Nixon moves to protect water, but could it be too little, too late?

By Andy Ostmeyer

aostmeyer@joplinglobe.com

KIMBERLING CITY, Mo. — David Casaletto chanced upon a place that he and his wife thought was darn near perfect: Table Rock Lake.

He liked being on the water. He couldn’t get enough of the forested rhythm of hills and hollows that exemplify the Ozarks.

“Loved it,” he said.

His wife grew up camping along Table Rock, and once they married, Casaletto, a native of Pittsburg, Kan., found himself doing the same several times a year. But even then, he noticed something odd.

“I remember my wife and I discussing the fact that the lake wasn’t as clear ... we didn’t understand the dynamics,” he said.

Despite their personal observations, the enjoyment the lake gave them was unwavering. In 1999, Casaletto and his wife just “up and moved” to the lake.

When they arrived in Kimberling City, they bought a house. Casaletto did so without a job. So he wandered into a nearby chamber of commerce and asked for leads. They put him on one immediately. They were looking for someone to write grants to pay for studies and other efforts to protect Table Rock.

“I knew nothing about water quality,” he said. Still, it was a job. Casaletto grabbed it and never looked back.

Today, as the executive director of Table Rock Lake Water Quality Inc., Casaletto is an advocate for protecting the water quality that he and his wife noticed slipping years before. And lately, he said, he has been thinking about sending a letter to Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon.

“He’s pledging to clean up the Lake (of the Ozarks). Hey, maybe you need to clean up the state,” Casaletto said in an interview on Monday.

Casaletto worries that the emphasis on cleaning up Missouri’s waters could begin and end at Lake of the Ozarks.

“If we are really serious, we have got to look statewide,” he said.

‘Robust powers’

Last Tuesday, the day after Casaletto was thinking about his letter, Nixon announced legislative proposals that he said would give the Missouri Clean Water Commission and the Missouri Department of Natural Resources authority to protect not just the Lake of the Ozarks, but every public water body in the state.

If passed, his proposal would allow the state to declare a body of water “distressed.” Once that happens, the state could stop the issuance of additional discharge permits in the vicinity of the water body. It also would, for the first time, give the state authority to inspect private septic tanks that contribute to the contamination, and if there are problems, to order the septic tanks to be cleaned up, connected to an existing sewer system or shut down.

“This would be authority that would apply to any body of water in Missouri,” said Scott Holste, spokesman for Nixon.

Given the gravity of the problems at Lake of the Ozarks, that body of water would be one of the first to be declared distressed, Holste said.

Nixon declared: “I’ll be the first to make sure the Lake of the Ozarks is designated as a distressed body, and I strongly believe the Clean Water Commission will agree with me.”

Nixon said the proposal would give regulators “substantially greater power” to control the flow of pollution into the lake and other bodies of water. The state, he said, “must have robust powers for dealing with pollution.”

Said Holste: “What we have seen with Lake of the Ozarks is that the current system is not doing its job. There could be other bodies of water that fall under that classification, too.”

‘Abysmal failures’

Nixon’s initiative stems from a series of DNR missteps this summer in which officials failed to notify the public that high levels of E. coli bacteria in the lake made swimming at public beaches unsafe. Nixon temporarily suspended the DNR’s director, Mark Templeton, after it was revealed that regulators were more worried about the impact on tourism than they were about protecting public safety.

Citing “abysmal failures” in water-quality protection, Nixon ordered inspections of sites that had permits to discharge into the lake.

Judd Slivka, spokesman for the DNR, said the agency had inspected 419 sites as of Dec. 15. Of those, 154 were found to be out of compliance with their permits. That rate of noncompliance is about 37 percent. So far, 75 sites have been returned to compliance. Others have been referred to the Missouri attorney general for enforcement action.

Slivka also said there are as many as 50,000 septic systems around the lake and that 60 to 80 percent of them are believed to be failing, meaning that fecal waste is making its way into the lake.

“That’s the number people kick around when they talk about Lake of the Ozarks,” Slivka said of the septic tanks.

Septic-tank oversight generally falls upon county health departments. The DNR has no authority over them at this time. It does not issue permits for private septic systems.

“We don’t regulate septic systems,” Slivka said.

Impaired irony

It’s ironic, Casaletto said, that the problem surfaced at Lake of the Ozarks.

For years, the state of Missouri has been required by federal law to put bodies of water that it considers “impaired” on a list and to develop a plan of action to fix the problem. Lake of the Ozarks has never been on that list, despite repeated warnings going back decades that human sewage was a problem, he said.

Meanwhile, Table Rock is on the “impaired” list, but not for bacteria. It is on the list for nutrient loading, which means too much nitrogen and phosphorus from fertilizers, animal wastes and detergents are getting into the lake. That loading provides nutrients for algae to grow.

