and the
Public Law 92-500, October 18, 1972
N. Scott Urquhart
Department of Statistics
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO 80523-1877
CO/WY ASA # 1

 Status of our waters before any legislation
 Legislative history
 Statistical issues in past implementation of the CWA
 EPA’s Environmental Monitoring and
Assessemt Program (EMAP)
 CSU’s STARMAP and its research
CO/WY ASA # 2

STATUS OF OUR WATERS BEFORE
MUCH LEGISLATION
 A little boy moved to a Colorado mountain town mid-winter, 1949.
 As the snow melted in the Spring, he went exploring.
 Landlady said not to go along the river behind the house where he was living.
 What better reason to go there?
 He stepped in an open sewer running directly into the river!
CO/WY ASA # 3

Time Magazine, August 1, 1969
(about a month after “the” fire)
An article dramatized the state of the Cuyahoga:
 Some river! Chocolate-brown, oily, bubbling with subsurface gases, it oozes rather than flows.
 'Anyone who falls into the Cuyahoga does not drown,'
Cleveland's citizens joke grimily. 'He decays.'
 The Federal Water Pollution Control Administration dryly notes: 'The lower Cuyahoga has no visible life, not even low forms such as leeches and sludge worms that usually thrive on wastes.' It is also--literally-a fire hazard.
 A few weeks ago, the oil-slicked river burst into flames and burned with such intensity that two railroad bridges spanning it were nearly destroyed.
 'What a terrible reflection on our city,' said
Cleveland Mayor Carl Stokes sadly.
CO/WY ASA # 4

This photo from the photographic collection of the Cleveland Public Library depicts a fire in December of 1952 on the Cuyahoga River.
Time Magazine ran this photo in its article "The Cities: The Price of Optimism" from its August 1, 1969 issue.
The article brought national attention to the pollution of the Cuyahoga River, but it mislead readers to believe that this picture was of the June 22, 1969 fire, when in fact it, was not.
CO/WY ASA # 5

THE FABLE OF THE CUYAHOGA
RIVER BURNING
 The fire began at 11:56 a.m. on a stretch of the
Cuyahoga River just southeast of downtown
Cleveland.
 The ignited floating oil slick was extinguished in just over twenty minutes, but not before the fire damaged two key railroad trestles.
 A bridge belonging to the Norfolk & Western Railway
Co. sustained $45,000 in damage as the oil slick passed under it. Both tracks on the bridge had to be closed. The railroad tracks were noticeably warped, while the railroad ties were charred.
 The other bridge, the Newburgh & South Shore
Railroad bridge, withstood $5,000 of damage, as support timbers were scorched.
CO/WY ASA # 6

THE FABLE OF THE CUYAHOGA
RIVER BURNING - II
CO/WY ASA # 7

 I thought I was going to tell you about how deplorable a condition our waters had become by 1970.
 Frankly, the cities, counties and states had begun a substantial environmental cleanup effort by 1970


Often not recognized
Opposed by vested interests
 TIME article galvanized public opinion

Result: Clean Water Act of 1972
CO/WY ASA # 8

FURTHER INFORMATION ON THIS
HOAX, SEE
 http://www.cwru.edu/artsci/engl/marling
/60s/pages/richoux/TheFire.html
CO/WY ASA # 9

 Federal Water Pollution Control Act first passed in 1956.
 Water Quality Act of 1965
 Clean Water Restoration Act of 1966
 Water Quality Improvement Act of 1970
 The Federal Water Pollution Control Act
Amendments of 1972




Replaced the language of earlier acts
Commonly known as the Clean Water Act
Signed by Richard Nixon
Many subsequent amendments
CO/WY ASA # 10

ECOLOGY and the CLEAN WATER ACT
 The Clean Water Act (CWA)
Specifically Mentions Aquatic Life As


“… the protection and propagation of a balanced indigenous population of shellfish, fish and wildlife, and to allow recreational activities …”
 Statements like this occur at least 28 times in the CWA sections numbered 3xx

Ecology covers this class of interests!
CO/WY ASA # 11

WHAT DID THE CLEAN WATER ACT
DO?
 Provided federal assistance for


Sewer systems
Water treatment plants

Also required for permits for discharges into waters
 Delegated responsibility for initial enforcement to the states

