Opinion ID: 199493
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The MWRA

Text: Established in 1984, the MWRA owns and operates the public water system that provides most of the drinking water for the city of Boston and surrounding communities. Its water system serves approximately two million customers in over forty Massachusetts cities and towns. The MWRA has primary responsibility for treating its drinking water and transporting that water from its reservoirs to the distribution systems of the local communities it serves. In providing water to its customers, the MWRA works in tandem with the Metropolitan -11- District Commission (MDC), an organization responsible for monitoring the quality of water in the MWRA system and managing the watersheds surrounding the principal sources of the MWRA's water supply.7 The MWRA's water system, which was originally designed by the Massachusetts Board of Health in the late nineteenth century, consists of three large reservoirs connected by a network of 265 miles of water mains and 130 miles of aqueducts. Feeding into the system are two above-ground bodies of water in central Massachusetts, the Quabbin and Wachusett Reservoirs, which collectively contain approximately 475 billion gallons of water. The Quabbin Reservoir, by far the larger of the two bodies of water, empties into the Wachusett Reservoir. The MWRA draws water from the eastern edge of the Wachusett Reservoir at the Cosgrove Intake, and transports the water through a series of tunnels and aqueducts until it reaches the Norumbega Reservoir, an intermediate storage basin in Weston, Massachusetts. From there the water travels in all directions, through a complex, 6,700-mile web of additional tunnels, pipes, 7Even though the MDC was named as a defendant in this lawsuit by virtue of its ownership and control of many of the water-treatment facilities in question, the United States did not allege in the district court, nor does it allege before this court, that the MDC violated any laws with respect to this controversy. We therefore refer to the appellees throughout this opinion as the MWRA, except where it is necessary to distinguish between the two entities. -12- and aqueducts, ultimately connecting to the local distribution centers in the various communities that the MWRA serves. For some time, the MWRA has employed two basic techniques to treat its drinking water: disinfection, used to kill live contaminants, and corrosion control, used to minimize the leaching of metals (such as lead) into the water from the antiquated pipes through which the water travels before reaching the taps of consumers. The water supply undergoes disinfection as it enters the distribution system through the Cosgrove Intake and again as it departs the primary distribution system at the Norumbega Reservoir. In the mid-1990s, the MWRA replaced the chloramine disinfection treatment it used at the Cosgrove Intake with an alternative disinfection treatment of ozonation, which consists of the injection of ozone bubbles into the water supply.8 According to the MWRA, ozonation kills a wider range of pathogens than do the traditional disinfection techniques, and the process provides the added benefit of improving the taste and coloration of treated water. While the EPA acknowledges the general effectiveness of ozonation, the agency has taken the position that it is not, by itself, an effective substitute for filtration. 8 The MWRA continues to use chloramine disinfection at the Norumbega Reservoir site. -13- In the months following the EPA's formulation of the SWTR, the MWRA determined that it would not be able to fulfill all of the avoidance criteria by the December 30, 1991 deadline. In particular, the MWRA concluded that occasional spikes in fecal coliform bacteria that had been measured in the Wachusett Reservoir in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a phenomenon later attributed to the seasonal roosting habits of gulls, could not be controlled by that date. Consequently, the MWRA did not seek a formal avoidance determination from the DEP. On January 24, 1992, the DEP notified the MWRA that, according to the terms of the SDWA, it would be required to install a filtration system by June 30, 1993. By early 1993, after it became clear that the MWRA could not design and install a filtration system before June 1993, the MWRA, the MDC, and the DEP entered into negotiations on an administrative consent order (ACO) to govern the MWRA's compliance with the SWTR. Rather than requiring the immediate installation of a filtration system, the ACO established a dual-track approach for compliance. Under this scheme, the MWRA was permitted in the short term to employ a treatment regime consisting of disinfection, ozonation, and covered water storage facilities, while at the same time embarking upon an aggressive watershed protection plan for the Wachusett Reservoir. The MWRA also was expected to continue its campaign -14- of gull harassment, a policy meant to scare away birds so as to prevent them from defecating in the reservoir. If the MWRA properly pursued these endeavors, it would be given the opportunity under the ACO to petition, on or before August 3, 1998, for a reopener establishing that the avoidance criteria had been met and that filtration was not required.9 At the same time as it pursued the watershed protection strategy, however, the MWRA also was obligated to plan the siting and design of the filtration facility that it would be required to install in the event that it could not establish its eligibility for filtration avoidance by August 1998. The MWRA, the MDC, and the DEP signed the ACO on June 11, 1993. Given that the ACO essentially excused the MWRA from complying with a