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EPA Water Pretreatment Rule Hands Industry Significant Relief
The wastewater treatment industry has scored key victories in an EPA rule streamlining requirements for industrial users to pretreat the wastewater they discharge into the nation’s publicly owned treatment works (POTWs), with the regulation containing reduced reporting requirements and other flexibility industry sought in six-year negotiations to finalize the rule, industry sources say.
The final rule also includes a provision widely touted by the White House Office of Management & Budget (OMB) and an association representing corporate CEOs to allow pretreatment limits based on pollutant mass, instead of pollutant concentration, to encourage water conservation.
EPA finalized its 1999 pretreatment streamlining rule Sept. 28, in an effort to “substantially reduce the costs to [wastewater] facilities, while still holding those facilities to the same federal discharge limits currently in place under Clean Water Act regulations,” according to an EPA statement. The rule eases regulatory requirements for pretreatment facilities by narrowing which facilities must obtain permits under the pretreatment program, for example, and by exempting facilities from monitoring for pollutants not present in their waste streams.
The wastewater industry, represented by the National Association of Clean Water Agencies (NACWA), met with OMB twice since late July in a last-minute push to include certain provisions in a final rule. NACWA faced resistance from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), which also met with OMB and requested competing provisions. The rule is available on InsideEPA.com.
The industry source says POTWs were successful in pressing EPA to include some of the provisions they wanted in the final rule, but industry is disappointed that the agency narrowed the definition of industrial users that do not need pretreatment permits in what industry says was a last-minute change on the issue.
An NRDC spokesman says the group has not had a chance to review the final rule, but 1999 NRDC comments on the proposed rule indicate that the group prevailed on at least one issue -- prohibiting indirect discharges of lower than 5.0 pH.
The wastewater treatment industry is touting three provisions in the final pretreatment streamlining rule it believes will reduce unnecessary administrative and financial burdens: one provision allowing industrial facilities to meet mass-based rather than concentration-based pollutant limits to conserve water; another that allows facilities a longer period of time to report discharges before being categorized as in significant noncompliance (SNC) with Clean Water Act requirements; and a third that redefines which industrial facilities are defined as non-significant users not subject to pretreatment permit limits.
Specifically, industry is pointing to a provision that evaluates
whether industrial facilities are subject to pollution limits based on the mass
of the pollutant discharged, rather than the concentration of that pollutant.
The industry source says this will ensure that facilities are not penalized for
conserving water, and thus releasing a higher concentration of pollutants, when
the actual amount of pollutants has not changed.
This provision appears to reflect an OMB effort for the federal government to
reduce the cost of federal rules on the manufacturing sector, and an initiative
by the Business Roundtable (BRT), which represents corporate CEOs, to promote
water conservation. The BRT initiative, which seeks to promote voluntary
business steps that are good for company profits and the environment, adopts
water conservation as a prominent theme (Inside EPA, Sept. 23, p1).
The wastewater industry also is highlighting a provision allowing facilities 45 days instead of 30 days to file a report on their industrial discharges. The industry source says the extension will help prevent industrial facilities from being held in SNC with pretreatment requirements simply because of paperwork violations. The source says late paperwork accounts for 70 percent of violations, and the change is welcome because “you don’t want the public to think facilities listed in SNC are discharging toxins, when in reality they have late reports.”
Finally, the wastewater industry is pointing to a provision that redefines which industrial dischargers are non-significant categorical industrial users (NSCIUs) that qualify for reduced pretreatment permitting and reporting requirements. The rule establishes three tiers of dischargers, each subject to different pretreatment requirements based on their discharge flow.
The rule defines NSCIUs as facilities that discharge less than
100 gallons per day (gpd) for pretreatment, as not subject to pretreatment
permitting and reporting. The agency also establishes a “middle tier” of
dischargers, which discharge between 100 and 5,000 gpd for pretreatment.
The agency says these facilities still are categorical industrial users under
the law, subject to pretreatment permits, but eligible for less reporting than
CIUs that discharge more than 5,000 gpd. Previous pretreatment rules did not
include the middle tier.
The industry source says this change will help reduce reporting burdens because there are many dischargers that fall into the 100--5,000 gpd category. However, the source says industry had proposed a system that combined the first and middle tiers to exempt all facilities discharging less than 5,000 gpd from pretreatment permits.
EPA says in the final rule that the agency’s chosen approach balances “the need for required minimum oversight of larger dischargers with the appropriate flexibility to POTWs to target oversight resources where they will provide the greatest benefit in terms of reducing the risk to the POTW and the environment.”
However, the agency notes that the decision to “categorize certain CIU facilities as ‘non-significant’ or ‘middle tier’ does not in any way relieve the affected CIUs of the duty to comply with the applicable categorical pretreatment standards” and “merely affect[s] the reporting and inspection frequency imposed on these users.”
In 1999 comments, NRDC objected to the redefinition of NSCIUs, but also raised concerns about an agency proposal to allow industrial users to discharge material with a pH of less than 5.0 as long as the users conducted a written technical evaluation to prove the discharges would not harm POTWs, and perform oversight. NRDC said this provision was illegal.
EPA dropped the pH revisions in the final rule, but an industry source said in the past that industry had agreed to “take that issue off the table” if EPA would move forward with other changes.