Panel delays action on water quality plan from Huntsville

A proposal to change water quality standards in Northwest Arkansas to accommodate for a city’s wastewater treatment plant was tabled Friday by an environmental regulatory oversight commission.

Commissioners expressed concern that the data used to support the change weren’t recent enough.

The proposal by the city of Huntsville has been in the works since 2013. The city’s permit expired in early 2014, but it has remained active through an administrative hold placed on it by the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality.

Like other cities and companies, Huntsville faces the prospect of having to add stricter discharge limits for minerals in a new permit, something the city and others say is not cost-effective.

Since 2013, state regulation changes and push-back have changed the city’s proposal, which now doesn’t raise minerals limits in nearby waters as much as the original did.

Chuck Nestrud, an attorney representing the city, said Friday that the proposed levels of minerals passed analysis by an environmental contractor, showing that no aquatic life or designated uses would be harmed by the changes. A study done by the U.S. Geological Survey found that Beaver Lake, the drinking water source for 400,000 Northwest Arkansans, would not be harmed, either.

But Commissioner Doug Melton, a Northwest Arkansas resident, said he researched the most recent water quality samples measured at War Eagle Creek and found that the minerals levels in one spot were far below what Huntsville was proposing to raise them to.

“That is troublesome,” Melton said.

Nestrud said the data used to create the proposal were taken from 2013 because of when the proposal was first made. That is the period of record the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will expect from any proposal to change the state’s water quality regulations, which must be approved by the EPA.

“We can’t exceed the numbers we’re proposing,” Nestrud said. “We’ve showed what we’re proposing would be protective of water quality.”

Melton argued that what he saw in more recent water quality sampling showed a possibility that War Eagle Creek could be degraded under the new water quality standards.

Samples from March of this year at a department monitoring station off of Arkansas 45 show a chloride level of 4.88 milligrams per liter, a sulfate level of 6.81 milligrams per liter and total dissolved solids level of 92 milligrams per liter, according to department data.

The revised water quality standards would be 39 milligrams per liter for chloride and 248 milligrams per liter for total dissolved solids for War Eagle Creek, stretching from the confluence with Holman Creek and then downstream to Clifty Creek.

For Holman Creek from the confluence with Town Branch downstream to the confluence with War Eagle Creek, the chlorides limit would be 180 milligrams per liter, the sulfates limit would be 48 milligrams per liter and the total dissolved solids limit would be 621 milligrams per liter.

The final change would be for Town Branch from the point of the city’s discharge downstream to the confluence with Holman Creek. The limit for chlorides would be 223 milligrams per liter, and the limits for sulfates and total dissolved solids would be 61 milligrams per liter and 779 milligrams per liter, respectively.

The Ozark Highlands ecoregion has values for streams in the region unless they have been specifically changed. Those limits are 13 milligrams per liter for chlorides, 17 milligrams per liter for sulfates and 240 milligrams per liter for total dissolved solids.

Sarah Clem, branch manager in the department’s office of water quality, told the commission that she had an idea for how the city could incorporate more recent data into its analysis to see if it remains solid. The city would not need to pay for a new study or take more samples, she said.

Clem said she could return to the commission’s next meeting Dec. 7 with more information, if the city agreed to her idea.

The commission voted, without dissent, to table the proposal until Dec. 7, with several commissioners expressing an interest in keeping the city from spending money on a new study or delaying the proposal much longer.