NH has serious water pollution for a small state

A report last week by Environment New Hampshire showed that three fourths of the state’s industrial and municipal wastewater discharge plants exceeded their emission caps at least once in 2005. The nonprofit group used the Freedom of Information Act to get that data from the Environmental Protection Agency.

The good news is that no sources in Belknap County exceeded their federal limits, but three in Coos County made the EPA list. Effluent from Fraser Paper into the Androscoggin River was too acid during 35 reporting periods in 2005, when mills in both Berlin and Gorham were still operating. The Berlin mill is closed now. The worst pH report was 15-percent too acid, and the average was 8-percent.

Wausau Papers in Groveton exceeded its acidity limits into the Upper Ammonoosuc and Connecticut rivers a dozen times, according to the new report, for an average of 8 percent. Another time it released 23 percent too many suspended solids.

Paul Bugeau, the firm’s senior environmental engineer, said Wasau is allowed to discharge water with a pH as low as 6.5 standard units on a measuring system where 7 is neither acid nor base. But the firm can discharge at a lower ph when the whole river is acid from power plants in the Midwest. Wausau can legally discharge water at .49 standard units more acid than the average reading for the whole river. He said Environment NH may not have realized that.

“We take in river water to make paper and backwash it to clean the filter beds,” Bugeau said. “Any change in pH is usually small. If we’ve had heavy rain from the Midwest, the whole river pH can be low.”

Both Wausau and Fraser have strict environmental control policies posted on their company web sites. Fraser Papers earned a prestigious environmental certification this year from the Forest Stewardship Council, which independently audits company practices, from wood harvesting to water discharge.

The Berlin municipal water treatment facility exceeded its caps in five reports, including once for 19-percent too much acidity, once for 180-percent too many suspended solids and three times for bacteria problems at varying levels.

Kathryn Fox of Environment NH said she had not spoken to staff at any of the facilities in the report. She explained why half the offenders are municipal treatment plants. They get overwhelmed during floods.

“The technology exists to handle the volume even during major storms,” Fox said. “The EPA has a clean water revolving fund to help communities upgrade their equipment and stay in compliance. The Bush administration cut the funding for that.”

Rockingham County had the most serious water issues. Ten large sources were out of compliance with their permits, which ranked the county 33rd worst in the country. The biggest offender was Harris County, around Houston, Texas, located in a region with oil fields and superfund sites.

Forty-three New Hampshire reports were greater than 500 percent of caps, ranking the state 21st worst in that category. California was first with 194 instances, but New Hampshire had seven times as many exceedance reports per capita. Companies track their own data and file it with the EPA.

Belknap County may have more water quality issues than the study would suggest. Much of the water pollution in the state comes from septic systems, pastures, corn fields, roads, construction sites, parking lots and other sources that never report to the EPA. Two dozen volunteer organizations are sampling New Hampshire streams and lakes to find out how healthy they are.

The Winnipesaukee Watershed Association ran a project in 2005 to monitor 15 sites on tributaries into the big lake, including Gunstock Brook in Gilford, the Merrymeeting River in Alton and two streams in Meredith — Mills Falls Brook and Hawkins Brook.

The resulting “Lake Winnipesaukee Tributaries Water Quality Report” found all the samples had low turbidity, a good result. But the water was too acid in 22 of 74 samples surrounding the lake, five of them from the Merrymeeting River. A collection site near the Jenness Hill Road Bridge in Meredith showed the worst problems. Some of the samples had too little dissolved oxygen, a high chloride concentration, and a high specific conductance. Those are signs of pollution upstream, the report said. All the numbers matter.

“If the pH is too high or low it can kill plant and animal life,” Fox explained.

Land owners and volunteers can do a lot to protect surface water, but it takes some elbow grease. Jared Teutsch of Northfield is a lobbyist for the NH Lakes Association and helped a group of high school kids build a rain garden this August in a parking lot just south of Newfound Lake. Half a dozen kids in the Lakes Conservation Corps dug a moat they filled with gravel and erosion-control soils. Then they planted perennial shrubs like low bush blueberries to soak up and filter the runoff before it reaches the storm drainage system. A lakefront homeowner could do the same thing.

“It was a hands-on learning experience they could get academic credit for,” Teutsch said.

Billy Trethaway, a high school senior living in Northfield, said the field project helped him make up his mind to study environmental protection next year.

“I’ll be writing about it in my college applications,” he said.