The CSO Sleeping Giant: Combined Sewer Overflow or Congressional Stalling Objective
By Peter Crane Anderson
INTRODUCTION
Over the past three decades, history has revealed that environmental catastrophes are often paradoxical. While the actual horrors of Bhopal, Love Canal, or Valdez, can never be justified and should always be avoided, these “media” events serve as stark and crucial reminders of the harmful impacts that humans can inflict upon the environment. Furthermore, these events often motivate Congress to create new regulatory programs to prevent such disasters in the future, or to re-assess the effectiveness of existing regulatory programs.
Given this calamity-based regulatory paradigm, it is evident that those environmental problems which do not possess a sufficiently high “crisis potential” will often be ignored. In these instances, the disasters are not readily apparent or acute, but their harms are more dispersed and chronic. One particular environmental problem which has traditionally fit within this chronic category, and which will be the focus of this note, is water pollution caused by “combined sewer overflows,” or CSOs.
Since CSOs are regulated pursuant to the Clean Water Act (herein-after CWA), which is scheduled for reauthorization in 1992, and in light of recent events which suggest that CSOs may finally become a prioritized environmental issue, this note will explore the environmental and budgetary consequences associated with various regulatory control options, and acknowledge the significance and complexity of the CSO problem. After an initial discussion of the typical nature of CSO wastestreams, this note initially discusses how CSOs are regulated under the CWA's current provisions. The focus then shifts to a review of EPA's past regulatory efforts, as well as an outline of the agency's recent CSO Control Strategy, and a brief description of the available options for limiting the incidents or effects of CSO discharges. The note will conclude with an analysis of various proposals for modifying the statute and regulations, as well as a discussion of current CSO activities occurring of the state level.
Over the past three decades, history has revealed that environmental catastrophes are often paradoxical. While the actual horrors of Bhopal, Love Canal, or Valdez, can never be justified and should always be avoided, these “media” events serve as stark and crucial reminders of the harmful impacts that humans can inflict upon the environment. Furthermore, these events often motivate Congress to create new regulatory programs to prevent such disasters in the future, or to re-assess the effectiveness of existing regulatory programs.
Given this calamity-based regulatory paradigm, it is evident that those environmental problems which do not possess a sufficiently high “crisis potential” will often be ignored. In these instances, the disasters are not readily apparent or acute, but their harms are more dispersed and chronic. One particular environmental problem which has traditionally fit within this chronic category, and which will be the focus of this note, is water pollution caused by “combined sewer overflows,” or CSOs.
Since CSOs are regulated pursuant to the Clean Water Act (herein-after CWA), which is scheduled for reauthorization in 1992, and in light of recent events which suggest that CSOs may finally become a prioritized environmental issue, this note will explore the environmental and budgetary consequences associated with various regulatory control options, and acknowledge the significance and complexity of the CSO problem. After an initial discussion of the typical nature of CSO wastestreams, this note initially discusses how CSOs are regulated under the CWA's current provisions. The focus then shifts to a review of EPA's past regulatory efforts, as well as an outline of the agency's recent CSO Control Strategy, and a brief description of the available options for limiting the incidents or effects of CSO discharges. The note will conclude with an analysis of various proposals for modifying the statute and regulations, as well as a discussion of current CSO activities occurring of the state level.
