Monday, November 5, 2007 - 3:30 PM
43-7

Managing Municipal Wastes for Water Quality Protection in the Susquehanna River Basin.

Herschel Elliott, Pennsylvania State Univ., Penn State University, 220 Agriculture Engineering Bldg., University Park, PA 16802-1909

Because the Susquehanna River basin (SRB) provides roughly half of the freshwater to the Chesapeake Bay, municipal waste management within the SRB impacts the Bay’s water quality.  Major emphasis has been put on nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus) but municipal wastes can delivery metals, toxic organics, and pathogens to surface waters. Municipal wastes impacting the Bay’s water quality include point sources (effluents from wastewater treatment plants, landfill leachates, septic system discharges) and nonpoint sources (runoff from land application of biosolids and stormwater).  New technologies and regulatory strategies are being adopted within the SRB to limit the impact of municipal waste pollutants on the Bay.  Because municipal wastes are highly regulated compared to other sources of pollutants to the Bay, more stringent standards may impose enormous compliance costs on municipalities in the SRB without commensurate water quality benefits to the Bay.

Back to Symposium--Agriculture, Rivers, and Coasts: II. The Susquehanna/Div. A05 Business Meeting
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Back to The ASA-CSSA-SSSA International Annual Meetings (November 4-8, 2007)