But if the states didn’t do it, EPA would
CO/WY ASA # 12

RELEVANT SECTIONS FOR TODAY
 Sec. 305. Water Quality Inventory

(b) (1) Each State shall prepare and submit to the Administrator … biennially …

 a report which shall include –
 a description of the water quality of all navigable waters in such State during the preceding year,
(2) The Administrator shall transmit such
State reports, together with an analysis thereof, to Congress … biennially thereafter.
CO/WY ASA # 13

RELEVANT SECTIONS FOR TODAY continued
 Sec. 303. Water Quality Standards and
Implementation Plans.

(d) (1) (A) Each State shall identify those waters within its boundaries for which the effluent limitations required by section 301(b)(l)(A) and
 … are not stringent enough to implement any water quality standard applicable to such waters. …
 The State shall establish a priority ranking for such waters, taking into account the severity of the pollution and the uses to be made of such waters.

(2) Each State shall submit … the waters identified and the loads established …
 such State shall incorporate them into it a current plan
{to mitigate the effect}
CO/WY ASA # 14

 How many lakes, streams and rivers are the states suppose to report on?
 Source – National Hydrographic Data
Set (NHD)


A successor to EPA’s RF3
 River Reach File version 3
Blue lines on 1:100,000 series of maps
 Published by the United States Geologic Survey
 Lets stick with the lower 48 states, because Alaska nearly doubles extent, and is poorly mapped
CO/WY ASA # 15

NATIONAL EXTENT OF WATERS
Sample Frame: Lakes
Lake
Area
Number
of
(ha) Lakes Percent
1 –5 172,747 63.8
Cumulative
Number of
Lakes
172,747
Cumulative
Percent
63.8
5 –10 44,996 16.6
217,743 80.4
10 –50 40,016
50 –500 11,228
500 –5000 1,500
14.8
4.1
0.6
257,759
268,987
270,387
95.2
99.3
99.9
>5000 274 0.1
270,761 100.0
CO/WY ASA # 16

WHAT A NATIONAL SAMPLE LOOKS
LIKE
(FISH TISSUE CONTAMINANTS)
CO/WY ASA # 17

EXTENT OF STREAM KILOMETERS
 What is your guess?


Map traces identified as perennial?
 2.1 million kilometers (~1.25 million miles)
Map traces identified as intermittent?
 3.2 million kilometers (~1.9 million miles)

Classification error rate? (In the West)
 ~20% coded perennial are nonperennial
 ~10% coded nonperennial are perennial
 Blue lines are? See this map later.
CO/WY ASA # 18

STATISTICAL ISSUES IN PAST
IMPLEMENTATION OF THE CWA
 NO CRITERIA for how States were to select waters on which to report!

(How should such data be combined across
Sates?)
 State’s sites often reflected data gathered in response to some complaint.

Thus EPA’s Office of Water contended
 The actual condition of the Nation’s waters is substantially better than reported.
CO/WY ASA # 19

IMPETUS FOR EPA’S
ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING AND
ASSESSMENT PROGRAM (EMAP)
 “What do you mean you don’t know how many acid lakes there are?”
 William Ruckelshaus - EPA Administrator - early 1980s
 “Good News - Based on my years in the environmental movement, I think the Agency does an exemplary job of protecting the nation’s public health and quality of the environment.”
 “Bad News - I can’t prove it.”
 William Reilly - EPA Administrator - 1989
CO/WY ASA # 20

IMPORTANCE OF EMAP-TYPE
DESIGNS
Not
Supporting
13%
Condition of a State’s streams using different designs
Fully
Supporting
13%
STATE A
Fully
Supporting
87%
Traditional Targeted Monitoring
Not
Supporting
25%
Not
Supporting
87%
Probability Survey
Not
Supporting
5%
STATE B
Fully
Supporting
75%
Traditional Targeted Monitoring
Fully
Supporting
95%
Probability Survey
CO/WY ASA # 21

EMAP
 Principles:


Define the population of interest.
 Develop a usable sampling frame for IT.
 And sample IT.
Develop relevant measures.




