Water Quality Standards.
The DEQ recently adopted new water quality standards in Wyoming known as Chapter 1 of the Water Quality Rules and Regulations. Standards for water quality drive the protection of streams and lakes in Wyoming. Strict standards give the State of Wyoming authority to protect its streams and lakes in both “pollution discharge” situations and “non-point source pollution” situations. The Wyoming Outdoor Council viewed the state’s new standards as not strict enough. We challenged parts of Chapter 1 in district court in Laramie County in May 2007.
Two new sections of those regulations, Section 27 and Section 36, are of grave importance to the water quality of Wyoming’s lakes and streams. Section 27 reclassifies intermittent and ephemeral streams in Wyoming as having only the potential for secondary contact recreation, not primary contact recreation. This has the effect of raising the standard for e. coli in such streams. And the standard for fecal coliform bacteria has been removed entirely as a criterion.
Secondly, Section 36 allows the DEQ to examine flows in “effluent dependent” streams, that is those streams whose flow is so dependent upon pollution effluent that it would not be a perennial stream without the addition of such pollution discharges. The DEQ is allowed, under Section 36, to rewrite water quality standards that fit the situation on the ground. In essence, this means that the DEQ/WQD may write a new standard for such effluent-dependent streams that accommodate the quality of the effluent being discharged into it. The standard, in other words, is being written to match the quality of the effluent, and not the water quality of the natural stream.
The Wyoming Outdoor Council believes the DEQ should be setting stream standards to benefit the stream, not to benefit the pollutant discharger who wants to discharge into that stream.