Warren hearing to address new water regulation

By Ed Runyan

runyan@vindy.com

WARREN

A regulation being imposed on the water discharged from the city’s treatment plant to be discussed at a hearing Thursday will have ramifications for local industries and communities all along the Mahoning River.

Tom Angelo, director of the treatment plant, called a lunchtime meeting Tuesday at Enzo’s Restaurant to explain the new Ohio Environmental Protection Agency regulation to take effect for Warren on Feb. 1.

The hearing with OEPA representatives will be at 6 p.m. at Warren G. Harding High School.

It will cost money to implement, and the implementation must be complete by May 1, 2013, Angelo said.

The regulation is for total dissolved solids, a measurement of salt and other chemicals. The EPA says Warren’s treatment plant no longer can discharge water containing solids of more than 622 milligrams per liter of water.

The state never had a limit for solids before, but it wants to establish them now to comply with the rules established by the state of Pennsylvania, Angelo said.

Water from Warren and other communities along the Mahoning River flows into Pennsylvania at the village of Lowellville in Mahoning County, and Ohio says the amount of solids in the Mahoning at Lowellville now must meet the Pennsylvania standard of 500 milligrams per liter.

One of Angelo’s biggest complaints is that the water at Lowellville already meets Pennsylvania’s standard. The water at Lowellville now measures at 340 parts per million.

“I’ve yet to see a springtime where there’s a whole bunch of fish belly-up in the Mahoning River,” Angelo said of the current water quality.

Warren’s testing of water from the treatment plant in recent years indicated an average reading of 743 parts per million and higher, Angelo said, meaning the city will have to take steps to bring the number down.

Some of the steps are to require businesses to clean up their water before they release it, he said. That will add to the cost of doing business here, Angelo said.

He describes the effect of new standards this way: “They just put an economic fence around the Mahoning River basin and all of the communities.” The new regulations will say to businesses who might want to locate here: “Go anywhere else but the Mahoning River basin.”

Warren is the first city or business along the river to get an order to reduce its solids discharge. But the other cities along the river with their own treatment plant, such as Youngstown, will get a new discharge limit later this year.

In that way, the effect of the new standards will be throughout the Mahoning Valley, Angelo said.

Angelo invited businesses leaders from companies such as General Motors and RG Steel to attend Thursday’s hearing.