DEP draft report says many waters don't support human health

“[T]his has the effect of characterizing streams as healthier than they actually are,� West Virginia Rivers Coalition senior scientist Than Hitt said to the Gazette-Mail of the DEP’s new approach to assessing water quality in the draft of its latest biennial report.

That 112-page draft report released in July, the West Virginia Integrated Water Quality Monitoring and Assessment Report, updates the kind of aquatic life the DEP uses to determine stream health.

But Hitt and other clean water proponents believe the report contains critical shortcomings regarding the selection of reference sites in the DEP’s new Aquatic Life Criteria Attainment Threshold (ALCAT) assessment model.

Hitt and fellow advocates expect water health-obscuring inaccuracy will result from the ALCAT model using more reference sites to which more adversely impacted sites are compared than an assessment model the DEP and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency previously developed jointly.

The ALCAT uses 438, or 55%, more reference sites than a 2021 version of the EPA and DEP-developed Genus Level Index of Most Probably Stream Sites (GLIMPSS) model. The DEP has opted not to include conductivity, a measure of how well water conducts electricity that is elevated by large-scale surface mining and other pollution sources, among its ALCAT reference criteria.

Clean water advocates fear the result will be high-conductivity, and thus more degraded, sites to be considered healthy reference sites and truly degraded streams not looking as bad in the data analysis.

“It's like going on a diet by loosening your belt,� Hitt said.

Hitt and other clean water advocates rallied opposition to the DEP’s newly proposed methodology during a West Virginia Rivers Coalition-hosted webinar Wednesday.

“[M]ost importantly, the criterion for conductivity was removed, so now you're allowed sites that have basically known stressors to be included as your reference, as your goal, which you're trying to attain,� former DEP Watershed Assessment Branch Program manager John Wirts said during the webinar.

Advocates noted the stakes are high since the report is used to identify pollution and develop restoration plans to clean up waters relied on to support human health and aquatic life.

“It's not about listing these streams on a list that’s going to sit on a shelf," Hitt said during Wednesday’s webinar. "It’s about protecting these real places and real communities.�

A 2010 study authored by Hitt and then-West Virginia University researcher Michael Hendryx published in EcoHealth, an international ecology and health science journal, found links between the ecological integrity of streams and public health. They found that respiratory, digestive, urinary and breast cancer rates increased with poor ecological conditions as indicated through observations of benthic macroinvertebrates, organisms with no backbone that live at the bottom of streams and other waterbodies.

Terry Fletcher, the DEP’s chief communications officer, defended the agency’s water assessment methodology in an email Wednesday, saying that reference sites are carefully screened against stressors and enforceable standards. Sites with exceedances of established water quality standards or failing habitat scores are not considered references, Fletcher said.

Conductivity was not considered in the DEP ALCAT model because West Virginia has no regulatory water quality standard for it, Fletcher said. There also is no federal water quality standard for conductivity, but the EPA does have a benchmark for it.

Fletcher claimed it was “inappropriate� to compare ALCAT and the GLIMPSS model since the DEP has never used GLIMPSS to identify impaired streams in West Virginia.

The DEP’s yearslong resistance to using genus-level biological data to identify water impairments despite recurring EPA calls to do so prior to the DEP’s ALCAT use had been a point of concern among clean water advocates.

Referring to a group of closely related species, genus falls below family in taxonomic rank, making it a more precise basis for assessments.

The EPA had been urging the DEP to switch to evaluating existing and readily available genus-level data for over a decade, going back to West Virginia’s impaired waters list for 2010.

“The new assessments are genus-level-based, and so that's a really good thing,� Wirts said during the West Virginia Rivers Coalition’s webinar Wednesday. “So again, it took a long time.�

But clean water proponents hope to persuade the DEP to change its reference-site approach through input submitted during the agency’s comment period on the draft report, which ends Monday.

“We have to make sure we get it right,� Hitt said during the webinar. “But yet what we see here is a lowering of standards. We think we can do better than that.�

Very few stream miles fully support public water supply use 

In its draft report, the DEP says it found that 12,604 out of 53,745 stream miles — 23.5% — don’t support their designated public water supply use assigned for human consumption. There was insufficient information to assess another 7,955 stream miles, or 14.8%. Only 3,704 stream miles, or 6.9%, were found to fully support public water supply use as designated. Just under 30,000 stream miles, or 54.9%, were not assessed.

The DEP says in its draft report that streams with limited or no data typically are small, unnamed tributaries, which usually contribute to larger waterbodies which have been assessed.

Similarly, the DEP draft report notes that 9,555 of 24,864 lake acres (38.4%) don’t support their designated public water supply use, with only 3,314 (13.3%) fully supporting, 4,323 (17.4%) unassessed and 7,672 (30.9%) giving insufficient information.

The draft report says that 5,111 (9.5%) stream miles overall don’t support their designated uses and need a Total Maximum Daily Load, a maximum amount of pollutants allowed in a waterbody so that it will meet water quality standards.

The DEP Division of Water and Waste Management’s approach to Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) development allows four years to develop a TMDL from start to finish. The DEP says that approach enables it to gather and generate data to produce scientifically defensible TMDLs and allows ample time for modeling, report drafting and frequent public participation opportunities. TMDL implementation is initiated through the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination permitting process that regulates water pollution control.

Fecal coliform the top cause for stream impairment 

The top causes for impairment in streams were fecal coliform (11,475 miles) and iron (10,870 miles), according to the draft report.

