Running your kitchen faucet and suspecting the water is contaminated can be a scary thought.

A number of Wisconsinites are familiar with this, and there are calls to bolster a program that helps with well replacements.

Tom Van Loh and his wife live in a farming community in Marathon County. They do not farm, but their property is surrounded by cropland. Van Loh said over time, they had a buildup of nitrates in their well, with test results eventually showing excessive levels. County officials helped them apply for aid through the State Well Compensation Grant Program, which funded a reverse osmosis system. It was a lifesaver for the couple.

"We knew for years that we were drinking contaminated water," Van Loh noted. "It gave us a lot of peace of mind."

Van Loh pointed out they likely would not have been able to afford the roughly $12,000 cost and they no longer have to stock up on bottled water. Agencies and assistance groups report waiting lists for the grants, saying eligibility is pretty restrictive when nitrates are involved. Federal pandemic aid extended the program temporarily but the funds eventually ran out.

Chase Cummings, county conservationist for the Dunn County Environmental Services Department, said agencies like his are monitoring increases in nitrate contamination in certain areas. He agreed existing eligibility requirements for the well compensation program make it hard for people to clean up their drinking water, especially when you focus on farm runoff.

"Nitrate concentrations must exceed 40 parts per million," Cummings explained. "The health standard is 10 parts per million. So, you'd have to have a very high nitrate concentration in your private well. And if you were to use the current well comp program eligibility, we would have one individual eligible."

It puts many other property owners in a bind because they do not qualify. Beyond fostering more conversations about expanding access to grants, Cummings stressed county governments are being more intentional about careful land use, including working with farmers to adopt conservation practices so lower levels of nitrates find their way to surrounding water sources.


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By Bennet Goldstein for Wisconsin Watch.
Broadcast version by Mike Moen for Wisconsin News Connection reporting for Wisconsin Watch-Public News Service Collaboration

As environmental groups and policy analysts in the Mississippi River basin seek solutions to shrink a massive “dead zone” that forms off the coast of Louisiana each year, they have looked to a regional cleanup program in the Chesapeake Bay as a model.

A key component of that effort, known as the Chesapeake Bay Program, is regulation.

For nearly 15 years, it’s included a legally enforceable, multi-state pollution quota — one of a select few in the nation. This “total maximum daily load” aims to reduce the amount of nutrients, like phosphorus and nitrogen, that run off into the bay’s waters. 

In excessive quantities, chemicals derived from these elements, commonly used to grow crops and fertilize lawns, can cause algae blooms and die-offs that rob waters of oxygen and suffocate aquatic life.

But the bay program’s scientific advisers recently noted the strategy is imperfect. 

After two missed deadlines to reduce nutrient runoff, and a third looming, Mid-Atlantic state and federal officials are reevaluating their options.

A unique legal agreement

In 1983, the Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia governors along with the mayor of Washington and administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency signed the Chesapeake Bay Agreement, a pledge to reduce the pollutants and sediment entering the bay that contribute to the loss of organisms like seagrasses, shellfish and waterfowl.

The tapering of nitrogen and phosphorus remained the focus of subsequent agreements, but the jurisdictions did not meet their goals voluntarily, so in 2010 the EPA created the country’s most expansive pollution quota. It applied to six states — Delaware, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia — and the District of Columbia.

The quota’s creation and enforcement took political arm-twisting, including an act of Congress, a presidential executive order and multiple lawsuits. It requires nutrient plans from each jurisdiction and “reasonable assurances” each will take steps to control pollution from “nonpoint sources” like farm fields and parking lots. 

If states fail to meet their obligations by set deadlines, the EPA can implement stricter limits, force unregulated polluters to get permits and redirect or condition grant money.

Signatories believed they would achieve the program’s primary goal — improving habitat for the bay’s aquatic life — if they capped nitrogen and phosphorus entering the Chesapeake each year at 214.9 million and 13.3 million pounds, respectively, and sediment at 18,587 million pounds per year.

