West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection Cheat River Watershed TMDLs Draft TMDL Public Meetings August 3,2010 Kingwood, WV August 4, 2010 Blackwater Falls State Park

Agenda TMDL/ water quality standards recap Overview of this TMDL effort Explanation/demonstration of electronic documents, spreadsheets, tools Questions and Answers

What’s a TMDL? “ Total Maximum Daily Load” TMDL is a pollution budget – the amount of pollutants that can be put into a stream before water quality standards are violated TMDL development is required by the Clean Water Act for all streams impaired by a pollutant

What’s an Impaired Stream? Stream that doesn’t meet water quality standards WV Water Quality Standards are codified in 47CSR2 Standards include “Designated Uses” for WV waters and the criteria to protect those uses Water Quality Criteria can be numeric or narrative

Cheat River Watershed TMDLs Criteria of Concern Total Iron Aquatic Life Protection; Public Water Supply 4-consecutive day average not to exceed 1.5 mg/l more than once in three years (warmwater); 0.5 mg/l (troutwater ) Dissolved Aluminum Aquatic Life Protection One-hour average concentration not to exceed 0.75 mg/l more than once in three years 4-consecutive day average not to exceed 0.75 mg/l (warmwater fisheries) more than once in three years; mg/l (troutwaters) pH All Uses 6.0 – 9.0 Standard Units at all times

Cheat River Watershed TMDLs Criteria of Concern Fecal Coliform Water Contact Recreation; Public Water Supply 200 counts/100ml as a monthly geometric mean no more than 10% of samples in a month exceed 400 counts/100ml Total Manganese 1.0 mg/l or less with a five mile zone upstream of a public water intake

Cheat River Watershed TMDLs Criteria of Concern Biological Impairment Conditions Not Allowable in State Waters (47 CSR 2-3.2i) “.....no significant adverse impact to the chemical, physical, hydrologic or biological components of aquatic ecosystems shall be allowed.” Benthic macroinvertebrate assessment West Virginia Stream Condition Index (WVSCI)

TMDL =  WLA +  LA + MOS  = “sum of” WLA = “wasteload allocations” LA = “load allocations” MOS = “margin of safety” WLAs - pollutant loads for “point sources” Discharge from point Need NPDES permit LAs - pollutant loads for “nonpoint sources” and background Precipitation and runoff No permit required

Cheat Watershed TMDL History EPA developed Blackwater River Dissolved Oxygen TMDL EPA developed metals/pH TMDLs for Cheat River and 50 tributaries – 2001 This effort reevaluates EPA metals/pH TMDLs plus addresses fecal coliform and biological impairements

Cheat Watershed TMDL History This WVDEP project: –Proposed streams advertised for public comment (Spring 2006) –Initial Public Meetings (TMDL 101) - May 2006 –Watershed Monitoring and Source Tracking - July June 2007 –Allocation Philosophy Meeting – April 2010 –Draft TMDL Public Meeting - Today

Impaired Waters 99 named streams – See Table 3-3 starting on page 11 of Main Report

Modeling MDAS (Mining Data Analysis System) Iron, Manganese, Dissolved Aluminum, pH and Fecal Coliform impairments Can handle point and nonpoint sources (representation and allocation) Metals speciation component allows evaluation of dissolved aluminum and pH Recognizes exposure duration and exceedence frequency components of criteria

22 TMDL watersheds Modeling 566 subwatersheds

Baseline Condition Design precipitation period Hourly precipitation data for a six-year period Design period includes wet and dry years Applied to present day land uses Permitted discharges equal to permit limits

Margin of Safety Required component of TMDLs Explicit 5% used in most TMDLs TMDL endpoints for numeric criteria are 95% of value (ex mg/l for 1.5 mg/l Fe criterion)

TMDL Condition Existing pollutant sources reduced such that TMDL endpoints are achieved at each modeled subwatershed Criteria value, duration, exceedence frequency Margin of safety Example – 4-day average concentration of iron in warmwater fishery not greater than mg/l more than once every three years

