River Summit Focuses on Dissolved Solids
DEP official: Standards proposal in the works
Morgantown Dominion Post
20 April 2010
By Alex Lang
The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection
(DEP) is working on a legislative proposal that would limit levels of
total dissolved solids (TDS) that could affect the smell and taste of
drinking water.
TDS was easily the most talked about issue at the 5th
Annual Monongahela River Summit held in Morgantown on Monday.
Secretary of the DEP Randy Huffman said his agency is
working on a proposal to create a secondary drinking water standard for
TDS, which are composed of both organic and inorganic substances,
including minerals. Secondary standards often have to do with taste and
color and not serious health risks.
The standards would be no more than 500 mg/L of TDS — a
nationally recognized benchmark. The proposal could be out later in the
spring for public review in order to get it to the Legislature for the
2011 session.
There have been two wake-up calls in the region with
regard to TDS. The first was increased TDS levels that led to
poor-tasting water in Pennsylvania in 2008. The other, more serious
offense, was a fish kill in Dunkard Creek in September 2009.
Elevated TDS levels led to an algal bloom. The algae
released a toxin that killed most of the marine life in the waterway.
“We’ve had two big red flags here in the last year and a
half,” said Frank Jernejcic, District 1 fisheries biologist for the
West Virginia Division of Natural Resources.
The summit focused on various issues that face the Mon
River basin. There were panel discussions about commerce on the
waterway, water quality issues and the Dunkard Creek fish kill.
More than 150 people attended the all-day event held at
the Waterfront Place Hotel.
In a morning discussion, Jernejcic provided those in
attendance with a history of the Dunkard Creek fish kill and
information about new gas drilling in the area.
Mine Discharge from CONSOL-ow n e d Blacksville No.
2 has been the focus of an investigation into elevated TDS levels.
After the fish kill, CONSOL voluntarily stopped their discharge. The
DEP has since allowed CONSOL to resume discharging into the stream.
Paul Ziemkiewicz, director of the West Virginia Water
Research Institute, said there are two common ways to control TDS. The
first is through a reverse-osmosis process, but this can be costly.
The other is releasing discharge at opportune times,
Ziemkiewicz said. The goal would be to discharge at times when the
water level is higher, so the ratio of water to TDS is higher.
Ziemkiewicz stressed that none of the components that make
up TDS are har mful as long as they are kept to a reasonable level.
Jernejcic said he didn’t want the Dunkard Creek fish kill
to be the main focus of problems facing the basin. “I hope we don’t let
the dead fish define the issue.”