I have worked in environmental consulting for the past decade and have routinely dealt with Ohio EPA on both hazardous waste investigation/remediation and NPDES permitted discharges. I have been part of teams preparing and submitting antidegradation and NPDES permit renewals, as well as maintaining compliance with existing permits. After reading through the news article and then the actual draft permit, the news article is very sensationalized. I am in no way defending the data centers or operators. The news article correctly states the discharges are untreated but fails to mention the strict monitoring requirements that would in place to maintain antidegradation and conform with Ohio Water Quality Standards and public water supply standards. There is also a Notice of Intent that requires the applicant to meet a list of requirements to even be considered for discharging under the general permit. NPDES permitting is a federal program that is also administered by the states. Ohio EPA is setting some pretty stringent limits under their authority in their draft permit, and the public and news organizations are cherry picking and/or don’t have the background to understand the permit requirements.
What it sounds like is the data centers are using untreated river water, and then are wanting to put that untreated (and now hot) water back.
This is better than using municipal water, which goes through expensive treatment to make it safe to drink.
I would hope they would have a reservoir to cool the hot water before dumping it back into a river. I can’t imagine hot water being healthy for life in the river.
You’d think that once the water is cooled, you could send it through again.
Yes. there are stipulations in the draft water about maximum withdrawal from surface water sources and required continuous monitoring of water temperature of the discharges.
It was fucked before this though. The clean ups of the 70’s onwards to 2000 is over, it’s been on a decline since, factory farms dumping shit water, dumping waste on fields, sewage waste, combined with chemical bullshit, on farm fields. There is so much less thought to our health and safety than we think, than used to be the case.
TL;DR Yes, but reality is nuanced, as always.
The recent federal bullshit is a definitely the culmination of decades of industry trying to undo environmental regulations. Moving forward, it’s going to take serious efforts and funds to repair and rebuild how much the US EPA and federal sciences were gutted. Some states are actually doing far better. On the environmental side of things, Ohio is actually pretty good. The programs are based on the federal ones and also have more protective limits to some things. Unfortunately, not all states have the resources or programs in place.
To your specific points, treated sewage solids have been spread on ag land for decades. Concentrates animal feeding operations (CAFOs) have been polluting waterways through permit exemptions for decades. A huge issue with land applied sewage solids is PFAS, which is just now publicly coming to light. There are vast deficiencies in the way things have been happening all along that still happened in the “golden era”.
Negligent or intentional releases of hazardous waste onto the surface or into waterways has been greatly curtailed across the board. There are going to to be ups and downs in speed due to the reality of investigation and cleanup work, regulatory review time frames, and the thorough nature of the programs. The “fast” version of a facility cleanup that I’ve been part of, where problems were addressed as they were discovered, still took from 2009 to 2018, then massive reporting efforts that took US EPA 5 years to come back with a final decision.
ETA: Most sites I have worked on in my career have been legacy contamination sites, meaning things happened in tue 50s-80s, and the companies responsible have been purchased 2 or 3 times since (or are entirely defunct). The companies that bought the sites and liabilities generally want to do the right thing and clean up the issues to mitigate human health and environmental risks. They also don’t want to go bankrupt in the process, which is part of why things take so long. Environmental work is expensive, and the time frames for cleanup and monitoring can be years to decades to “in perpetuity” for some issues.
I was going to say, especially in this era, “lawful” does not necessarily mean “good,” and can often be far from it.
Burning River is back, baby!
Thoughtful evil is the best kind of evil.
The cryptids and end-of-world scenarios there must be out of control, so they must be going with the nuclear option:
https://media.thebrainbin.org/74/62/7462bbd431d41e3d0ebbcea86713ccfec7d12bc6c4e9f9ce3c4d316a8be5130f.pngJokes aside, it’s a draft, so I wonder if they’re proposing the absolute worse option so bad options sound acceptable. Wouldn’t be the first time I see this sort of thing, specially with alarmist, sensationalistic and discreetly ill-intented news media aplenty as samples.
Conservatives. Ruin. Everything.
Ay, oh, wait to go Ohio
