Lower Guyandotte TMDL
West Virginia DEP Water Quality Standards Assessment Section
The WVDEP WQSAS presents this StoryMap to guide the public through the Draft 2021 TMDLs for the Lower Guyandotte Watershed to address impairments in select streams. The StoryMap provides basic information about TMDLs, as well as specific details about pollutants and select streams in the Lower Guyandotte Watershed. In addition, there are links to resources throughout the StoryMap that provide access to regulations requiring TMDLs, as well as the public report, technical report/appendices, and allocation sheets. WVDEP WQSAS is seeking public comment and will prepare a response to comments prior to seeking approval of the TMDL by the US EPA .
What is a TMDL?
A TMDL or “Total Maximum Daily Load” is how much of a pollutant a stream or lake can receive and still meet water quality standards. The WVDEP WQSAS develops TMDLs as a plan of action to clean up waters (i.e., streams and lakes) that are not meeting water quality standards. The plan identifies pollution sources and develops a strategy to reduce or eliminate loads.
Why are TMDLs Needed?
Public awareness and a desire to control water pollution led to passage of the federal Clean Water Act of 1972 . The Clean Water Act established the basis for the regulation of discharging pollutants. Pollution control programs greatly reduce the amount of pollutants discharged into streams and navigable waters.
The West Virginia Water Pollution Control Act sets the goal of maintaining “reasonable standards of purity and quality of the water of the state” in order to protect the use of the water. One of many important tasks assigned to the WVDEP WQSAS is establishing (with legislative approval) these standards of protection, called Water Quality Standards.
The West Virginia Water Quality Standards designate specific uses for waters of the state. Designated uses include drinking water supply, propagation of fish and other aquatic life, water contact recreation, agricultural use, wildlife use, and industrial water supply.
Numeric criteria are established for various pollutants to protect each of these designated uses. For example, the numerical criterion for total iron concentration (4-day average) is 1.5 mg/l for warm water fishery, 1.0 mg/l for trout waters, and 1.5 mg/l for a drinking water supply, but there is no iron criterion relative to water contact recreation. Our Water Quality Standards also list “conditions not allowable” (CNA) in West Virginia waters that interfere with the designated use. Some examples of conditions not allowable are taste and odor, algae blooms, and condition which adversely alter aquatic ecosystems.
In a sense, the Water Quality Standards serve as a “measuring stick” to assess the quality of our state’s waters. Section 303(d) of the Clean Water Act and regulations developed by the US EPA, require states to identify all waters that do not meet water quality standards even after pollution controls required by law are in place. Streams or lakes not meeting the appropriate water quality standards are considered to be impaired. WVDEP WQSAS publishes a report that contains a list of all streams and lakes in the state that do not meet Water Quality Standards, known as the 303(d) list. You can view West Virginia’s latest US EPA-approved list here .
For each water listed as impaired by a pollutant, the Clean Water Act requires that a TMDL be developed. Full implementation of the TMDL would provide reasonable assurance that the stream or lake will meet Water Quality Standards to restore the designated use.
Pollutants Map
The map to the right displays the Lower Guyandotte Watershed broken into smaller “subwatersheds” for the TMDL development effort. The map also displays streams that are impaired for fecal coliform, total iron, pH, aluminum, selenium and dissolved oxygen. Some streams are impaired for multiple pollutants.
Select "Layers" in the green box to the left of the map to see a legend for the map. Check or uncheck layers to display stream impairment and pollutant sources.
This includes streams that had been listed on prior 303(d) lists as well as new impairments identified following an intensive pre-TMDL development monitoring effort. All impaired streams are included in this TMDL project in order to effectively address impairments in the Lower Guyandotte Watershed.
Fecal Impaired Streams: This layer contains all the fecal coliform bacteria impaired streams in the Lower Guyandotte Watershed including stream reaches modeled in MDAS (Mining Data Analysis System).
Iron Impaired Streams: This layer contains all Iron (Fe) impaired streams in the Lower Guyandotte Watershed including stream reaches modeled in MDAS.
pH Impaired Streams: This layer contains all pH impaired streams in the Lower Guyandotte watershed including stream reaches modeled in MDAS for the watershed.
Selenium Impaired Streams: This layer contains all Selenium (Se) impaired streams in the Lower Guyandotte Watershed including stream reaches modeled in MDAS for the watershed.
Aluminum Impaired Streams: This layer contains all dissolved Aluminum (Al) impaired streams in the Lower Guyandotte Watershed including stream reaches modeled in MDAS for the watershed.
