THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, November 11, 1996 TAG: 9611110037
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: 191 lines
Peering through a microscope, Karen Harr views tiny bugs lounging in a drop of sewage. They appear fat and happy, their bellies bulging from a feast of nitrogen and phosphorus, two pollutants that bedevil the health of the Chesapeake Bay.
``That's them, that's our babies,'' says Harr, manager of the Virginia Initiative Plant in Norfolk, tucked quietly off Hampton Boulevard on the banks of the Elizabeth River.
Run by the Hampton Roads Sanitation District, the sewage treatment plant is one of six in Virginia that rely on nature more than chemicals to process human waste. Here, about 40 million gallons of wastes arrive daily from Norfolk, Portsmouth and parts of Chesapeake.
The hungry microorganisms, Harr and others believe, represent the future in combating nutrient pollution in the Bay. The bugs eat nitrogen and phosphorus, the two most troublesome nutrients, which can rob water of life-sustaining oxygen, cause algae blooms and generally debase water quality in the Bay.
But unlike neighboring Maryland, which is spending millions of dollars to upgrade dozens of treatment plants with this so-called ``biological nutrient removal'' technology, or BNR, Virginia so far has balked at making such an investment.
Some leaders in the Bay's cleanup fear that unless these critters are incorporated into other major plants on the James, York, Rappahannock and Potomac rivers, a key goal of reducing nutrients by 40 percent by 2000 will not be attained.
``I'm not sure how we'd get there'' without BNR, said Bill Matuszeski, director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Chesapeake Bay office in Annapolis, Md.
Frustrated that Virginia has not anted up, state Del. W. Tayloe Murphy Jr., an environmental advocate whose district touches the Potomac River, intends to introduce legislation this winter to fund millions of dollars worth of BNR improvements.
At a meeting on the subject this summer, Murphy, a normally genteel Northern Neck Democrat, called Virginia's inaction ``a disgrace.'' He angrily noted that the commonwealth, with more Bay coastline than any other state, spends less than 1 percent of its overall budget on environmental protection.
Also attending that meeting was Becky Norton Dunlop, Virginia's secretary of natural resources, the state's top environmental official. In response to criticism that her draft plan to cut nutrients in the Potomac was heavy on ideas but offered no state money, Dunlop said: ``Our goal has been not to focus on the funding question.''
An appointee of Gov. George F. Allen, Dunlop generally opposes government spending initiatives; similarly, she has suggested that other, less costly alternatives be explored for reducing nutrients in the Potomac and throughout Virginia's half of the Bay.
More recently, though, the Allen administration has warmed somewhat to financial assistance. In its updated nutrient plan for the Potomac, released last week, Virginia lists partial state funding for BNR as ``an option'' for future discussion.
``Overwhelmingly, what we heard (from local officials along the Potomac and elsewhere) was a need to cost-share these improvements,'' said Gary Waugh, a spokesman for the state Department of Conservation and Recreation.
Waugh said that, according to state calculations, it would cost between $150 million and $175 million to squeeze a 40 percent reduction in nutrients from the Shenandoah and Potomac river basins.
Without exception, experts say BNR's biggest problem is its expense. Estimates for adding BNR technology to eight major treatment plants on the Potomac, which feeds the most nutrients into the Bay of any Virginia river, range from $20 million to $80 million - and that doesn't include accompanying construction costs.
The Virginia Initiative Plant, in Norfolk, cost $60 million when it was built in 1991 on top of an old landfill near Old Dominion University, said James R. Borberg, general manager of the Hampton Roads Sanitation District.
Almost half of that money came from the federal government, Borberg said. However, with political attention now focused on downsizing government and deficit reduction, Washington no longer offers such grants. Instead, the states are being asked to play the role of banker.
To Borberg and others in the sewage business, if Virginia wants to support BNR in the name of helping the Bay, great. They believe the technology works and are more than willing to install it.
But they also expect financial aid in doing so. Without state help, they say, their ratepayers would see sewage bills go through the roof.
``If this is a partnership, as everyone says it is, then shouldn't the state be a partner in helping fund this effort?'' asked James T. Canaday, chairman of a nutrient committee for the Virginia Association of Municipal Wastewater Agencies.
The group is working with Murphy to prepare a financial-aid bill for the upcoming General Assembly in Richmond, which opens in January.
HRSD operates nine sewage plants in Hampton Roads. Only the Virginia Initiative Plant incorporates BNR; the Nansemond treatment plant, in Suffolk, is now being outfitted with the technology. Completion is expected in early 1997.
On a recent tour of the Norfolk plant, Harr explained that, essentially, her job as manager is to create the proper climate for the bugs to thrive. ``I'm kind of a gardener,'' she said. ``It's as much art as science.''