Instead, scientific modeling estimated that 258 million pounds of nitrogen and 15 million pounds of phosphorus entered the bay in 2021, a reduction from previous years thanks to upgrades to wastewater treatment plants and lower airborne emissions, but still off the mark. The program did hit its sediment target.

The bay program’s advisers say those declines represent achievements. Without the nitrogen and phosphorus reductions, things could be a lot worse as the region’s waters warm, urban population grows and agriculture expands. The bay’s 1-cubic-mile dead zone also might be even larger. 

Nonetheless, the sluggish progress remains an inconvenient truth. Officials have concluded they will not meet a 2025 deadline to stem the flow of nutrients after failing to achieve benchmarks set for 2000 and 2010.

“At the rate we’re going, it’s going to take about 150 years,” said Denice Wardrop, a bay program science adviser who directs the Chesapeake Research Consortium. “We better learn how to do it better.”

The program offers lessons for the Mississippi River basin too.

Something is better than nothing

Efforts in the Mississippi River, where environmental regulations are comparatively lax, to reduce annual injections of waterborne nutrients into the Gulf of Mexico largely have failed. This summer’s hypoxic zone is forecast to span 5,827 square miles, 5% larger than average. 

Scientists expect climate change to worsen conditions by warming the gulf’s waters, which would cause it to retain even less dissolved oxygen, and increasing rain, causing more runoff.

“The way that we operate right now is very much a state-by-state, choose-your-own-adventure model,” said Maisah Khan, former policy director at the Mississippi River Network.

Several groups say the federal government needs to lead and coordinate state restoration efforts, as it does in the Chesapeake Bay.

A Mississippi River-wide nutrient quota could streamline and prioritize runoff control projects and allocate federal dollars where they are needed most. Numerous academics and the National Research Council Water Science and Technology Board of the National Academies also embrace the concept.

“Without that,” said Alicia Vasto, water program director with the Iowa Environmental Council, “I think we’re kind of rudderless.”

So why doesn’t a Mississippi River quota already exist?

For one, the scale of the problem, said professor emeritus David Dzombak of Carnegie Mellon University, who chaired the National Academies committee that recommended policies to improve the river’s water quality.

Given the challenges that come with coordinating nutrient quotas in the 64,000-square-mile bay watershed, doing so across 1.2 million square miles in the Mississippi River basin — which comprises 41% of the continental United States — seems unimaginable.

Another factor: political will.

Basin states must cooperate with their neighbors to enforce a quota, but their interests vary significantly. Far upstream, a Louisiana shrimp trawler’s livelihood is all but haze in the distance. Meanwhile, few states are hungry for more federal oversight, and the EPA is likewise reluctant to brandish a stick.

The agency said it prefers helping states develop their own lists of impaired waters and cleanup plans, rather than doing so itself for an entire region all at once.

That’s exactly what environmental groups say isn’t working.

A better quota

Yet Chesapeake Bay scientists admit their regional nutrient quota isn’t a panacea.

“It’s a two-edged sword,” Wardrop said. “While it had some wonderful benefits in initiating action, of building an accountability system, it had some consequences where you got painted into a corner.”

Regulators fixated on tabulating the total pounds of sediment, nitrogen and phosphorus that drain into the bay’s deep channel (where the hypoxic zone forms each year), she said, instead of considering other ways to improve conditions for its plants and animals.

For instance, restoring wetlands and protecting shorelines could enhance shallow-water habitat for fish and mollusks, even if the bay program hasn’t completely reduced nutrient runoff.

“Yes, phosphorus and nitrogen are important, but it’s not a fix-all,” said Zach Taylor, freshwater mussel hatchery manager at the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. “There are still other considerations for improving the water quality, but I do think that it’s a good place to start.”

Because the bay’s shallows respond more quickly to falling nutrient levels, scientists say, the program should prioritize those regions for habitat improvement, which could help rally public enthusiasm. 

The same holds true for the Mississippi River basin. Improving water quality in upper basin states helps that region and the gulf, said Doug Myers, Maryland senior scientist with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

“You certainly don’t want your whole Mississippi River project tied to meeting dissolved oxygen criteria in the Gulf of Mexico,” he said. “It’s the people who live in those inland states that are gonna have to see the benefits for themselves and get excited about it for the benefit of their communities.”

