Of all the environmental topics to discuss around the dinner table, sewage treatment probably doesn't rank among the most popular. The mass media certainly don't consider it as compelling as global warming or endangered species or rain forests.
To Peter Maier, however, sewage treatment - rather, its mistreatment - is one of the most overlooked environmental issues of the day, one that threatens to choke rivers, putrify lakes and destroy wetlands.State environmental health officials disagree, saying Maier has not been able to prove any significant harm from sewage treatment discharges.
"We don't see anything broken with the system," says Don Ostler, director of the Utah Division of Water Quality.
A civil engineer living in Stansbury, Tooele County, Maier has been trying in vain for more than a decade to get the Environmental Protection Agency to change its rules governing the treatment of sewage.
The EPA rules were based on incorrect data from improperly applied tests, he says. As a result, the nation's sewage treatment plants - which are designed according to those rules - are basically a waste, Maier says.
Maier, originally of the Netherlands, has written letters to the EPA and elected officials, published editorials in trade magazines and newspapers and has testified before a congressional committee. In the early 1980s, he suggested a construction freeze on two sewage treatment plants in Salt Lake County.
"But no one listened to me," Why? Politics and because "no one wants to admit that they were wrong," Maier says.
Ostler says people have listened to Maier but disagree with him.
"To date, no one that I'm aware of has been able to agree with Peter, that this is causing tremendous problems and needs to be changed," Ostler says.
In recent months, Maier has been bending the ears of Utah politicians again, trying to get Utah to tighten its own clean-water laws. He's written to Gov. Mike Leavitt and Salt Lake Mayor Deedee Corradini and met with Rep. Karen Shepherd, D-Utah.
On Wednesday, Maier met with Dianne Nielson, director of the Department of Environmental Quality, and representatives from the Division of Water Quality.
"I'm trying to get (them) to implement the Clean Water Act the way it was intended," Maier says.
The act simply calls for the elimination of water pollution from the nation's lakes and streams. One source of water pollution, of course, is human waste, which until this century poured freely into waterways.
When the EPA began requiring sewage treatment, it relied on a modified "biochemical oxygen demand" test called the BOD-5, which measures how much oxygen the sewage depletes from the water.
But the BOD-5 measures only the oxygen demand exerted by the carbonaceous, or fecal, portion of the waste and not the nitrogenous, or urine, portion.
"The federal laws do not require treatment for 35 percent of fecal waste and 100 percent of urine waste," Maier says. "Evaluating sewage treatment plants solely with BOD-5 values is not only technically incorrect but can lead to serious errors."
The most serious of those errors, he says, is the failure to eliminate the nitrogenous waste. That means a steady supply of nitrogen is entering the waterways, providing for the proliferation of algae and other plants that feed on it.
When the plants die, they become a carbon source and their decomposition requires oxygen, killing fish and creating odor. "So, it's as if we never treated the sewage in the first place," Maier says.
The problem of algae growth caused by excessive amounts of nitrogen discharged into the water is most evident in Chesapeake Bay and the North Sea, Maier says.
"We're lucky here because the Great Salt Lake just pickles everything," Maier says. "If that lake suddenly became freshwater, you're going to have a problem."
Nevertheless, something has to be done soon, he says, because the sewage load is increasing with the ever-growing population in Utah. State officials have estimated a staggering $1 billion worth of sewage treatment plants will be needed in the next 20 years to meet the demand.
"We can't continue treating for the wrong waste," says Maier, arguing that sewage treatment plants can be designed correctly with existing technology and at less cost.
In Utah, low-oxygen pollution is evident in the Jordan River and East Canyon Reservoir, according to Ostler. But East Canyon's problem is mainly due to agriculture runoff, and the Jordan River is polluted by ammonia discharges from the Central Valley sewage treatment plant, which is in the process of finding a way to eliminate its problem by plant modification, Ostler says.
Ostler says the BOD-5 test is considered scientifically sound. He also added that officials use a full BOD test when measuring waterways into which treated sewage is discharged.
"We've gone over this several times with Mr. Maier, but he doesn't seem to acknowledge that."
The state Water Quality Control Board has told Maier that before any changes will be implemented, he must get published in a technical journal with peer review, Ostler says.