EESI: Briefings

Water Pollution in Urban and Rural Settings

Friday, March 23, 2001
9:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m., 124 Senate Dirksen Office Building

Please click here to view the Briefing Summary!

The Environmental and Energy Study Institute, the Federal Water Quality Association and the American Water Resources Association, National Capital Chapter, sponsored a Congressional symposium on water pollution in urban and rural settings.

Urbanites and rural residents tend to point the finger of blame at each other as the major cause of water pollution. The symposium provided hard scientific information on the relative contributions of urban and rural areas to nonpoint source contamination of both surface and groundwater and their relationship to land use and other human activity. The symposium examined efforts to deal with nonpoint pollution in an urban watershed, the Anacostia, and a mixed rural-urban watershed, the Patuxent. Finally, the symposium presented information on innovative approaches and possible synergies to improve water quality in both urban and rural portions of watersheds.

The symposium’s framework speaker was Timothy L. Miller, Chief of the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Water-Quality Assessment Program (NAWQA), which monitors the chemical, physical and biological conditions in major watersheds across the nation. He compared the findings in rural and "urbanized" areas and then focus on the causes and consequences of urban runoff and the implications for public policy. Additionally, USGS made available to symposium attendees, copies of recently completed reports on NAWQA’s findings regarding contamination and its potential effects on aquatic life and human health in a number of major watersheds. A surprising finding from these and earlier watershed reports is that contaminants often occur at greater frequencies and concentrations in urbanized areas, which cover less than 5 percent of land in the continental United States, than in farming areas, which cover more than 50 percent of the land. NAWQA normally uses the term "urbanized areas" to describe residential and commercial land use with low to medium population densities, as opposed to heavily developed urban centers.

Other speakers at the symposium and the subjects they will address included:

Hon. Mary Lorsung, Chair, Patuxent River Commission (Patuxent River Experience);

Larry Coffman, Associate Director, Prince George’s County Department of Environmental Resources (Anacostia River Experience);

Max Schnepf, Coordinator, National Conservation Buffer Initiative, Public Affairs Liaison to the Soil and Water Conservation Society, Natural Resources Conservation Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture (The Conservation Buffer Factor and Urban Rivers); and

Allison Weideman, Program Manager, Chesapeake Bay Program Office, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (Draft Chesapeake Bay Nutrient Trading Guidelines: An Innovative Approach to Meeting Nutrient-reduction Goals and Accommodating Urban and Rural Needs).