The air transportation industry and environmental agencies face a difficult challenge over deicing. From late fall to early spring, the only way to make planes safe to fly is to spray them with chemicals to remove frost and ice. The problem is, those chemicals can suck the oxygen out of the rivers and streams they run into.
At Manchester Boston Regional Airport, deicing agents run into the Merrimack River. According to the latest test results, the chemical load can be more than thirty times what it ought to be.
New Hampshire Public Radio’s Jon Greenberg has more.
Getting the ice off of planes is serious business. In the early 1980’s, 78 people died when an Air Florida pilot failed to clear the ice from the wings of his aircraft. At the airport in Manchester, the deicing equipment stands ready.
CUT: Over here are some of the deicing trucks
Assistant Airport Director Richard Fixler points to large tanks labeled propylene glycol. They sit near a row of trucks with bucket lifts.
CUT: There’ll be a man in the bucket and he’ll spray the deicing fluid on the aircraft.
Last season at Manchester, a very snowy winter, this process required almost 200 thousand gallons. The propylene glycol, an agent you’ll probably find in the soap and deodorant you might use, washes off the planes. It isn’t toxic but it isn’t problem free either.
CUT: It’s coming out of the pipe right now. You can see the cloud right in front of it. And that never changes. It’s just a matter of how much comes out.
Jim Polichronopoulous stands by a 3-foot diameter pipe on the bank of the Merrimack River. The airport installed it about two years ago to carry off deicing fluids. His parents live a few blocks from this spot. They’ve complained about a powerful stench and thick foam on the river, especially in the cooler months.
CUT: You know that’s a big pipe and that just comes out full blast. The foam just sits on top of the water.
Both the odor and foam violate the state’s clear water regulations. In addition, when the Environmental Protection Agency tested the outflow last January, it found levels of organic compounds that were more than 30 times the recommended limit of the airport’s stormwater permit.
The EPA sent those findings to the airport only about 10 days ago. Regarding the foam, assistant airport director, Richard Fixler, initially denied that it existed.
CUT: The outfall discharges below the level of the river probably 90% of the year, so therefore, it doesn’t cause a foaming issue.
But when told that the airport’s own quarterly monitoring confirmed the presence of foam, not to mention photographs taken by a resident, Fixler allowed that there might be foam sometimes. He emphasized that the airport views this pipe as a temporary arrangement.
CUT: If it was a final solution, perhaps we would look at it differently, but we know this is an interim measure. At this point, there really isn’t anything we’re going to do until we understand what’s required.
Here’s the back story. Airport managers built the pipe to the Merrimack with the full support and cooperation of state and federal officials. Three years ago, before the pipe was built, all three parties were caught between an immediate problem and regulatory limbo. The immediate problem was that deicing fluid was draining into a small waterway near the airport, Little Cohas Brook. Harry Stewart, head of the state’s water division, says the brook couldn’t handle it.
CUT: LCB had a very significant foaming problem and an odor problem related to propylene glycol,.
Simply put, the river had much more water than the brook to dilute the propylene glycol. Before, there were many complaints from residents. Since the pipe went in, there have been only two. Stewart calls the current situation an imperfect improvement which he recognizes fails to meet the state’s water quality standards.
If the pipe is a temporary fix, it’s been temporary for at least a year longer than expected. That’s where the regulatory limbo factors in. Airports such as Manchester Boston Regional typically get a standard stormwater permit that’s written at the national level. The old national permit expired in 2005. The final draft of a new permit was delayed.
No one was ready to press the issue until the federal standards were clear.
However, David Webster, head of permitting at the EPA’s Boston office, says the water sample values collected last January have put the terms of the airport’s next permit in a new light.
CUT: It does raise the issue to be addressed in the permit.// And so what you put in the permit might be stronger than what it otherwise might have been?// If that’s what’s needed to meet water quality standards, and here’s a case where there are real concerns with those values, so – yes.
Webster says the final permit language is expected at the end of this month. He says it ought to resolve all the issues, including lower levels of organic compounds released into the Merrimack and the release of no foam or odor.
For NHPR News, I’m Jon Greenberg.
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