Dissolved Oxygen Impaired Streams: This layer contains all Dissolved Oxygen (DO) impaired streams in the Lower Guyandotte Watershed. DO impairments corresponded with fecal coliform impairments. After examining the pollutant sources, the TMDL determined that reductions needed to attain fecal coliform water quality standards will also result in the attainment of DO. Fecal coliform TMDLs act as a surrogate for stream impaired for DO.
Process For Developing a TMDL
The WVDEP WQSAS process for developing TMDLs begins with intensive “pre-TMDL” monitoring to collect information about the streams that are impaired in a watershed. Sampling stations are identified for 303(d) listed streams as well as those for which WVDEP WQSAS lacks data throughout the watershed. Stations are also placed on streams with minimal human disturbance to better understand the background water quality conditions of an area. These stations are sampled monthly by WVDEP WQSAS for one year. The monthly data are used to assess water quality and to calibrate a computer model used in the TMDL calculation for each stream.
WVDEP WQSAS gathers available information for the sources of pollution in the watershed. Typical sources include NPDES permits, abandoned mine lands/discharges, mining permits, logging, pipelines, oil and gas well drilling, roads, agriculture/pasture, and residential/urban areas. Once the pollutant source data are complete and the computer model is calibrated, the model predicts instream concentrations of the modeled pollutants (e.g., total iron, selenium and fecal coliform bacteria).
Reductions can then be made in the computer model to predict how much reduction is needed for a stream to attain water quality standards. The percent reduction of the load from different sources of pollution depends upon an allocation approach established by the WVDEP WQSAS working with point and non-point stakeholder communities.
Allocation Strategy
The allocation strategy in West Virginia TMDLs takes a “top-down” approach using a computer model to predict loads from a watershed over different seasons and flow regimes for a six-year time period. Working from the headwaters or "top" of a watershed, the model tests if load reductions will result in attainment of water quality standards in these headwater subwatersheds, then presents a “cumulative load” progressively moving down toward the mouth of the stream. Once the model demonstrates that streams meet specific water quality standards, the percent reductions and final TMDL allocations for each pollutant source result in the final TMDL product. The TMDLs are described in a TMDL public report and support documentation. After sharing the public report and addressing comments, WVDEP WQSAS sends TMDLs to the USEPA for approval before implementing the TMDLs.
Aquatic Life Narrative Criteria
The narrative water quality criterion of 47 CSR 2 §3.2.i prohibits the presence of wastes in State waters that cause or contribute to significant adverse impact to the chemical, physical, hydrologic, or biological components of aquatic ecosystems. WVDEP WQSAS currently bases assessment of biological integrity on a rating of the stream’s benthic macro-invertebrate community using the multi-metric West Virginia Stream Condition Index (WVSCI).
Streams for which the WVSCI score indicates nonattainment of the aquatic life use were subject to a stressor identification process. This process identifies causes of stress to the aquatic life and when possible associates those conditions with specific pollutant sources. Common stressors include sedimentation, elevated ionic strength, organic enrichment, pH, metals, and flocculants. The TMDL provides a list of streams for which specific pollutant TMDLs are expected to resolve the stress to the aquatic life. For instance, reduction of sediment sources to attain the total iron water quality standard will also reduce the stress from sedimentation to the aquatic life.
Lower Guyandotte TMDL Documents
The interactive data pages above provide specific resources for the public to review and understand the Lower Guyandotte TMDL. The Draft Public Report provides an overview of the entire development of TMDLs, including water quality standards, pollutant sources, model selection, model calibration, allocations, future growth, reasonable assurance, etc. The Draft report references sections and appendices of the Technical report for additional information.
The Draft Technical Report provides a more technical, in-depth description of specific areas of the TMDL development. The Draft Technical Report also includes appendices providing data analysis to better understand the TMDL. Appendix A provides a complete list of impaired streams. Several appendices (B, C, D, E, F, G, H) describe and support how pollutant sources were represented in the model. Appendix I provides graphs demonstrating water quality and hydrology calibration of the model. Appendix J provides all water quality, habitat, and biological data used in the TMDL development process to determine impairment and calibrate the models. Appendix K provides stressor identification for streams that do not meet an attainment threshold for aquatic life use. Lastly, Appendix L provides data that demonstrates using total iron as a surrogate for sediment impaired streams is appropriate.
The allocation sheets for each pollutant provides the actual TMDLs for each impaired stream, including the load allocations and wasteload allocations for all contributing sources of pollution. Once approved, the implementation of the TMDLs presented in these sheets, including operable wasteload allocations, will be required.
The public is invited to comment on the status of the streams and further investigate the specific plans to restore the streams in the TMDL documents.
ArcGIS Shapefiles and Layer Description are available upon request.
To contribute information or ask questions;
TMDL development contact:
depwqsas@wv.gov
