Water quality suffers because of Missouri''s inaction
By KEN MIDKIFF
Special to The Star
Maybe Missouri Sen. Brad Lager, a Savannah Republican, has it right for all the wrong reasons. By causing the Environmental Protection Agency to take back a water-quality protection program, maybe the feds will do what our state has not.
Apparently under the influence of those who view our lakes, rivers and streams as little more than sewers, the Missouri General Assembly has passed laws and measures that are aimed at treating pollution of water as a right.
For at least two decades, the General Assembly has, each year, decreased the amount of tax monies to the Department of Natural Resources. Last year, that amounted to 12 percent of the total budget of the agency.
The federal Clean Water Act states right up front — in Section 101 — that all waters should support aquatic life, recreation, and that fish and shellfish should be safe to eat. To discharge waste water, the Clean Water Act requires that the discharge contain contaminants in limited amounts, and even then, the discharger must have our permission to do so.
That permission is called a permit issued under the legal standards of Section 301 of the Clean Water Act — the National Pollution Discharge Elimination System. Congress decreed that the Environmental Protection Agency was authorized to grant permission on our behalf.
In 1974, the Environmental Protection Agency gave the state of Missouri the authority to administer the federal water protection program in this state.
But the Department of Natural Resources, because of a lack of funding and personnel, has done a miserable job administering the federal program. Water quality protective permits were issued on a “you pays your money, you gets your permit” basis. These permits do contain water-quality protective effluent limits and are generally protective of water quality.
The remainder of the program is sorely lacking. There is very little monitoring, even less enforcement.
Enter Lager. On the last day of the legislative session last year, in a snit over bacteria problems at Lake of the Ozarks, he refused to let the state agency charge fees for issuance of discharge permits. These fees amount to 37 percent of the water protection budget. This year, he has called the Department of Natural Resources a “Kremlin,” and has further said he will hold up the permit fee authorization until the agency holds meetings with “stakeholders,” which is apparently composed only of dischargers.
The Department of Natural Resources simply cannot continue to administer a federal program on the piddling amount given to it by the General Assembly, and with a primary fundraising tool taken away. Citizens, having received a cold shoulder from the state, are correctly withholding support.
With the restrictions set up by the General Assembly, industries are under the impression that they have a right to pollute — an erroneous notion, and one that needs correction.
What Lager is doing is pushing the water protection program into the hands of a federal agency, with offenders tried in a federal court, with a U.S. Attorney as the prosecutor. Perhaps it is time that the water protection program is placed back in federal hands. Federal agencies are not persuaded by petty state politicians to “go light” on major industries that foul our waters.
The state of Missouri has failed. Let’s give the federal government a chance.
Ken Midkiff is the chairman of the Missouri Clean Water Campaign. He lives in Columbia.