Smarter Growth. John H. Spiers

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СКАЧАТЬ the wife of an air force pilot who lived in Fairfax. Like many sewer ladies, Agnew started out as a conservationist interested in preserving scenic and recreational amenities. Her first major involvement in a grassroots environmental campaign was in opposition to a luxury housing proposal for the Burling tract adjacent to the Potomac. After the Burling case, Agnew became president of the Northern Virginia Conservation Council. Over time, her interests evolved to focus more on water pollution issues, and she established the Center for Environmental Strategy as an advocacy organization in Northern Virginia.

      The sewer ladies combined familiar tools of grassroots organizing with formidable expertise on the technical details of water pollution to become leading environmentalists in Greater Washington. Gannett’s ability in particular to master intricate details and sway officials was not only impressive but also disarming to many given her slight appearance. Gannett invited local officials to her home to watch films about wastewater treatment and then gave them thick technical volumes to read on the subject. One Montgomery Council member, Rose Crenca, intimated, “She looked like a simple housewife … but she was a mental giant on all that technical junk.” The sewer ladies attended hundreds of public hearings and private meetings with officials, converting their backyard interests into effective political mobilization. The director of Montgomery’s Office of Environmental Planning said of the sewer ladies’ expertise: “These women who come in our offices make bureaucrats sit up and listen,” and, in many cases, “will tell their staffs to go back and do more work to satisfy the women’s questions.” The planning director also learned while reviewing case files that the sewer ladies actively lobbied officials at the EPA.⁴⁰

      The sewer ladies disagreed with Norman Cole about expanding and upgrading wastewater treatment facilities because they worried that it would open the door for more development that would, in turn, generate more pollution. Gannett and Agnew, among others, were also critical of Cole’s technology-driven approach to wastewater treatment that focused on the use of chemicals over preventative efforts to limit pollution.⁴¹ Cole retorted that the sewer ladies’ efforts to restrict sewer access as a means to curb new growth instead just made cleaning up pollution more difficult. He also praised more moderate environmental voices that believed that technology could solve pollution problems if there was sufficient political will.⁴²

      The sewer ladies emerged at a time when government was responsive to greater citizen input in decision making, particularly on environmental issues.⁴³ On the other hand, many felt ignored in planning processes. The experience of Ruth Allen was a good example. Allen, who earned a Ph.D. in philosophy from Yale and a graduate degree in epidemiology, was hired by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG) to oversee the implementation of Section 208 of the CWA to develop regional plans for pollution and water supplies. Allen was supposed to collect public feedback, but her colleagues told her to listen to political officials and technical bureaucrats instead. That bothered Allen, who met Marian Agnew at a committee meeting where environmentalists were advocating for an alternative to incinerating the sludge left over from sewage treatment. Allen’s interest in the citizens’ views did not resonate well with her superiors at COG, who forced her out. Upon leaving, Allen joined up with the sewer ladies and, in an ironic twist, became a member of the citizen’s advisory group for COG, where she challenged her former colleagues to be more responsive to public concerns.⁴⁴

      The most prominent case of civic engagement in wastewater treatment issues during the 1970s involved a new facility in Maryland to treat sewage and sludge that Blue Plains could not handle. In early 1973, the WSSC applied for federal funding to build a facility for Montgomery County in Darnestown. At the time, much of the county was under a sewer moratorium to curb additional growth.⁴⁵ The EPA rejected the proposal, arguing that the facility’s discharge of treated wastewater near water supply intakes for the Washington area would harm drinking water quality and violate the guidelines of the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974.⁴⁶ As the Montgomery Council tried to determine a new site, the governor intervened at the behest of the state’s construction industry to site a new facility in Dickerson.⁴⁷ The new location was further away from drinking water intakes, thereby offering a longer distance for dissipating effluent.⁴⁸

      While the business community endorsed the Dickerson plant to support current and future growth, environmentalists opposed the high costs and uncertain impact on downstream water intakes. At public meetings, the sewer ladies, in particular Charlotte Gannett, insisted that the agency revisit the facility’s costs, which more than doubled in two years, the project’s full impact on public health, and alternatives such as composting.⁴⁹ Enid Miles and the Montgomery County Civic Federation used data from federal environmental agencies to insist that the plant’s discharge points should be below water intakes because existing technologies were insufficient for fully treating municipal sewage.⁵⁰ The focus of local environmentalists on critiquing both the environmental and financial costs of the Dickerson project reflected a strain of smart growth in 1970s metropolitan America that returned with renewed force in the late 1990s.

      In March 1976, the WSSC applied for $273 million in federal funding to build the Dickerson plant. The next month, a preliminary EPA review raised concerns about the facility’s high costs and impact on drinking water. As the agency continued its review, the sewer ladies lobbied against the project. Patty Mohler persuaded the county health department to submit a letter of concern to the county council, while Enid Miles relayed materials through a neighbor to the U.S. Surgeon General, who wrote to EPA administrator Train opposing the health impact of the facility.⁵¹ Shortly thereafter, the agency rejected the project, citing the facility’s high costs, slowdowns in projected population growth, and construction of small interim facilities that satisfied demand for the foreseeable future.⁵²

      While the sewer ladies and other grassroots environmentalists praised the EPA’s decision, elected officials as well as the Greater Washington Board of Trade argued the facility was needed to support current and future growth.⁵³ Montgomery’s county executive, James Gleason, rebuked the EPA for wielding heavy-handed regulations to interfere in the local project, “We are being choked to death by federal bureaucracy,” he said.⁵⁴ State and local officials filed suit against the agency to revive the Dickerson proposal, but a federal judge rejected the appeal.⁵⁵

      The defeat of the Dickerson plant left an open question of how to dispose of waste from Blue Plains. As part of the 1974 consent decree, its users were given four years to agree to a regional plan for disposing of the leftover sludge. When they failed to do so, a federal judge ordered each jurisdiction to find a site to dispose of its share. Montgomery officials decided on a composting facility as a more environmentally conscious option than incineration, but their selection of a site near the county’s border with Prince George’s County inaugurated a four-year political fight that was only resolved when the county selected another site.⁵⁶

      By the early 1980s, the water quality of the Potomac had improved significantly. Area treatment plants were under the CWA’s permitting system and offered an improved quality of treatment. The Georgetown Gap had been closed and intermittent raw sewage overflows above the water intake for the nation’s capital eliminated by 1974. The number and variety of aquatic plants and fish made comebacks, while pollution levels dropped enough in some places to allow swimming and other activities for the first time in nearly a quarter century. Boats filled the Potomac in Washington for bicentennial celebrations, and annual raft races began in 1978.⁵⁷

      Despite the gains made in cleaning up the Potomac, political challenges continued to stymie progress. Upgrading and building new wastewater treatment facilities was expensive and took time. Part of the problem was a complicated federal review process and President Nixon’s impounding of half of the funds for three years before their release in 1975. By 1977, only one-third of the funds had been spent on less than half of the nation’s facilities.⁵⁸ Political conflicts over treatment facilities as well as disposing of sludge also slowed pollution control. Many of the nation’s municipal treatment facilities and conveyance infrastructure failed to meet federal guidelines СКАЧАТЬ