Ohio River Water Quality Issues
The Ohio River— meaning "beautiful river" in the Iroquois language— is formed by the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. From this point, the historic river flows 981 miles through hundreds of riverside communities toward its confluence with the Mississippi River near Cairo, Illinois. Throughout these communities, the river provides numerous local benefits, including a reliable source of drinking water, multiple recreational opportunities, diverse fish and wildlife habitats, and expanding opportunities for economic development and waterfront revitalization.
In 2006, Kentucky Waterways Alliance and other environmental groups claimed a major triumph to protect the Ohio River when the Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission (ORSANCO) omitted language for downgrading wet weather standards from its 2006 Pollution Control Standards. The omitted revisions would have suspended primary contact recreation standards for the river anytime velocity exceeds 2 mph. The relaxation of standards was designed to relieve the demand on combined sewer overflows along the Ohio by allowing an increase (from 200 to 2000 colonies/100-mL sample) in fecal coliform standards.
ORSANCO received over 5,000 comments on their proposals, an overwhelming public outcry against their proposed changes to the standards. "It is great to know that ORSANCO is willing to listen to citizens who are concerned about the long-term health of the Ohio River, and the people who enjoy it," said Tori McClure, an avid rower on the Ohio River.
Following the Commission’s decision in 2006 to not initiate wet weather standards on the Ohio River, ORSANCO contracted Responsive Management to develop a survey instrument and conduct a recreational use survey including phone interviews and site-visits of the Ohio River to quantify when and where recreation occurs and the public’s attitude and constraints to recreational use of the Ohio River. KWA and the West Virginia Rivers Coalition submitted preliminary comments concerning the proposed survey instrument that expressed concern with the survey’s geographic scope, methodology, and inadequate data recovery to accurately depict recreational use of the Ohio River.
During a stakeholder group conference call, concerns were raised by KWA and several state departments of natural resources on the geographic extent and minimal number of completes required to fulfill the surveys deliverables. Responsive Management’s original proposal would have established the state boundaries as the geographic extent and only required 5000 completes. This means randomly selected respondents as far off as Chicago and Cleveland could have been interviewed on their recreational use and opinion of the Ohio River. ORSANCO has amended its original proposal and will now achieve 1200 completed surveys within 75 miles and 3800 completed surveys within 20 miles of the Ohio River.
Currently, ORSANCO has postponed commencement of the survey until the Fall of 2008. We remain concerned the survey will be conducted outside of the recreation season of April to October, further skewing the survey’s results and drawn conclusions.