Members of the State Water Control Board:

I am currently the Chairman of the Lord Fairfax Soil and Water Conservation District, am a Member of the Chesapeake Bay Restoration Fund Advisory Committee, and in the 1970s in my capacity as a legislative assistant to a Member of Congress helped to write some of the language in the 1972 and 1977 Federal Clean Water Act Amendments that required the Administrator of EPA to encourage the reclamation and reuse of wastewater. I served on the first TAC which attempted to develop new related regulations for the Commonwealth, but those efforts failed to encourage reuse and the draft language was abandoned.  I sat in on the sessions of the new TAC as an interested member of the public.

I also initiated efforts to establish the wastewater reclamation and reuse system at Timberville which, as you know, has become a system with major problems, some of which are the direct result of shortcomings in regulations at the time the system was planned, constructed, and began operations.  My long involvement in encouraging wastewater reclamation and reuse and more recent experience with the Timberville system provide what I believe are unique insights related to the proposed new regulations you are considering.  

Several members of the TAC have advised DEQ that they thought parts of the proposed regulations were too burdensome and would discourage reclamation and reuse of wastewater in the Commonwealth.  DEQ states in the proposed regulation preamble that "in response the agency further refined the language to meet the stated purpose to promote and encourage the reclamation and reuse of wastewater."  After careful review of several drafts of the proposed regulations I am not able to find any changes of significance in the final draft that do so. 

There is, in my opinion, a great need for the Commonwealth as well as other entities of governments in other states and world wide to encourage reclamation and reuse of wastewater.  The extraction of nitrogen from the atmosphere for fertilizer is one of the great fossil fuel consuming processes related to agriculture.  It is one of the principal purposes of conventional wastewater treatment including BNR to return nitrogen to the atmosphere through the utilization of huge, additional quantities of fossil fuels.  It is astoundingly wasteful to do so.  Every effort should be made to reduce the amount of nitrogen lost back to the atmosphere and return it to agriculture for reuse.  A similar rationale applies to phosphorus.

These proposed regulations not only do not encourage reclamation and reuse of wastewater, but they very openly and directly discourage reclamation and reuse.

The most direct obstacle is language added after the last TAC meeting which imposes an automatic penalty for any reclamation and reuse system by preventing use of the reduction or elimination of the discharge of nitrogen and/or phosphorus to the Chesapeake Bay watershed for nutrient trading purposes.  An equivalent of BNR levels of N and P are imposed automatically on reclamation and reuse systems EVEN IF THERE IS NO DISCHARGE TO SURFACE WATERS.  This language appears under Section C. Reclaimed Water Management Plan, sub paragraph 2., b., (3).

What this language totally ignores is a practical fact in agriculture.  Farmers apply fertilizer at the time they plant crops.  If adequate rain falls, the crops take up most of the fertilizer.  If there is a drought, a substantial part of the fertilizer will remain in the ground and will be subject to percolation to groundwater during winter groundwater recharge periods or subject to runoff during the non-growning season.  In Virginia, drought conditions upset fertilizer utilization in two years out of five according to the Virginia Tech soils professor who served on both TACs.  While fertilizer levels in wastewater are generally insufficient to provide crop needs, supplemental fertilizer can be supplied through the irrigation system at optimal levels to produce maximum crop production and fertilizer uptake.  Not only is any threat of movement of the nutrients in wastewater to surface waters essentially eliminated, but the process substantially reduces the amount of fertilizer otherwise applied to crops from reaching groundwater or surface waters.  Yet these proposed regulations discourage this benefit.

They also discourage reclamation and reuse by imposing tougher restrictions related to buffer areas around irrigation areas, again having a serious negative impact on reuse.  The change from current regulations prevents an adjacent landowner from waiving any buffer requirement and imposes a mandatory minimum 50 foot buffer from ANY property line. If my brother owns the land next door he cannot waive the 50 foot buffer.  If I rent the land next door to farm it the landowner cannot waive the buffer.  Fifty feet may not seem like much, but on a long, narrow field it may eliminate entirely the potential use of that land for irrigation even though there may be circumstances where there is no threat from aerosols from irrigation to a neighboring landowner.

There are several omissions from these regulations that ought also to be included in order to assure irrigation systems utilizing reclaimed wastewater are adequate for the anticipated flows from the treatment facilities.  Before a permit to construct the treatment facilities is issued, there must be sufficient land under contract or owned by the facility to receive the irrigation water produced by the treatment facility for the anticipated life of the facility. 

In conjunction with this requirement there must be an established irrigation rate agreed upon which will define the amount of land needed for irrigation. 

In addition, Nutrient Management Plans need to be established on the lands to be irrigated before a permit to construct is issued, which will help determine irrigation rates.

 These are three critical factors to be established by regulation if reuse is to become a valid concept in the Commonwealth.  If they had been included in regulations at Timberville, either the system there would not have been built, or it would have been established initially on a sound basis.

Thank you for your careful consideration of these comments.