Fecal coliform contaminants come only from human and animal fecal waste and are used to indicate whether other potentially harmful bacteria could be present. Fecal coliform has a legally enforceable primary standard. Its maximum contaminant level is zero. Fecal coliform bacteria can cause diarrhea, cramps, nausea and headaches.

The DEP’s draft report notes that leaking sewage collection systems, illegal homeowner sewage discharges from straight pipes or failing septic systems, and runoff from residential areas and agricultural lands elevate fecal coliform levels.

Based on statewide probabilistic data, 17.5% of stream miles have fecal coliform bacteria levels that exceed the West Virginia criterion for them, the draft report says.

The basin with the fewest attaining stream miles (67%) was the Lower Ohio, which includes the Lower Ohio, Lower Guyandotte, Upper Guyandotte, Twelvepole, Big Sandy and Tug Fork watersheds, as well as streams that drain into the Ohio River downstream of the Kanawha River. The Ohio River is a drinking water source for approximately 5 million people.

The draft report acknowledges that bacteria levels may increase under higher flow conditions not represented in the data because samples are not collected during storm runoff events.

The draft report noted the DEP approved fecal coliform and iron TMDLs in the Little Kanawha River and Tug Fork watersheds in 2023 and is working with a contractor to complete fecal coliform TMDLs within the Cacapon hydrologic area.

Lower Ohio basin found to have highest sulfate prevalence

The Lower Ohio basin also has the highest percentage of stream miles (29.2%) exceeding the DEP’s sulfate threshold for identifying probabilistic sites influenced by mine drainage, according to the draft report.

Streams receiving mine drainage may be impaired by low pH and elevated concentrations of metals, including iron, aluminum and manganese, the draft report notes.

Southern coalfield residential water testing results have shown levels of iron, manganese and aluminum well above reporting limits. The EPA has assigned iron, manganese and aluminum secondary maximum contaminant levels — guidelines to help public water systems manage drinking water for aesthetic considerations, like taste, color and odor.

Residents with high iron, manganese and aluminum levels in their drinking water supply have reported and documented discolored, foul-smelling water consistent with what the EPA has said are noticeable effects of secondary maximum contaminant level exceedance for iron and manganese: rusty or black color, reddish, orange or black staining and metallic taste.

Contaminants aren’t considered to pose a human health risk at the secondary maximum contaminant level, according to the EPA. But the color and odor of water in many southern coalfield residents’ water has caused them to avoid using it for drinking, cooking and other uses, turning to costlier bottled water or bacteriologically compromised spring water instead.

The DEP declined in its draft report to conduct a “true cost/benefit analysis� of the economic and social costs and benefits of water pollution control, saying evaluating industrial facilities “would be a monumental task considering the various types of industry (mining, chemical, power generation, etc.), each having a very different process of pollution control.�

The agency instead noted three financial assistance programs within its Clean Water State Revolving Fund setup, which oversees local governmental entities that receive funds through the program and provides guidance on administrative actions needed to process a loan through it.

The Trump administration has proposed gutting federal funding for the Clean Water State Revolving Fund program. The administration proposed a $155 million appropriation for the Clean Water State Revolving Fund program for fiscal year 2026. West Virginia alone was allotted roughly $25 million through the Clean Water State Revolving Fund base grant funding for fiscal year 2025, according to EPA records.

One of the Clean Water State Revolving Fund programs, the Agriculture Water Quality Loan Program, has been discontinued, according to the draft report. The program was a partnership with the West Virginia Conservation Agency developed to address pollution from nonpoint sources — sources that don’t meet the legal definition of “point source� in the federal Clean Water Act. Point sources include pipes, ditches, channels, tunnels, wells, concentrated animal feeding operations, vessels or other floating craft from which pollutants can be discharged.

DEP Division of Water and Waste Management Engineer Chief Katheryn Emery said during a DEP meeting in June the Agricultural Water Quality Loan Program hadn’t been used “the last few years,� with state officials not receiving any new applications for the program. The program has been a source of low-interest financing match funds to implement agricultural practices that will reduce adverse water quality impacts.

From July 1, 2021 through June 30, 2023, 25 wastewater treatment facility loans totaling approximately $77.6 million were funded through a low-interest loan program within the Clean Water State Revolving Fund, according to the DEP draft report.

The DEP draft report says a separate low-interest loan program was established in cooperation with the ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä-based West Virginia Housing Development Fund and the McDowell County-based Safe Housing and Economic Development office to address onsite sewage disposal problems.

The Onsite Systems Loan Program provides loans to replace malfunctioning septic systems and to install new onsite sewage systems for homes that have direct sewage discharges to ditches and streams, per the report.

But centralized treatment for those homes will not be available in the next five years, according to the report.

'This isn't just about wildlife'

During the West Virginia Rivers Coalition webinar Wednesday, Rivers Coalition intern Daisy Fynewever shared a preliminary analysis of research she worked on indicating a correlation between stream impairment and cancer incidence in West Virginia, based on DEP geospatial, federal cancer and national water drainage network data.

Fynewever, a senior at Georgetown University, noted that the correlation isn’t necessarily causation and said epidemiological studies on a smaller space scale and larger time scale would help understand the link.

“But all in all, it just adds greater importance and greater weight to getting [the] impaired streams list as accurate as possible based on the best available scientific knowledge,� Fynewever said. “Because this isn't just about our wildlife. It's also about human communities, and we can use this to understand human health, in addition to all the value that it has for the environment.�

“We have work to do here,� Hitt said. “But we have to be open to the science and the data.