Most of the action occurs in three big basins, each connected by a maze of pipes and passages. Sewage is filtered and then forced from basin to basin, where different bugs eat different pollutants under different conditions.
The whole process takes between four and six hours. The resulting wastewater, almost clear and with barely a trace of nitrogen or phosphorus, is then fed back into the Elizabeth River through a thin canal.
When the bug population gets too high - the plant runs best with about 250,000 pounds of organisms in the loop - Harr directs her staff to remove a portion, incinerate them along with their habitat of muddy glop, and start growing some more.
The incinerated material, which resembles red dust, is either trucked to a landfill for burial or made into ornamental animals that HRSD markets as gifts for display in backyard gardens or patios.
HRSD holds a patent on this technology, which uses slightly smaller basins and therefore takes a shorter time than other BNR systems.
Throughout the Bay watershed, 592 major sewage plants discharge treated wastes into a river, stream or harbor that ultimately empties into the Bay, according to EPA statistics. Of those, 32 are equipped with BNR.
Maryland leads the way, with 22 plants. Virginia is second, with six. Pennsylvania has two.
Washington, D.C., operates one BNR facility, and a federal outlet at Fort Meade in Maryland also is equipped with a biological system, according to the EPA.
By 2000, when the Bay states are supposed to meet the 40 percent nutrient-reduction goal, that number of BNR plants is expected to rise to 76, said Allison Wiedeman, an environmental engineer with the EPA's Bay program in Annapolis.
Almost all of the upgraded plants are in Maryland, where the state is issuing as much as $320 million in tax-guaranteed bonds to help local governments pay for BNR, according to the Maryland Department of Environment.
Virginia is slated to add two new systems; one of those is HRSD's Nansemond plant, which is incorporating BNR without state aid, Borberg said.
If the commonwealth does not help finance more upgrades, Bay cleanup leaders say, the most likely alternative for meeting the 40 percent target would be tighter controls on farming and agriculture.
Fertilizers and animal wastes are chief contributors of nutrients. And until now, most states in the Bay cleanup have opted for voluntary regulations of such farm runoff.
These voluntary controls - including grassy buffers along waterways, fencing to block cattle from wading into streams, and alternative fertilizers - have helped lower nutrient levels throughout the Bay.
But, as the EPA reports, the watershed has a long way to go to reach 40 percent, especially with nitrogen. And without BNR, environmentalists and government officials would likely turn to farmers to get more reductions.
A ban on phosphates in Virginia, passed in 1987, has greatly decreased phosphorus levels. The EPA reports that the reduction rate for phosphorus in the lower Bay is, percentage-wise, ``in the upper 20s to low 30s.''
The rate of reduction for nitrogen, however, hovers in the ``upper teens.'' And in some river systems, the nitrogen loads have increased in recent years, said the EPA's Matuszeski.
``I'd say BNR is definitely critical to get in the Potomac, and likely critical in the James,'' Matuszeski said. ``Getting the others (river systems in Virginia) would definitely help, and certainly would keep us from going full bore on agriculture.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
LAWRENCE JACKSON
The Virginian-Pilot
Microorganisms thrive in basins at the Virginia Initiative Plant in
Norfolk, eating nitrogen and phosphorus. The two are among
pollutants that people working to clean up the Bay want to see cut
40 percent.
RIVER POLLUTION
GRAPHIC
[For a copy of the graphic, see microfilm for this date.]
MICHAEL HALL
The Virginian-Pilot
SOURCE: U.S. Geological Survey, Richmond and Towson, Md.;
Susquehanna River Basin Commission, Pa.
About Biological Nutrient Removal (BNR):
Some say it represents the future in combatting nutrient
pollution in the Chesapeake Bay.
Tiny bugs literally eat nitrogen and phosphorus, the two most
troublesome nutrients, which can rob water of life-sustaining
oxygen, cause algae blooms and generally debase water quality in the
Bay.
Unlike Maryland, which is spending millions of dollars to upgrade
dozens of treatment plants with BNR, Virginia so far has balked at
making such an investment.
LAWRENCE JACKSON PHOTOS
The Virginian-Pilot
In the third stage of water treatment at the Virginia Initiative
Plant, in Norfolk, microorganisms eat pollutants in sewage. Sewage
is moved from basin to basin for consumption by different bugs. The
cleaned water is returned to the Elizabeth River.
Norfolk's Virginia Initiative Plant cost $60 million to build, about
half of it federal. Adding biological nutrient removal technology to
eight major plants on the Potomac would cost $20 million to $80
million.
KEYWORDS: CHESAPEAKE BAY ENVIRONMENT POLLUTION by CNB