Legislators endorse revised water rules

Two legislative committees endorsed proposed revisions to Arkansas’ water quality standards this week, a month after the committees asked the director of the state Department of Environment Quality to confer with industry representatives and offer a revised proposal.

Springdale’s mayor told lawmakers Thursday that he supports the proposed standards to keep the federal Environmental Protection Agency from becoming more involved in regulating the state.

But an environmental manager for a company in El Dorado said he opposes the proposed standards because they could open the door to more federal regulation.

At issue is a provision in Arkansas’ water regulations that governs how limits are set on the amount of minerals a company can discharge into a stream.

Arkansas’ regulations currently allow the limits to be set by assuming a stream has a flow of 4 cubic feet per second, even if the actual flow of the stream is lower.

Teresa Marks, the department’s director, said the standard “is a little generous as far as being a higher flow standard than many of these streams actually contain and use for permitting purposes, and we felt like that it was going to increase the number of impaired waterways and possibly might not be approved by [the EPA].”

Under the proposed regulation, the department would set limits based on a calculated average flow.

The proposed compromise language grandfathers in about six facilities “so they will not need to make any changes in the foreseeable future,” Marks told the House and Senate Public Health, Welfare and Labor committees.

She said department officials tried to informally grandfather in the facilities, but the proposed language “makes it more of a formal grandfathering in.”

Ryan Benefield, the department’s deputy director, said Friday that he didn’t have a list of those facilities.

Marks told lawmakers Thursday that department officials met with several officials and members from the Arkansas Environmental Federation business lobby to work out the compromise, and state Rep. Andy Davis, R-Little Rock, helped broker it. Municipalities also support the proposed water quality standards, she said.

Springdale Mayor Doug Sprouse said he’s worried about the potential effect if the Environmental Protection Agency becomes more involved in the state’s environmental regulations.

“That’s where I see this road going, and that’s my concern above all else,” he said.

“So, from my point of view, this is our best opportunity to safeguard and to help as best we can in the situation we are in right down to protect future investment and future jobs in our cities around the state,” Sprouse said.

Don Zimmerman, executive director for the Arkansas Municipal League, said the compromise between the environmental federation and the department “is as good a compromise as could be arrived at.”

But Randy Whitmore, environmental manager for Great Lakes Chemical Corp. in El Dorado, said the proposed water quality standards “are extensive changes and there is a lot of risk … of giving [the EPA] a line-item veto.

“This sets up a perfect storm that’s going to have detrimental effects on our companies, but also on municipalities and other businesses in the state,” he said.

Sen. Bryan King, R-Green Forest, wondered about the effect of the proposed regulation to Berryville and Huntsville.

Benefield said Berryville is working on a site-specific standard for the Kings River and will be unaffected by the proposed change. Berryville officials “believe by doing some facility-specific, best-management practices, they can make the Kings River unimpaired for minerals,” he said.

Huntsville officials are conducting a study to revise the water quality standards through third-party rule-making and “if they are able to successfully do this, [proposed regulation] won’t affect their process either,” he said.

Keeping the current standard in place was an aim of Act 954 of 2013, sponsored by Davis. That law also removed the default drinking-water designation for state waterways. It was repealed by the Legislature during a special session in October after the EPA said the law conflicted with the Clean Water Act and the federal agency threatened to take over the supervision of pollution discharge permits.