Why the proposed amendments are needed?

IDEM needs to stop issuing permits that put more sewage in our streams!

Currently, IDEM issues permits that allow new housing developments and commercial operations to hook-up to overflowing community sewer systems.  IDEM justifies its action by ignoring the impact of rainfall on sewer systems that are designed to collect both rain and sewage.  These systems are known as combined sewer systems.  IDEM bases its decisions for these systems on the best situation - dry-weather conditions. 

In many of Indiana’s 106 communities with combined sewer systems, the system overflows in just a light rain.  When the system is overflowing, the additional sewage directly results in more sewage in our streams.  In essence, IDEM is allowing more sewage into the sewer despite the damage to water quality and the clear threat to our health from parasites, viruses and bacteria result from the combined sewer overflows (CSOs).

IDEM issues these permits despite mandating that CSO communities develop long term control plans to reduce the overflows.  These plans are likely to cost billions of taxpayer dollars to implement.  However, plans submitted by the Indianapolis and Fort Wayne suggest that the massive investment in controls may only be enough to offset new flows that resulted from urban sprawl since the 1950s.  IDEM’s long-standing practice of ignoring the cumulative impact of growth on combined sewer systems undermines our hope of waters that children can safely play around. 

IDEM needs to stop making the problem worse!  New housing developments and commercial operations need to ensure that they do not increase the sewage overflows.  They can do this by holding their sewage until it can be safely treated or finding enforceable reductions in rainfall connections elsewhere in the system.  The proposed amendments accomplish that while providing the city and the developer with the flexibility to determine how to achieve that goal. 

The Indianapolis Situation:

·        Combined sewer overflows occur 65 days a year with a total of 6,964 million gallons released to the White River each year.

·        More than 1,000 million gallons are discharged over 31 days a year because the treatment plants cannot handle the flow during typical wet weather.

·        In 1999, IDEM authorized 114 new sewage connections to the city’s treatment plants for a total new authorized flow in 1999 alone was 3.5 million gallons a day.  That represents 100 million more gallons of new annual overflows approved in one year alone. 

 The Fort Wayne Situation:

·        Combined sewer overflows occur 84 days a year with a total of about 2,500 million gallons released.

·        More than 1,500 million gallons are discharged over 12 days a year because the treatment plants cannot handle the flow during typical wet weather.

·        In 2000 and the first quarter of 2001, IDEM authorized 57 new sewage connections to the city’s treatment plants for a total new authorized flow of more than 1.7 million gallons a day.  That represents more than 20 million more gallons of new annual overflows approved in one year alone.

Contact Tom Neltner at mccabe@ikecoalition.org or 317-442-3973 if you want information on the new sewer connections to your communities sewer system