Thursday, August 21, 2008

Cleaning Up The KK River Is Good For Milwaukee And The Region

Nice partnership between the state and the City of Milwaukee. Clean rivers make for a healthier watershed and Lake Michigan, strong selling points for the region's case as a leader in water quality issues.

And important for southsiders and neighborhoods as the river works its way to the lake.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yea this is really good news. Hopefully this cleanup can spur new development and improve our environment.

Peter Maier said...

When goverments claim that rivers are cleaned up, who checks them?
As long as EPA (and States)does not consider nitrogenous waste (urine and protein) pollution, we will never implement the Clean Water Act, as it was intended. This waste not only, like fecal waste, exerts an oxygen demand, but also is a fertilizer for algae and aquatic plant growth, causing eutrophication and eventually dead zones.

The reason EPA ignored this pollution is caused by a worldwide incorrect applied pollution test that EPA used to base its NPDES discharge permits on.

Although EPA in 1984 acknowledged this incorrect use, in stead of correcting the test, it allowed an alternative test and now officially ignored this type of pollution and by doing so lowered the goal of the CWA from 100% treatment to a measly 35% treatment, without notifying Congress.

Other problems caused by this incorrect applied test are that we do not know the real performance of a sewage treatment plants and have no idea what the effluent waste loading is on receiving water bodies, besides the possibility that such plants are designed to treat the wrong waste in sewage.

Want to know more visit www.petermaier.net and read the description of this test (BOD) in the Technical PDF section.