Baseline/TMDL Example

Boundary Conditions Shavers Fork, Dry Fork, Blackwater River above Beaver Creek Gross allocations – no reductions prescribed Miscellaneous Pennsylvania tributaries in Big Sandy Creek watershed Gross allocations - reductions as necessary to meet TMDL endpoints at the state border

Pennsylvania Allocations

Biological Impairment TMDLs Stressor identification Define potential stressors/pathways Evaluate chemistry, habitat, field notes, bugs Determine stressors Stressor/TMDL Linkage Metals /pH Toxicity Al, Fe, pH Organic Enrichment......FC surrogate Sedimentation Fe Surrogate Linkage Table 4-1, Page 20

Sedimentation Stressor Old Approach –Select unimpaired reference watershed with similar landuse, ecoregion, geomorphological characteristics –Normalized sediment loading in reference watershed is TMDL target for biologically-impaired stream –Present Sediment TMDL Cheat TMDL Approach - Correlate TSS and Iron - Model Iron - Present Iron TMDL - Calculate TSS for Fe - Compare to TSS for reference approach

Iron /TSS Correlation From Pre-TMDL Monitoring, used stations with >5 quantifiable observations of both Fe and TSS, a positive correlation and R 2 >0.5; Fe/TSS correlation = Three “flavors” ranging from to Ex = 2.0 mg/l Fe per 100 mgl TSS Applied to sediment producing land uses and bank erosion sediment loads

Sedimentation Stressor All biologically-impaired streams for which sedimentation is a significant stressor are also impaired for iron Sediment reduction needed to meet iron water quality criteria is larger than that needed under reference watershed approach Iron TMDLs are appropriate surrogate

Ionic Stress Crab Orchard Run Insufficient info on causative pollutants and thresholds (SO4, other ions) Biological TMDL development deferred until December 2011 Work plan developed –DEP monitoring –EPA – model enhancements

Reduced Pollutant Sources Iron Abandoned Mine Lands Upland Sediment sources Residental/Urban Runoff Streambank erosion Active mining permits

Reduced Pollutant Sources Fecal Coliform Failing/nonexistent on- site sewage systems Urban/residential land use stormwater runoff Agricultural land use loading

Manganese Criteria applicable only in five mile stream segments upstream of water supply intakes Impairments only in Heather Run, Lick Run, and Pringle Run watersheds Reductions prescribed only for Abandoned Mine Land sources

pH / Dissolved Aluminum Impairments linked; decreased pH causes increased aluminum in dissolved form Atmospheric deposition - Impact of varies by buffering capacity Iron and aluminum reductions to meet criteria decreases acidity Alkalinity additions captured in baseline

pH / Dissolved Aluminum Allocation Strategy – Pg. 56 Metals/pH spreadsheet, pH LAS tab

Implementation Activities WV/NPDES Permit issuance/reissuance WLAs for mining permits Construction Stormwater General Permits DEP Division of Land Reclamation Office of Abandoned Mine Lands and Reclamation Office of Special Reclamation Public Sewer Projects NPS Regional Coordinator Northern Basin Coordinator, Lou Schmidt

Future Growth OK New point source discharges with limits based on achieving water quality criteria “end-of-pipe” “Remining” without specific allocation New sewage discharges w/ 200/400 fecal coliform effluent limits New mining with TSS effluent limits = 35 mg/l avg. mon., 70 mg/l max. daily applicable at all times New Construction Stormwater in accordance with area allowances

Future Growth – Construction Stormwater 1.5% of area in immediate subwatershed Cumulative area provision See “CSW Future Growth” tab on Metals Allocation spreadsheet

Public Comment Public Comment period ends August 23, 2010 Documents may be reviewed/downloaded from DEP webpage CD available upon request – CD includes GIS Shapefiles and Technical Report Comments should be submitted to Steve Young at Questions - contact Dave Montali, Jim Laine, Ben Lowman, Mike McDaniel (304) (Ext 1063, 1061, 1055, 1101)

TMDL Products Main Report – Overall description of the Cheat River TMDL development process Technical Report with detailed appendices

Allocation spreadsheets: Fecal Coliform, Metals, pH TMDL for each stream, WLAs and LAs by SWS Filterable GIS shapefiles + web- based project coming soon TMDL Products

CD /Spreadsheets/ GIS Demo