Over 66,342 miles of stream-- 83 percent of the 79,746 miles of streams assessed so far-- meet designated water quality standards, and 53 percent of the 62,342 acres of lakes assessed meet standards, according to a new report issued by the Department of Environmental Protection this week.

DEP also published a proposed list of streams that are impaired under Section 303(d) of the federal Clean Water Act.

This new information is contained in the 2006 Integrated Water Quality Monitoring and Assessment Report (formerly known as the 305(b) report) published for public comment.

Pennsylvania has 83,161 miles of streams, 3,956 lakes covering 161,445 acres and 403,924 acres of freshwater wetlands.

The largest sources of water quality impairment for aquatic life continue to be abandoned mine drainage— 4,645 miles impaired, agriculture- 4,161 miles, urban runoff/storm sewers- 1,470 miles, road runoff- 687 miles, small residential runoff- 554 miles and atmospheric deposition- 305 miles. More specifically, the problems are: siltation (6,617 miles), metals (4,160 miles), pH (2,113 miles) and nutrients (1,757 miles).

Looking more closely at the stream miles impaired for human health use, like the consumption of sportfish, DEP said 890 miles of stream were impaired out of the 1,523 miles assessed.

The cause of impairment of these streams were mercury (541 miles), PCBs (392 miles), chlordane (101 miles) and dioxins (35 miles).

DEP could not identify the specific cause for the impairment for 907 miles of the impaired streams and only listed the source of the impairment for 10 other miles as industrial point source (page 34).

With respect to lakes, DEP said the primary cause of impairment was agriculture or “unknown.”

In addition to information presented in tabular form, DEP has updated its GIS viewer known as eMAP PA to show the new assessment and 303(d) impaired streams information allowing you to zoom in on your own watershed. (Instructions).

Comments on the monitoring report and the impaired streams list are due August 16 to DEP, according to the PA Bulletin notice.

6/16/2006