West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection

1. West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection Draft TMDL Public Meetings August 3,2010 Kingwood, WV August 4, 2010 Blackwater Falls State Park Cheat River Watershed TMDLs

2. Agenda • TMDL/ water quality standards recap • Overview of this TMDL effort • Explanation/demonstration of electronic documents, spreadsheets, tools • Questions and Answers

3. What’s a TMDL? • “Total Maximum Daily Load” • TMDL is a pollution budget – the amount of pollutants that can be put into a stream before water quality standards are violated • TMDL development is required by the Clean Water Act for all streams impaired by a pollutant

4. What’s an Impaired Stream? • Stream that doesn’t meet water quality standards • WV Water Quality Standards are codified in 47CSR2 • Standards include “Designated Uses” for WV waters and the criteria to protect those uses • Water Quality Criteria can be numeric or narrative

5. Cheat River Watershed TMDLs Criteria of Concern • Total Iron • Aquatic Life Protection; Public Water Supply • 4-consecutive day average not to exceed 1.5 mg/l more than once in three years (warmwater); 0.5 mg/l (troutwater) • Dissolved Aluminum • Aquatic Life Protection • One-hour average concentration not to exceed 0.75 mg/l more than once in three years • 4-consecutive day average not to exceed 0.75 mg/l (warmwater fisheries) more than once in three years; 0.087 mg/l (troutwaters) • pH • All Uses • 6.0 – 9.0 Standard Units at all times

6. Cheat River Watershed TMDLsCriteria of Concern • Fecal Coliform • Water Contact Recreation; Public Water Supply • 200 counts/100ml as a monthly geometric mean • no more than 10% of samples in a month exceed 400 counts/100ml • Total Manganese • 1.0 mg/l or less with a five mile zone upstream of a public water intake

7. Cheat River Watershed TMDLsCriteria of Concern • Biological Impairment • Conditions Not Allowable in State Waters • (47 CSR 2-3.2i) “.....no significant adverse impact to the chemical, physical, hydrologic or biological components of aquatic ecosystems shall be allowed.” • Benthic macroinvertebrate assessment • West Virginia Stream Condition Index (WVSCI)

8. S = “sum of” WLA = “wasteload allocations” LA = “load allocations” MOS = “margin of safety” WLAs - pollutant loads for “point sources” Discharge from point Need NPDES permit LAs - pollutant loads for “nonpoint sources” and background Precipitation and runoff No permit required TMDL = S WLA + S LA + MOS

9. Cheat Watershed TMDL History • EPA developed Blackwater River Dissolved Oxygen TMDL - 1998 • EPA developed metals/pH TMDLs for Cheat River and 50 tributaries – 2001 • This effort reevaluates EPA metals/pH TMDLs plus addresses fecal coliform and biological impairements

10. Cheat Watershed TMDL History • This WVDEP project: • Proposed streams advertised for public comment (Spring 2006) • Initial Public Meetings (TMDL 101) - May 2006 • Watershed Monitoring and Source Tracking - July 2006 - June 2007 • Allocation Philosophy Meeting – April 2010 • Draft TMDL Public Meeting - Today

11. Impaired Waters 99 named streams – See Table 3-3 starting on page 11 of Main Report

12. Modeling • MDAS (Mining Data Analysis System) • Iron, Manganese, Dissolved Aluminum, pH and Fecal Coliform impairments • Can handle point and nonpoint sources (representation and allocation) • Metals speciation component allows evaluation of dissolved aluminum and pH • Recognizes exposure duration and exceedence frequency components of criteria

13. Modeling 22 TMDL watersheds • 566 subwatersheds

14. Design precipitation period Hourly precipitation data for a six-year period Design period includes wet and dry years Applied to present day land uses Permitted discharges equal to permit limits Baseline Condition

15. Margin of Safety • Required component of TMDLs • Explicit 5% used in most TMDLs • TMDL endpoints for numeric criteria are 95% of value (ex. 1.425 mg/l for 1.5 mg/l Fe criterion)

16. TMDL Condition • Existing pollutant sources reduced such that TMDL endpoints are achieved at each modeled subwatershed • Criteria value, duration, exceedence frequency • Margin of safety • Example – 4-day average concentration of iron in warmwater fishery not greater than 1.425 mg/l more than once every three years

17. Baseline/TMDL Example

18. Boundary Conditions • Shavers Fork, Dry Fork, Blackwater River above Beaver Creek • Gross allocations – no reductions prescribed • Miscellaneous Pennsylvania tributaries in Big Sandy Creek watershed • Gross allocations - reductions as necessary to meet TMDL endpoints at the state border