The elephant in the room

As industry and sewage facilities cut their discharge, agricultural runoff now ranks as the largest remaining contributor to the bay’s water pollution — about half of all nitrogen and a quarter of phosphorus.

The situation is more pronounced in the Mississippi River basin, where an estimated 60% to 80% of the nitrogen entering the gulf originates at farms and livestock operations.

Bay scientists say a nutrient imbalance impedes improvement more than anything else. 

As farms multiply and expand, agricultural producers import more nutrient-rich fertilizer and animal feed. Hungry livestock convert feed into manure, which farmers apply to fields along with synthetic fertilizer. But crops don’t absorb all the nutrients. Excess nitrogen and phosphorus build up in soil, resulting in harmful runoff.

The source of the bay program’s authority, the Clean Water Act, can’t place pollution limits on field runoff. Instead, state and federal agencies offer grants and incentives to encourage producers to adopt better practices like planting cover crops or ceasing to till fields before planting.

But bay researchers say agencies promote these practices without considering their effectiveness or placement. 

The cheapest interventions, such as cover crops, offer farmers private benefits like improved soil health. But they are the least efficient at removing nutrients from the ground compared to other remedies like denitrifying bioreactors, structures that reduce nitrogen in field runoff. 

That leaves taxpayers with the fewest pounds of nutrients removed per public dollar spent.

The scientists say the program could stop tallying the number of nutrient-cutting practices installed on farms and instead incentivize success. For example, regulators could measure the nitrogen coming off fields and pay farmers when they fall under a set limit.

“We’ve maybe got to change our incentivizing systems for how we ask farmers to do things,” Wardrop said.


Bennet Goldstein wrote this article for Wisconsin Watch.


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By Matt Vasilogambros and Kevin Hardy for Stateline.
Broadcast version by Kathleen Shannon for California News Service reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration

After an Orange County resident flushes her toilet, the water flows through the Southern California community’s sewer system, meanders its way to the sanitation plant, has its solids removed, is piped to a wastewater recycling facility next door and undergoes three different purification processes until it is clean enough to drink.

“It tastes like water,” said Mehul Patel, executive director of operations for the Orange County Water District’s project, after taking a gulp from a clear plastic cup at the sampling station, as he stood outside the final purification process facility on a warm afternoon earlier this month.

“It’s just like any other water, but it’s gone through a lot,” he said. “People shouldn’t judge where it came from, but where it is now.”

No large community in the U.S., not even Orange County, is taking water from toilets and transforming it directly into clean drinking water right now. But Patel’s demonstration might offer a glimpse of the future, as states and communities across the country design new plants that will do just that, giving communities more control over their water supply as the climate gets drier.

The idea is still new in many parts of the country. And officials face some pushback from skeptics concerned about the high costs of advanced purification systems and from a public not used to the idea of drinking what was once their own waste.

Every day, Orange County’s Groundwater Replenishment System, known to the locals as GWRS, purifies 130 million gallons of wastewater coming from 2.5 million residents. It’s the world’s largest wastewater recycling plant, and the first in the United States to recycle every ounce of its county’s wastewater. This system of pipes, purifiers and chemical reactions has become a required visit for any water official looking to adopt a similar program in another state.

Patel expects more visitors now that California’s top water officials are slated to greenlight new rules later this month that would allow counties to purify their wastewater and inject it immediately into the drinking water supply. If approved, as expected, regulations would go into effect in July.

Currently, all of Orange County’s recycled wastewater is used to replenish its groundwater aquifer and protect it from seawater intrusion. The water is later pumped out and purified once again to drinking water standards and distributed throughout the county. There are no plans to change this two-part process anytime soon.

Some Golden State communities do the same; others use their recycled wastewater to irrigate fields, water parks or merely dump it into the Pacific Ocean.

But as the state faces a drier future in which the amount of water coming from the Colorado River and the Sierra Nevada Mountains may not be reliable, top water officials say the state needs more sources of drinking water.

