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Published November 13, 2008 10:04 pm - It was no surprise to Darvin Bentlage, of Barton County, that the North Fork of Spring River has been identified as impaired by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. DNR, EPA wrestle over list of state’s impaired streams By Wally Kennedy
wkennedy@joplinglobe.com It was no surprise to Darvin Bentlage, of Barton County, that the North Fork of Spring River has been identified as impaired by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “It’s impaired because of ammonia and the lack of dissolved oxygen,” Bentlage said. “It’s something that can be corrected with proper management.” Bentlage believes the problem is caused by the spreading of hog manure and poultry litter as fertilizer that then runs off into North Fork, a tributary to Spring River. Crop farmers use urea fertilizer, too. “If they can keep the manure and fertilizer from going into the ditches, there would not be a problem,” he said. “But that means some of their farmland must be used to create buffers to prevent that from happening.” Coming up with ways to remedy water pollution is the objective of Section 303(d) of the federal Clean Water Act, said John Ford, head of the DNR’s water protection program. That section requires that each state submit every two years a list of water bodies that are impaired. If a water body is placed on the list, the DNR must attempt to correct the problem, if it can. The EPA is the final arbiter on which waters are placed on the list. But the EPA and the DNR are now in a tug of war over which water bodies should go on the list that was created for 2006. The DNR also submitted a list of some water bodies it wanted to delist. After reviewing the list, the EPA agreed with the state that 61 streams and rivers should be listed, and that 42 should be delisted. But, the EPA would not approve the delisting of 49 other water bodies. And after examining state data, the EPA also added 86 water bodies to the list. John B. Askew, the EPA’s Region 7 administrator, said, “After an extensive and exhaustive review of the relevant and available data, EPA believes that Missouri should have identified more waters on its impaired-waters list.” Seventeen streams in Southwest Missouri have been identified as impaired. Six of them were added to the list by the EPA. The EPA also declined to delist two of them. Some creeks, such as Jasper County’s Center Creek and Turkey Creek, where lead, cadmium and bacteria are the pollutants, have long been on the impaired list. But some of the others that have been listed reflect problems associated with mercury, bacteria and low dissolved oxygen. Ford, with the DNR, said: “The EPA added a number of waters to the 2006 list because of a very strict interpretation of the federal Clean Water Act. Our interpretation was a little looser. We have a basic disagreement over the issue of dissolved oxygen.” Ford said some streams in Missouri have low levels of dissolved oxygen in the summer. He said the DNR is of the opinion that what is being observed is a natural process unrelated to human impact. The DNR, he said, does not believe it should commit staff time to something that is not a problem. 
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