Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
6.6 Point Source Pollution
Pollutants loads generated by municipal and industrial wastewater treatment
plants (WWTP) and by combined sewer overflows (CSOs) and sanitary sewer
overflows (SSOs) have been estimated from the National Pollutant Discharge
Elimination System permits and verified with the management of some of the
sources (U.S. EPA
2004
). Besides nutrients, CSOs and SSOs also contain microbial
pathogens (e.g. fecal coliform), oxygen depleting substances, total suspended
solids, toxics, and floatables. These pollutants lead to the impairments of surface
waters, beach closures, contamination of drinking water supplies, and threat to
human health. Data on CSOs events for the period of 200-2006 were acquired from
the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ), processed and spa-
tially referenced. Figure
6.4
shows the locations of the CSOs events in the study
CSOs in the Saginaw
Bay Watersheds: 2000
N
Kilometers
0
10
20
40
60
80
100
Fig. 6.4 Locations of combined sewer overflows (CSOs)
