BOARD02415

• Board Meeting Date: 3/20/2000
• Description: Directors' Reports
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Memo

Groundwater/Safe Drinking Water Act: The EPA has released its Ground Water Report to
Congress as required by the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDW A) Amendments of 1996. The Act
authorizes grants to the states to ensure protection of groundwater resources. Congress authorized
$15 million annually, through 2003. EP A is required to evaluate funded state programs every
. three years and report to the Congress on the status of groundwater quality and the effectiveness
of state protection programs. The report states ill most locations, groundwater quality is good, but
it is threatened by over-pumping and point and non-point source pollution. The report states that
about a dozen states have developed an EP A-approved groundwater protection prograrn and that
more than half the states are starting to look at comprehensive approaches to groundwater
protection. However, only afew states have a list of ground water protection priorities or have
indicated they have funding sources to address groundwater protection priorities. Other obstacles
to comprehensive protection are fragmented programs and a lack oflocal and regional ground
water information. The report, dated October 1999, is available on~line at
www.epa.gov/ogwdw/gvvr/finalgvv.pdf.

CWA-NPDES Permits/lnterbasin W~ter Transfers: The WSWC reports that the EPA
is soliciting comments from its regional offices regarding the need to regulate interbasin transfers
of water with National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits under the
CW A. The request specifically asked whether "NPDES should be used to regulate water
transfers?" It also requested information as to the number and type of transfers in existence.

An official with EP A's Office of General Counsel, referring to previous and current court
cases, described the request for comments as an attempt to determine what str~tegy EP A should
follow should the agency be named as a defendant in a lawsuit contending that water transfers
should be regulated as point sources of pollution subject to NPDES regulation.

One of the lawsuits, referred to as the Loon Mountain case (DuBois, et al. v. USDA, et
aI), originated in New Harnpshire and was decided by the U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals in
1996. The decision held that a ski resort's discharge of water from its snowmaking system into a
pond in a watershed other than that from where the water was withdrawn constituted an addition
of pollutants subject to NPDES requirements, due to differences in water chemistry, temperature
and clarity. In another case, Miccosukee Tribe \I. Southern Florida Water Management District,
in Florida, a court reportedly held that pumping water over a berm into the Everglades required
an NPDES permit, because the water would not have flowed naturally into the Everglades and
the pumping added new pollutants to those waters.

A group in southern Oregon is also challenging Reclamation's operation of the Klamath
Straits Drain, arguing that by pumping water from the Drain back into the Klamath River,
Reclamation is discharging pollutants into the waters of the U.S. contrary to the CW A (Klamath
Forest Alliance v. Bureau of Reclamation). The Klamath Drain mostly carries irrigation return
flows back to the Klarnath River through a series of canals, a tunnel, concrete channel-boxes, and
large pumping stations. The plaintiff, the Klamath Forest Alliance, contends that the Drain, as a
channelized, man-made structure, is a "discemable, confined and discreet conveyance" of
polluted water, and therefore, a point source of pollution of the waters ofthe United States that
should be regulated by a NPDES permit.

. Babbitt Article About Dams: The March issue of Open Spaces contains an article by
. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt entitled "A River Runs Against It: America's Evolving View of

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