“Our levels are not health hazardous,” Casaletto said. “It’s an aesthetic and fish situation .... it could destroy our tourism if the lake turned green.”

There is no evidence of fecal bacteria being a problem at Table Rock. The Stone County Health Department and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers check the lake for bacteria. All public beaches are checked from May through September.

Laurie Driver, spokeswoman for the Corps, said, “They had no instances when they closed any swim beaches on Table Rock Lake for high e-coli levels (in 2009).”

Paul Terry, a public health specialist with the Stone County Health Department, said that is consistent with his findings, too.

Casaletto said he wondered about that. His group did its own checking. They also found that E. coli levels were below the standards that make it unsafe for swimming.

“I swim all summer long with granddaughters,” he said. “If I thought there was a problem with the lake, not only would I not get in, but I wouldn’t let my 4-year-old and 1-year-old granddaughters in the lake.”

Meanwhile, efforts by his group and others have resulted in new rules within the Table Rock watershed, including limits on phosphorus discharges from wastewater treatment plants, including those at Springfield.

“We have enjoyed a turnaround of sorts,” he said, indicating the lake is in better shape today than it was when he used to camp there and first noticed the subtle decline in water quality.

But the problems at Lake of the Ozarks have him wondering.

“I’ll ask this question: What is different about Lake of the Ozarks than Table Rock? Is there any reason not to extrapolate from that and say 37 percent of these (DNR permitted systems) are failing statewide?”

He also wonders if 60 to 80 percent of the septic systems along Table Rock are failing. His watershed group wants to apply for a grant to do an assessment of septic tanks in the watershed, and the feasibility of grouping some of them onto centralized, state-permitted treatment systems.

Even if the septic system is properly installed in appropriate soil, it has a shelf life.

“If everything is perfect, they are going to fail ... well, everything is not perfect. ... They are older tanks and you just figure three-quarters of them have potential failure. ... A lot of times the failure is going straight into our groundwater. Everybody is on a well around Table Rock.”

In the 1970s, septic tank technology meant a 300- to 500-gallon metal tank.

“Those are the things leaking now,” he said.

The problem is that replacing an existing system with a new one along the limestone shores of Table Rock could cost $15,000 to $20,000, he estimates.

Stockton Lake

Loring Bullard, executive director of the Watershed Committee of the Ozarks, said he agrees with Casaletto. The focus on water quality shouldn’t end at Lake of the Ozarks.

“Its a big issue statewide,” he said.

His group monitors the water supply for the city of Springfield, which includes Stockton Lake. That lake has a watershed that reaches from Miller in the south to Lockwood in the west.

Like Table Rock, Stockton has good water quality. Corps officials also test public beaches and do open-water tests in the middle of the lake several times during the summer. They have not found elevated levels of bacteria. Bullard also said that Stockton Lake, like Table Rock, has set-back restrictions that limit lakefront construction. But too often, he said, there’s little attention to water quality problems before they occur.

“It is hard to get people to focus on prevention. We are crisis driven,” he said.

Like the Table Rock group, Bullard’s group hopes to change that.

“We are working on an onsite wastewater training center,” he said. Rules change for installers and developers, but they and others, including farmers and homeowners, could go to the training center to learn more about the latest rules and available technology.

The state, he said, also may need to offer low-interest loans or set up cost-sharing programs so that homeowners can begin the repair of aging septic systems.

“You got a whole bunch of little guys who are a big part of the problem,” Bullard said.

‘Come on guys!’

While Nixon called his proposal an important step forward, others remain skeptical.

Ken Midkiff, chairman of the Missouri Clean Water Campaign, said the governor offers no definition of “distressed” and how that might differ from a water body that is impaired.

And how far would the state’s authority reach? The main stem for the Lake of the Ozarks is the Osage River, which forms in Vernon County. Would the state have authority to deny permits or mandate septic tanks be cleaned up miles upstream of the lake itself?

“The Clean Water Commission would make the determination of what is an affected area when they designate a distressed body of water,” Holste said last week, in response to questions about the governor’s proposal.

Midkiff also doesn’t think there’s the political will to give the state regulatory authority over private septic systems. That’s been tried before in the Legislature. It failed. He also doesn’t think there’s the money to beef up the DNR’s staff so they can provide oversight.

Casaletto asks: Why is the state focusing on after-the-fact solutions?

“You don’t address water quality problems after they have distressed a waterway,” he said. “You don’t wait until you have ruined the lake.’’

The emphasis has to be on protecting waterways before they become distressed, and the technology is there to do that with wastewater discharges and septic systems.

Instead of writing a letter to the governor, Casaletto said he might go to meetings of the Missouri Clean Water Commission and to legislative hearings next month to discuss the issue.

“Come on guys,” he said. “Your charge is not for distressed water ... your charge is to keep them from becoming distressed.”

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