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High levels of endocrine pollutants in US streams during low flow due to insufficient wastewater dilution

Nature Geoscience volume 10, pages 587–591 (2017)Cite this article

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Abstract

Wastewater discharges from publicly owned treatment works are a significant source of endocrine disruptors and other contaminants to the aquatic environment in the US. Although remaining pollutants in wastewater pose environmental risks, treated wastewater is also a primary source of stream flow, which in turn is critical in maintaining many aquatic and riparian wildlife habitats. Here we calculate the dilution factor—the ratio of flow in the stream receiving discharge to the flow of wastewater discharge—for over 14,000 receiving streams in the continental US using streamflow observations and a spatially explicit watershed-scale hydraulic model. We found that wastewater discharges make up more than 50% of in-stream flow for over 900 streams. However, in 1,049 streams that experienced exceptional low-flow conditions, the dilution factors in 635 of those streams fell so low during those conditions that the safety threshold for concentrations of one endocrine disrupting compound was exceeded, and in roughly a third of those streams, the threshold was exceeded for two compounds. We suggest that streams are vulnerable to public wastewater discharge of contaminants under low-flow conditions, at a time when wastewater discharges are likely to be most important for maintaining stream flow for smaller sized river systems.

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Figure 1: Colour-coded map for dilution factors for streams across the US.
Figure 2: Dilution factors for POTW discharges by hydrologic region in ascending order of dilution factor.
Figure 3: Dilution factors under low-flow conditions (Q95).
Figure 4: Susceptibility of streams to EDCs characterized by a low Strahler stream order.

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Acknowledgements

This work was partially supported by the Arizona State University Decision Center for a Desert City (NSF Award No. 0951366) and Central Arizona–Phoenix Long-Term Ecological Research (BCS-1026865).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Edmund T. Pratt School of Engineering, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, 27708, USA

    Jacelyn Rice

  2. School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, 85287-5306, USA

    Paul Westerhoff

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J.R. and P.W. contributed to all aspects of this publication.

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Correspondence to Paul Westerhoff.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Rice, J., Westerhoff, P. High levels of endocrine pollutants in US streams during low flow due to insufficient wastewater dilution. Nature Geosci 10, 587–591 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2984

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