key component of the SWTR, it seems rather surprising at first blush that the EPA, while aware of the negotiations over the ACO, did not attempt to block its implementation. In fact, despite having written the Rule's filtration requirement in mandatory terms (and despite the Act's mandate that there be filtration when the Rule's standards were not met), the EPA's actual practice has been to enforce the filtration mandate with less than the unswerving rigor that the statutory and regulatory language would seem to require. For 9A subsequent amendment to the ACO pushed back to October 31, 1998, the MWRA's target date for demonstrating compliance with the avoidance criteria. -15- instance, notwithstanding the filtration command in the SWTR, in 1992 the EPA issued an internal guidance memorandum that gave state enforcement authorities the discretion to postpone final filtration determinations if a water system is able to prove that it could later meet the avoidance criteria through intermediate measures. And while the EPA never expressly acquiesced in the provision in the ACO that created the potential for the MWRA to eventually avoid filtration (in fact, it stated in a letter to the parties to the ACO that it reserved the right to bring an enforcement action at a later date), it did promise the DEP and the MWRA that it would abstain, at least in the short term, from filing its own enforcement suit once the ACO was executed. Consistent with this approach, the EPA worked closely with the MWRA in its implementation of both compliance tracks in the three years following the signing of the ACO. This assistance included the agency's advice on steps to be taken by the MWRA to satisfy the avoidance criteria. In November 1996, John DeVillars, the EPA Regional Administrator, wrote a letter to the MWRA in which he generally commended the MWRA on its progress but cautioned that in order to avoid filtration, more still needs to be done (emphasis added). At least through the end of 1996, this statement epitomized the EPA's deliberately ambiguous posture vis-à-vis the MWRA's need to install -16- filtration: the agency generally supported the MWRA's efforts to achieve compliance with the avoidance criteria by alternative means, even as it held out the threat of suing to require filtration if it later found itself unsatisfied with the MWRA's performance. In early 1997, after the MWRA acknowledged that it could not meet several interim deadlines contained in the ACO, the EPA began to lose patience, and the working relationship between the MWRA and the EPA quickly deteriorated. In two letters to the MWRA dated January 8, 1997, and May 15, 1997, the EPA Regional Administrator expressed extreme concern for the MWRA's failure to produce adequate design plans for a Wachusett Reservoir filtration facility, and reminded the MWRA that it was still in technical violation of the SWTR for its failure to install a filtration system back in 1993. The EPA's displeasure with the MWRA's approach was only exacerbated by a September 18, 1997 agreement between the DEP and the MWRA that amended the ACO to delay the completion of the design of the filtration plant until January 31, 2002. On October 1, 1997, over a year before the MWRA was to have submitted its petition to reopen the filtration determination, the MWRA and the MDC filed with the DEP an early Request for Review and Revision of DEP Determination that Filtration is Required for Wachusett Reservoir. This document -17- requested that the MWRA be excused from further pursuing the filtration track by the end of 1997 if it could establish prospective compliance with the SWTR's avoidance criteria. The EPA, which was not consulted by the MWRA prior to the filing of this request, responded critically upon learning of it. In a December 9, 1997 letter to the MWRA, the MDC, and the DEP, the EPA Regional Administrator revealed that he had asked the U.S. Department of Justice to bring an SDWA enforcement action to require filtration . . . [and] measures to enhance protection of the Wachusett reservoirs . . . according to a clear, binding and expeditious schedule. Such legal action was necessary, in his opinion, because the MWRA did not meet the avoidance criteria in 1991, has not met them to this day, and will not meet them by next summer, either. Three days after the EPA Regional Administrator sent this letter, the DEP issued a noncommittal response to the MWRA's request to forego filtration. While refusing to allow work on the filtration track to be terminated in light of the MWRA's acknowledgment that it could not meet the avoidance criteria regarding Giardia, viruses, and total coliform counts by the end of 1997, the DEP did grant the MWRA until October 31, 1998, or nearly three months later than allowed by the ACO, to reapply for a filtration waiver. Accepting that invitation, the MWRA submitted a follow-up request to the DEP on October 30, -18- 1998. In that request, the MWRA sought permission to treat its water using ozonation and chloramine disinfection only. The MWRA also proposed that the savings realized from not installing a filtration facility be spent on a pipeline replacement plan and stepped-up monitoring program. On November 13, 1998, the DEP formally approved the request, finding that the MWRA had come into compliance with all of the SWTR's avoidance criteria and concluding that the MWRA had developed satisfactory plans for improving the quality of its water. The DEP's action effectively excused the MWRA from having to install a filtration system for the time being; however, the approval made clear that any future violation of any of the avoidance criteria would result in revocation of the waiver and reimposition of the filtration requirement.