Wyoming DEQ Revises Water Quality Standards

by Dan Heilig

In 1998, the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality set out to revise its water quality standards. Four years, seven drafts and thousands of pages later, the agency has put its stamp of approval on a comprehensive re-write of rules that are intended to increase protection for Wyoming's lakes and rivers against pollution.

The revised standards set water quality goals for all of the state's surface waters. The goals are based on-and, under federal law, must protect-existing uses of the state's rivers and lakes, such as fisheries, recreation and agriculture.

A critical component of the revised standards is the classification system developed to implement the rule. Class 1 waters, also known as outstanding resource waters, receive the highest degree of protection, essentially prohibiting any lowering of water quality. Class 2 waters contain fish. Class 3 waters contain aquatic species other than fish. Class 4 waters are protected for agricultural, wildlife and industrial uses. In all classes, the level of water quality necessary to protect existing uses must be maintained.

The federal Clean Water Act requires states to review and, if necessary, revise water quality standards every three years. Despite this requirement, Wyoming last revised its standards in 1990, so revisions were long overdue.

On balance, the revised standards are a significant improvement over the rules that have been on the books for over a decade. Increased protection for aquatic life in the state's surface waters is perhaps the most substantial of the improvements: every stream, lake and creek is now presumed to support aquatic life and must be protected accordingly. These protections can be removed, but only after a "use attainability analysis" demonstrates that aquatic life is not present in a surface water.

On balance, the revised standards are a significant improvement over the rules that have been on the books for over a decade.

Other improvements in the new revisions include extending fecal-coliform limits to all surface waters at all times; upgrading pollutant limits to meet the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's national criteria; lowering maximum acceptable temperature for cold-water fisheries from 78° F to 68° F and, for warm-water fisheries, from 90°F to 86°.

Unfortunately, not all the changes are welcome. The special prohibition against temperature changes in fish spawning areas (designed to prevent thermal shock) has been eliminated; the new standards allow unlimited rates of both temperature increases and decreases in cold water and warm water fish streams when water temperatures are between just above freezing and 59 degrees F. In addition, there is no process by which citizens may nominate Class 1 waters; the tributary rule for Class 1 waters (which ensured existing quality in these waters by protecting water quality in their tributaries) has been abolished; and the credible-data rule, which requires burdensome scientific testing knowledge and equipment, impedes citizen-based clean-up efforts.