Lower Kanawha Watershed TMDLs West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection Draft TMDL Public Meetings September 28, 2011 Winfield High School

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

What’s a TMDL? “ Total Maximum Daily Load” How much pollutant a stream can receive and remain healthy A Pollution Budget – prescribes reduction of pollutants (where needed) that result in the restoration of an impaired stream 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

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 Iron Aquatic Life/Public Water Supply Not to exceed 1.5 mg/l as a 4 day average concentration more than once in a three year period

Criteria of Concern Dissolved Aluminum Aquatic life Not to exceed 750 ug/l as a 4 day average concentration more than once in a three year period Not to exceed 750 ug/l as a 1 hour average concentration more than once in a three year period pH All uses No values below 6.0 nor above 9.0 Dissolved Oxygen aquatic life no value less than 5.0 mg/l (warmwater)

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

TMDL Development History Project Timeline: Proposed streams advertised for public comment April 2007 Initial Public Meetings (TMDL Intro) May 2007 Watershed Monitoring and Source Tracking July June 2008 Allocation Philosophy Meeting October 2010 Draft TMDL Public Meeting Today

Impaired Waters 221 named streams – See Table 3-3 on page 11 of Draft Report for a complete list of streams and impairments

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

Modeling

22 TMDL watersheds 515 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

TMDL Condition Existing pollutant sources reduced such that TMDL endpoints are achieved in each modeled subwatershed recognizing Criteria value, duration and exceedence frequency Margin of safety

Required component of TMDLs Explicit 5% used in most TMDLs TMDL endpoints for numeric criteria are 95% of criterion value (example 1.425mg/ml for 1.5 mg/ ml criterion) Margin of Safety

Baseline/TMDL Example

Pollutant Sources (Iron) Abandoned Mine Lands Streambank erosion Upland Sediment Sources Harvested Forest Oil and Gas Agriculture Urban Residential Active Mining/Bond forfeiture

Iron Reduction Strategy AML sources Surface runoff reduced to values equal to undisturbed forest Springs reduced to water quality criteria Streambank Erosion reduced to reference stream loadings Sediment Sources reduced to iron loadings equivalent to 100 mg/l TSS Assessment of area by sediment source category and percent of total area within subwatershed subsequent reductions based on percent of total pollutant load contributed by category (if one category is 75% or more of total area – reduce first)

pH/Aluminum Pollutant Sources & Reduction Strategy Initial step – reduce Iron loadings to meet criteria Acid precipitation (Hoffman Hollow) Additional alkalinity added as needed to increase pH and reduce dissolved aluminum Abandoned Mine Lands Add additional alkalinity to offset acid precipitation Reduce total aluminum loads from sediment sources, as needed, to meet dissolved aluminum water quality criteria

Fecal Pollutant Sources & Strategy Fecal Coliform STP effluents represented at existing limits (200/400) Failing/nonexistent on-site sewage systems – 100% reduction Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs) - reduced to water quality criteria (200/400 cts) Sensitivity Analysis based reductions Urban runnoff Agriculture

Biological Impairment TMDLs Stressor identification Define potential stressors/ pathways Evaluate chemistry, habitat, field notes, bugs Determine stressors Stressor/TMDL Linkage Organic Enrichment......FC surrogate Sediment …….Total Iron surrogate Ionic Stress…….deferred and retained on 303d list Linkage Table 4-1, Page 25

Organic Enrichment Stressor All biologically impaired streams for which organic enrichment is a significant stressor are also impaired for fecal coliform Implementation of fecal coliform TMDL will require removal of untreated sewage and animal wastes and thereby remove organic enrichment stress Fecal TMDL is an appropriate surrogate

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

Sedimentation Stressor Reference Stream Method (previous 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 TSS/Iron correlation Method (current approach) Correlate TSS and Iron Model Iron Present Iron TMDL Calculate TSS reduction for Fe Compare to TSS reduction for reference approach

Sedimentation Stressor Table 10-1 on page 56 of the Draft Report

Future Growth Highlights New facility anywhere in watershed if meeting water quality criteria end of pipe New sewage discharges w/ 200/400 fecal coliform effluent limits Subwatershed-specific future growth allowances have been provided for site registrations under the Construction Stormwater General Permit Full details on Future Growth can be found on page 92 of the Draft report

Public Comment Public Comment period ends October 14, 2011 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, Mike McDaniel, Ben Lowman (304) (Ext 1063, 1061, 1055, 1101)

TMDL Products Main Report – Overall description of the TMDL for development process for streams in the Lower Kanawha watershed Technical Report with detailed appendices

TMDL Products Allocation spreadsheets: Fecal Coliform, Iron, Aluminum, etc TMDL for each stream, WLAs and LAs by SWS Filterable GIS shapefiles, along with Technical Report and Appendices, available on CD Coming soon – web based GIS access

CD /Spreadsheets/ GIS Demo