Water Quality Management - River Dynamics and Integrated River Management - page 580

Table 9.9 Habitat characteristics of modified warmwater streams and warmwater streams in Ohio. Superscripts for
modified warmwater streams refer to the influence of a particular characteristic in determining the use (1 = High
Influence, 2 = Moderate Influence). Characteristics apply to all ecoregions and types unless otherwise noted. [after
R ankin (1989, p. 41)]
Feature
number

Modified warmwater streams Warmwater streams

Recent channelization 1 or recovering 2 1 No channelization or recovered

Silt/muck substrates 1 or heavy to moderate silt covering
other substrates 2

2 Boulder, cobble, or gravel

Sand substrates 2-Boat , Hardpan origin 2 3 Silt free

Fair-poor development 2 4 Good-excellent development

Low-no sinuosity 2, 1-Headwater

5 Moderate-high sinuosity

Only 1-2 cover types 2 , cover sparse to none 1 6 Cover extensive to moderate

Intermittent or interstitial 2-with poor pools

7 Fast currents, eddies

Lack or fast current 2 8 Low-normal substrate embeddedness

Maximum depth < 40 cm 1-Wading, 2-Headwater 9 Maximum depth > 40 cm

High embeddedness of substrates 2 10 Low/no embeddedness

Note: Development refers to pool and riffle development
system is to build and OPERATE wastewater treatment plants that remove CBOD and NBOD (mainly
ammonia) by biological processes. The removal of CBOD and NBOD from the wastewater effluent will
not only reduce the current oxygen demand in the water column, but will over time reduce the SOD as
shown in Fig. 9.9. The operation of wastewater treatment plants is emphasized above because in China (and
perhaps other countries) there has been an unfortunate tendency to build, but not fully and completely
operate wastewater treatment plants. For example, on June 23, 2005, the China Daily reported
“Last week, a sewage disposal facility worth US$8 million was found lying idle, letting toxic water
flow by to harm people downstream in Tongchuan in northwest China's Shaanxi Province In spite of
worsening pollution there, the facility has never operated since being built about two years ago, allegedly
because of lack of cash.”
In the U.S. the CWA has established a system of regulations that force industries and municipalities to
internalize the cost of pollution removal through treatment of their wastewater, however, for municipalities
the CWA provided 75% cost share funding through 1987 and low interest loans beginning in 1987 to aid
in the construction of wastewater treatment plants. The switch from cost share funding to low interest
loans occurred because many communities delayed construction of or improvements to their wastewater
treatment facilities because they were waiting to get to the head of the waiting list for federal cost share
funds. Ackermann (1981, pp. 20-26) summarized the state of implementation of construction of municipal
treatment plants nearly 10 years after the implementation of the CWA as follows:
“Only about $2.5 billion worth of municipal treatment works have been completed despite appropriations
of $31.5 billion in construction grants. More embarrassing is that many treatment plants are not producing
designed results. A recent study by the General Accounting Office found that 87 percent of the plants
were in some violation of their effluent discharge permits. Failures were attributed to design deficiencies,
operator problems, and equipment failures. Most damaging has been the delay in program progress
because of ponderous regulations established by EPA. There are 11,240 municipal projects in the grant
pipeline, 3840 of them worth $20.5 billion are under construction, and the remainder are 2-3 years away
from groundbreaking.”
Thus, from the experience of the U.S., countries seeking to aggressively construct and operate
wastewater treatment plants can expect it will take a long time to fully get the plants on-line.