“We spend a lot of money and energy moving water from different parts of the state to Southern California, where it’s used once and dumped in the ocean,” said Darrin Polhemus, deputy director of the California State Water Resources Control Board. “That’s maybe not the smartest way to deal with a resiliency question.”

Communities across the country, even beyond the increasingly arid West, have been using recycled wastewater to shore up water supplies drained by larger populations, over-pumped groundwater aquifers, hotter summers and less precipitation.

Facilities are pumping out millions of gallons of recycled wastewater in Arizona, Georgia, Texas and Virginia. Regulators in Colorado, Florida, Iowa and Kansas are considering how to use it. In Arizona, for example, some cities use recycled wastewater to replenish dormant rivers and brew beer; others use it to refill underground aquifers, cool factories or keep parks and golf courses green. But rarely has wastewater gone directly into the drinking water supply.

Daniel McCurry, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Southern California, expects that in two decades at least half of states will adopt wastewater recycling to meet the hydrological demands of a hotter, drier climate.

“Places you wouldn’t normally think of as dry or water-stressed at all are starting to build these plants,” he said. “And that’s only going to accelerate.

“Anywhere that’s primarily reliant on groundwater is going to have water reuse in their future.”

How it works

The town of Castle Rock, Colorado, lies in a valley east of the Rocky Mountains.

Directly recycling wastewater into drinking water will eventually allow residents to hold onto more of their precious water supply. Rather than continuing to send treated wastewater into East Plum Creek, where volumes can be lost to evaporation, the town will be able to recycle its municipal water over and over at a water treatment plant that was upgraded in 2021.

“We keep more of a closed loop and we bring that water directly back,” said Mark Marlowe, director of Castle Rock Water, of the incoming system.

While the plant already has the capability, it’s not sending treated wastewater directly to customers yet; Marlowe says it will likely take three to five years to meet new regulations on potable reuse announced by the state in January. The rules include a full year of water quality monitoring and a community awareness campaign before implementation.

While Castle Rock will spend more to comply with those regulations, it also expects to save money on energy costs by reducing the distance water must be moved. And the city’s sewage will actually provide more predictable water quality, Marlowe said. The quality of creek water can vary wildly as salt runs off in the winters or as storms increase sediments in the water.

“There is no new water,” Marlowe said. “It’s really just a question of whether the water is being recycled through natural processes or through manmade engineering solutions.”

In Orange County, the science of turning human waste into clean water is on full display.

After showing a Stateline reporter around the 15-acre wastewater recycling plant southeast of Los Angeles, the air around it heavy with the smell of standing water, Patel stopped at three display sinks designed for the tour frequented by local students and water officials from out of town — one filled with amber-tinted water, another yellowish and the third crystal clear, each showing what the wastewater looks like after the three purification steps.

Starting at microfiltration, wastewater is sucked through microscopic holes in hollow plastic fiber. At reverse osmosis, the water is forced through holes 1,000 times smaller in tightly wound membrane sheets, wrapped in fiberglass tubes. And at advanced oxidation, the water is hit with ultraviolet light combined with hydrogen peroxide.

From sewage to drinkable water, the process takes 20 hours.

In the next decade, Southern California cities such as Los Angeles and San Diego plan to recycle wastewater for direct use as drinking water. Both would add more purification steps than what Orange County uses to ensure pathogens are removed before the water reaches consumers.

“As the drought has gotten worse, the interest has increased,” Patel said.

Where it’s going

Even in the typically water-rich Midwest, unpredictable supplies have some communities considering turning wastewater into drinking water.

In southern Iowa, the town of Osceola could become the first in the state to use treated wastewater as part of its drinking supply. Three years of drought have left the town’s West Lake dangerously low, the Des Moines Register reported.

The topic came up time and again at a water conference hosted by the Kansas Water Office last month.

In one presentation, Jason Solomon, a technical assistant at the Kansas Rural Water Association, projected a map of the Neosho River pocked with toilet icons marking the dozens of places communities release treated wastewater into the river. Sometimes, those discharges aren’t far from the intake valve of the next town downstream relying on the water.

