Water Online

SEP 2016

Water Innovations gives Water and Wastewater Engineers and end-users a venue to find project solutions and source valuable product information. We aim to educate the engineering and operations community on important issues and trends.

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dents. Each circle depicts one combined sewer outfall and chang- es color with the conditions: Green indicates no overflow, red indicates there has been CSO activity and serves as a warning that contact with the water within 100 feet should be avoided, and purple indicates when a monitoring unit is offline. By selecting the colored circle and clicking on the dispatch tab, users can see the status and end date and time of the most recent CSO event. "Our public notification system is real time, simple to access, and easy to understand," said NHSA Executive Director Dr. Richard J. Wolff. "With increasing recreational activity on the Hudson River, it's important that people know when to avoid the areas around the outfalls, and our system enables them to do just that." The Camden County Municipal Utilities Authority (CCMUA) has taken a different approach than real-time monitoring. It uses modeling with predictive mathematical calculations to identify under which storm conditions outfalls could be predicted to overflow. When such storm conditions occur, CCMUA will put a notification on its website warning of the likelihood of CSOs. The Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission (PVSC), which has the state's largest wastewater treatment plant, also uses a model to predict when CSO events will overflow. This modeling is based on meteorological data. If the model shows that rainfall amounts will produce enough volume to cause a combined sewer outfall to discharge, the utility will flag the portion of the waterbody belonging to that CSO permittee as having a possible CSO event. According to PVSC, its CSO notification functionality was to be available on its website by July 1. The CSO Notification page will be accessible from PVSC's website and the websites of the other participating CSO permittees via a link, and will be updated hourly. Lessons From Chicago, New York City, And Washington, D.C. In Chicago, the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago has developed a CSO Notification Plan for overflows into waterways, as required by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency. The district maintains a list of interested parties' emails, to which it sends alerts of CSOs into Lake Michigan. Citizens may sign up on the district's website for these alerts. In addition, the district provides a map (updated daily) on its website that shows CSO events as a color-coded graphic with the waterways either blue (no overflow) or red (an overflow has occurred within the previous 24 hours). However, the website clearly states that the information is only updated daily, not in real time. Further, it states that not all outfall locations are equipped with monitoring equipment, so some CSOs may be occurring but not be shown. New York has a public notification of CSOs in its CSO Wet Weather Advisory program that has been operational since January. In 2013, New York passed the Sewage Pollution Right to Know Law of 2013, which required that discharges of sewage be reported by combined sewer system operators to the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) within 2 hours and to the public and municipalities within 4 hours. On the DEC's website, people can sign up to receive alerts by email, text, or phone, and DEC alerts them to the date and time of discharge, the location, expected duration, and the steps being taken to contain it. However, New York's system is not without flaws; it largely relies on modeling estimates, and the alerts have reportedly been hard to sign up for. To notify river users of CSO events, Washington, D.C. has installed CSO event indicator lights at two points: the Potomac River at Rock Creek and the Anacostia River at the South Capitol Street Bridge. When these lights are lit red, there is an active CSO event; when lit yellow, there has been one in the past 24 hours; and when unlit, there is no event. By 2025, the District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority expects to reduce CSOs into the Potomac and Anacostia rivers by more than 95 percent. Sewer and stormwater pipes will be separated in order to eliminate several CSO outfalls and use the remaining outfalls for stormwater only. A First Step In The Right Direction In New Jersey, much more remains to be done to eliminate the problem of combined sewer overflows. The NJDEP permits require municipalities and wastewater treatment plants to develop, within the next four years, long term control plans that evaluate their sewage infrastructure options and propose steps to improve them. Public notification of CSO events is a vital first step. n 20 wateronline.com n Water Innovations SEWEROVERFLOWS Kirstin McPolin is an environmental attorney and writer. Passionate about policy and legislation, she is currently working on water infra- structure issues for Jersey Water Works, a collaborative effort of many diverse organizations and individuals who embrace the common purpose of transforming New Jersey's inadequate water infrastruc- ture by investing in sustainable, cost-effective solutions. When Kirstin isn't writing, she can be found on her stand-up paddleboard with her husband and three kids. About The Author NHSA's color-coded CSO map

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