Train field crews thoroughly.
Exercise solid QA.
Have and use a solid data retrieval system.
Learn from your mistakes.
CO/WY ASA # 22

 Classical finite population sampling


Focuses on a list – not continuous
Assume enough knowledge of the response to allow meaningful stratification.
 Interesting ecological resources are located in space – no list

Not well enough understood to allow meaningful stratification.
 Water flows in channels

Distance needs to be measures “as the fish swims”, not “as the bird flies.”
CO/WY ASA # 23

 Developed Generalized Random
Tessellation Sampling (GRTS)



Spatially balanced
Variable density
Supports replacement of unusable points
 Nontarget
 Physically inaccessible
 Access denied
 No evaluation needed – see next slide
CO/WY ASA # 24

CLIFF AT MILE
135.2
(PARTIAL HEIGHT)
NO VEGETATION TRANSECT NEEDED HERE!
EMAP SITE SELECTION PROTOCOL
ACCOMMODATES THIS, WHEREAS
TRADITIONAL METHODS DON’T.
CO/WY ASA # 25

CO/WY ASA # 26

CSU’s STARMAP
MAJOR OBJECTIVES
 TO ADVANCE
 THE SCIENCE OF STATISTICS
 TECHNIQUES OF HIERARCHICAL SURVEY
DESIGN AND ALLIED TECHNIQUES
 SPATIAL AND TEMPORAL MODELING
 TO DEVELOP AND EXTEND THE
EXPERTISE ON DESIGN AND
ANALYSIS TO THE STATES AND
TRIBES
CO/WY ASA # 27

CONTINUED
 TO EXPAND THE CADRE OF
GRADUATES WITH


EXPERTISE AND EXPERIENCE IN
 SURVEY DESIGN AND ANALYSIS
 NEEDED TO SUCCESSFULLY MONITOR THE
CONDITION OF
THE NATION’S AQUATIC RESOURCES
 http://www.stat.colostate.edu/starmap/
CO/WY ASA # 28

 Combining Environmental Data Sets
 Local Estimation = “Small Area” estimation
 Developing Environmental Indicators

GIS tool development
 Outreach and Extension

Learning materials relative to environmental sampling and analysis
CO/WY ASA # 29

STARMAP PROJECTS - EXAMPLES
 Ranalli, M.G., F.J. Breidt, and H.
Wang. Low-rank Smoothing Splines on
Complex Domains . Seminar, Atlantic
Ecology Division, EPA, Narragansett,
RI. March 1, 2005.
 Measuring distance “as the fish swims”
CO/WY ASA # 30

New Hampshire Estuary and Sample Locations
New Hampshire
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Mercury (Hg) Concentration ug/g
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0.010000 - 0.100000
0.100001 - 0.200000
0.200001 - 0.300000
0.300001 - 0.500000
0.500001 - 0.766387
Estuary boundary
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0 1 2 3 4 5
Kilometers
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4
CO/WY ASA # 31

STARMAP PROJECTS – EXAMPLE II
Spatial statistical models for predicting water quality impairment on stream networks

Ver Hoef, J.M., E. Peterson, and D.T.
Theobald. Spatial statistical models that use flow and stream distance. To appear in Environmental and Ecological Statistics
 Objective: Predicting the likelihood of water quality impaired stream reaches; Developing
GIS and spatial modeling methodologies for stream networks
 Example: Maryland Stream Survey
CO/WY ASA # 32

Maryland Bioglogical Stream Survey (MBSS) Sample Site Locations
0 5,000 Meters
0 30
Kilometers
Legend
MBSS sample sites
1:100,000 National Hydrography Dataset
Maryland
CO/WY ASA # 33

FUNDING ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The work reported here today was developed under the STAR Research Assistance
Agreement CR-829095 awarded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to
Colorado State University. This presentation has not been formally reviewed by EPA. The views expressed here are solely those of presenter and STARMAP, the Program he represents. EPA does not endorse any products or commercial services mentioned in this presentation.
This research is funded by
U.S.EPA – Science To Achieve
Results (STAR) Program
Cooperative
Agreement
# CR - 829095
CO/WY ASA # 34

End of prepared presentation
Questions are welcome!
See http://www.stat.colostate.edu/starmap/publications/
And many related talks, reports, etc
CO/WY ASA # 35