She said on review of HB 342, it appeared that this was one of the things that the legislation was trying to correct by the bill's description of taking sediment and describing it as settleable solids rather than suspended solids. She didn't believe that HB 342 would correct the situation with the NPDES permits because DEC does not have primacy, therefore EPA is the agency that determines what the discharge limitations should be. She said DEC has been working with both the industry and EPA to reach a common sense approach. Number 285 MS. BRALEY referred back to Representative Brice's question regarding the Red Dog Creek where the intake water doesn't support any life, and it is actually being cleaned up to the point where fish are going up farther in the stream then they have ever gone up before. She said DEC is working with Red Dog and the EPA to go through the reclassification as well as using site specific criteria for the Red Dog Creek so that the miners won't ever have to go through this situation again by removing the strictest and highest use of water quality of that stream, which is drinking water. She said DEC has a section in their regulations which allows them to look at natural background quality and set site specific criteria that would apply to that specific water. MS. BRALEY said that the Red Dog Creek issue is a complicated issue and the DEC is trying to use a couple of mechanisms to create a situation that will last a long time. Number 344 REPRESENTATIVE FINKELSTEIN asked if the DEC had discretion to consider the issues in HB 342 in regards to intake water. Number 355 MS. BRALEY said DEC does for state permits. She said DEC does have the ability to deal with natural background conditions in setting discharge limitations already, so HB 342 would increase their ability. She said, what HB 342 does not do, is resolve the issue of the NPDES permit and how it is applied. REPRESENTATIVE FINKELSTEIN asked if DEC has the ability to consider settleable solids where it is biologically appropriate. Number 394 MS. BRALEY said yes they do. She said DEC revised the Water Quality Standards in January of 1995. She said sediment is listed as a criteria and at that time there was a lot of discussion about this issue. She said this discussion included whether you used the Imhoff Cone which measures what settles out versus the total suspended solids. She said the DEC clarified in the January 1995 regulations, that for purposes of measuring sediment, it was specified that it is would use the settleable solid method. She reiterated the problem of HB 342, referring to only using settleable solids as discharges. She said this takes it out of the criteria description and puts it into another description. It is common with NPDES and state permits to require that a Total Suspended Solids (TSS) be used as a measurement to see how you are doing. She referred to her experience of using this method when she worked at a seafood processing plant in Kodiak. She said TSS would not be able to be used as a monitoring tool under HB 342, a tool commonly used by industry. Number 468 REPRESENTATIVE FINKELSTEIN asked if the most critical factor, from a fishery perspective, was suspended rather the settle solids. Number 489 MS. BRALEY said she was not a fish biologist, but she said she would assume that would be where you would want to know what the TSS was. She said DEC is doing a lot with water quality standards at this time and referred to mixing zone language up for public review. Number 512 CHAIRMAN ROKEBERG referred to a document sent from the Governor's office, contained in the committee packet, which is an update of what DEC is doing. He encouraged any committee members to submit any written questions to Ms. Braley. Number 559 REPRESENTATIVE OGAN made a motion to set forth Amendment 1 on the table for discussion. REPRESENTATIVE FINKELSTEIN asked if the committee could wait on adopting the Amendment until the committee acted on HB 342. CHAIRMAN ROKEBERG said a CSHB 342 would be brought forth at a later meeting. He said Amendment 1 requires the commissioner to adjust the Alaskan regulations to meet any changes in EPA regulations whether they increase or decrease in severity.
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