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Oregon DEQ accepts water petitions
by SARA HOTTMAN,
Herald and News 4/15/11
Total maximum daily
loads, or TMDLs, are a mechanism in the federal Clean
Water Act to mandate the amount of a pollutant that can
be discharged into water bodies.
On the Klamath
River, the order affects point sources, such as
wastewater treatment plants, and non-point sources, such
as agriculture and storm runoff.
“We’re pleased the
DEQ recognized the importance of this and wanted to work
with residents of the Klamath Basin,” said Mark Willrett,
Klamath Falls public works director. “We really
appreciate their willingness to step forward and work
with us.”
Meeting with
petitioners
Steve Kirk, Klamath
coordinator for DEQ, said the agency would soon meet
with petitioners to discuss and address their issues.
Petitioners were city of Klamath Falls, Klamath County,
Columbia Forest Products, PacifiCorp, South Suburban
Sanitary District, and Klamath Water Users Association,
which represents irrigators.
Petitioners, who
learned of
the decision at the beginning of the week, filed the
appeals in February, two months after the DEQ finished
the TMDL order for Klamath and Lost rivers. Their
petitions cite concerns about the expense of
implementation and claim the methods and assumptions
used to write the order were flawed.
“This is
an encouraging development, and we are pleased that the
(DEQ) took our concerns to heart,” said Greg Addington,
director of the Klamath Water Users Association, which
represents irrigators on the Klamath Reclamation
Project.
“This is a
challenging set of issues, legally and environmentally,
and we hope to work with DEQ and others to address them
constructively,” he said.
The TMDL order still
has not been approved by the federal Environmental
Protection Agency. Martha Turvey, head of the watershed
unit at the regional EPA office in Seattle, said the
group would delay review until after the petition
process.
Willrett said the
petitioners likely will have to coordinate with the EPA
and the California water board, which already has a TMDL
in place for its portion of the Klamath River, in the
review process.
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