19. Pennsylvania Allocations

20. Biological Impairment TMDLs • Stressor identification • Define potential stressors/pathways • Evaluate chemistry, habitat, field notes, bugs • Determine stressors • Stressor/TMDL Linkage • Metals /pH Toxicity ................ Al, Fe, pH • Organic Enrichment ......FC surrogate • Sedimentation ...............Fe Surrogate Table 4-1, Page 20 Linkage

21. Sedimentation Stressor • Old Approach • Select unimpaired reference watershed with similar landuse, ecoregion, geomorphological characteristics • Normalized sediment loading in reference watershed is TMDL target for biologically-impaired stream • Present Sediment TMDL • Cheat TMDL Approach • - Correlate TSS and Iron • - Model Iron • - Present Iron TMDL • - Calculate TSS for Fe • - Compare to TSS for • reference approach

22. Iron /TSS Correlation • From Pre-TMDL Monitoring, used stations with >5 quantifiable observations of both Fe and TSS, a positive correlation and R2 >0.5; • Fe/TSS correlation = Three “flavors” ranging from 0.020 to 0.066 Ex. 0.020 = 2.0 mg/l Fe per 100 mgl TSS • Applied to sediment producing land uses and bank erosion sediment loads

23. Sedimentation Stressor • All biologically-impaired streams for which sedimentation is a significant stressor are also impaired for iron • Sediment reduction needed to meet iron water quality criteria is larger than that needed under reference watershed approach • Iron TMDLs are appropriate surrogate

24. Ionic Stress • Crab Orchard Run • Insufficient info on causative pollutants and thresholds (SO4, other ions) • Biological TMDL development deferred until December 2011 • Work plan developed • DEP monitoring • EPA – model enhancements

25. Reduced Pollutant Sources • Iron • Abandoned Mine Lands • Upland Sediment sources • Residental/Urban Runoff • Streambank erosion • Active mining permits

26. Reduced Pollutant Sources • Fecal Coliform • Failing/nonexistent on-site sewage systems • Urban/residential land use stormwater runoff • Agricultural land use loading

27. Manganese • Criteria applicable only in five mile stream segments upstream of water supply intakes • Impairments only in Heather Run, Lick Run, and Pringle Run watersheds • Reductions prescribed only for Abandoned Mine Land sources

28. pH / Dissolved Aluminum • Impairments linked; decreased pH causes increased aluminum in dissolved form • Atmospheric deposition - Impact of varies by buffering capacity • Iron and aluminum reductions to meet criteria decreases acidity • Alkalinity additions captured in baseline

29. pH / Dissolved Aluminum Allocation Strategy – Pg. 56 Metals/pH spreadsheet, pH LAS tab

30. Implementation Activities • WV/NPDES Permit issuance/reissuance • WLAs for mining permits • Construction Stormwater General Permits • DEP Division of Land Reclamation • Office of Abandoned Mine Lands and Reclamation • Office of Special Reclamation • Public Sewer Projects • http://www.wvinfrastructure.com/projects/index.html • NPS Regional Coordinator • Northern Basin Coordinator, Lou Schmidt (louschmidt@frontiernet.net)

31. Future Growth • OK...... • New point source discharges with limits based on achieving water quality criteria “end-of-pipe” • “Remining” without specific allocation • New sewage discharges w/ 200/400 fecal coliform effluent limits • New mining with TSS effluent limits = 35 mg/l avg. mon., 70 mg/l max. daily applicable at all times • New Construction Stormwater in accordance with area allowances

32. Future Growth – Construction Stormwater • 1.5% of area in immediate subwatershed • Cumulative area provision • See “CSW Future Growth” tab on Metals Allocation spreadsheet

33. Public Comment • Public Comment period ends August 23, 2010 • Documents may be reviewed/downloaded from DEP webpage http://www.wvdep.org/ • CD available upon request – CD includes GIS Shapefiles and Technical Report • Comments should be submitted to Steve Young at Stephen.A.Young@wv.gov • Questions - contact Dave Montali, Jim Laine, Ben Lowman, Mike McDaniel • (304) 926-0499 (Ext 1063, 1061, 1055, 1101) • David.A.Montali@wv.gov, James.C.Laine@wv.gov, • Michael.L.McDaniel@wv.gov, Ben.M.Lowman@wv.gov

34. TMDL Products • Main Report – Overall description of the Cheat River TMDL development process • Technical Report with detailed appendices

35. TMDL Products • Allocation spreadsheets: • Fecal Coliform, Metals, pH • TMDL for each stream, WLAs and LAs by SWS • Filterable • GIS shapefiles + web-based project coming soon

36. CD /Spreadsheets/ GIS Demo