His point: The current system is only one step removed from directly recycling wastewater. Rivers and reservoirs are as much a mental barrier as a physical one in terms of water quality, said Solomon, whose group assists small water providers across the state.

He thinks direct wastewater recycling is likely a ways off in Kansas given its stigma and costs. But it’s an idea worth considering with recent droughts threatening drinking water supplies even in the traditionally wettest part of the state.

“Why don’t we just take it directly from the wastewater plant?” he said in an interview. “Why would we put it back in the river? It’s going to get dirtier in the river.”

Public perception is key

Although experts say the science is clear, convincing the public has been a challenge, including in Southern California.

Three decades ago, Los Angeles County sought to bring what the local media dubbed “toilet to tap” to the region, but officials were met with fierce resistance by politicians and residents. It stopped the project.

The “yuck” factor can be challenging, said David Sedlak, director of the Berkeley Water Center at the University of California, Berkeley.

“When you look at some communities where they haven’t done water recycling yet, they have to start building legitimacy from the ground up,” said Sedlak, who recently published a book on water solutions.

“Sometimes that means changing the culture of transparency and openness. And sometimes that means working with the public and bringing them on board to see and understand it.”

Often, people assume the water coming from rivers is cleaner than it really is, Sedlak said; the public may not fully grasp that it can include agricultural runoff or the wastewater from some upstream communities.

A future plant in El Paso, Texas, will include an educational exhibit area so schoolchildren and other visitors can see the science behind the treatment process.

Adjacent to an existing wastewater plant, the $130 million purification facility will send treated wastewater directly back into the drinking water system. Construction is expected to begin next year, but the city has been working to educate and build trust with the public for the past decade, said Christina Montoya-Halter, the communications and marketing director for El Paso Water.

“I don’t want to say it was easy,” she said. “But we are in a different position in El Paso because we’ve been talking about the need to diversify for a long time.”

The city sources water from the Rio Grande and underground aquifers, and runs a desalination plant to treat salty groundwater.

The new treatment plant, which should be running by 2027, is expected to produce up to 10 million gallons per day — or about 6% of the city’s annual needs. But it’s considered a crucial supply since El Paso hasn’t received its full allocation of Rio Grande water in about a decade.

Gilbert Trejo, vice president of engineering, operations and technical services for the utility, said directly treating wastewater will cost roughly double the price of other treatment processes.

Trejo, who serves on the board of a national trade group promoting the use of recycled water, expects directly recycled wastewater will become mainstream as officials increasingly view it as a solution to water shortages.

“It’s not just a solution for arid states and arid regions,” he said. “This also solves a lot of problems in water-rich areas.”


Matt Vasilogambros and Kevin Hardy wrote this article for Stateline.


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Concerning levels of lead have been detected in the drinking water at some Pennsylvania schools, according to a new report. The investigation examined nine large school districts across the state and reveals widespread noncompliance with safety regulations.

David Masur, executive director of PennEnvironment, says his organization filed a set of "Right to Know" requests with school districts across the state - and in all nine cases, found the districts were not implementing best practices to protect kids from lead in drinking water.

"Eight of the nine school districts were actually violating Pennsylvania law when it came to properly testing and reporting for lead in school drinking water, and even for giving children proper access to adequate amounts of drinking water," Masur reported.

He added several districts violated the requirement to have one drinking fountain for every one hundred kids and occupants in a building, and noted that there is no safe level of lead, especially for children. Exposure can lead to learning disabilities and hearing and speech problems, as it can affect brain development and lower I.Q.

Masur said his group is calling on members of the General Assembly to immediately implement two bipartisan proposals - Senate Bill 986 and House Bill 2011. They would require all Pennsylvania school districts to replace older drinking-water systems.

"Basically they require school districts to implement the best practices," he explained. "That includes requiring all school districts to replace old drinking fountains - any drinking fountain put in before 2014 - with lead-filtering water bottle filling stations and drinking fountains."

He said the legislation also includes about $30 million to help school districts cover the cost of these upgrades to protect kids' health.