Clean Water Advocacy - Newsroom - NACWA in the News
Industry, Environmental Groups Agree on Regulatory Guidance for Sewage Diversions
10/27/2005 By Tom Ichniowski
In an unusual example of regulatory cooperation, industry and environmental
groups, with the encouragement of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, have
reached agreement on a draft plan covering how to deal with sewage flow
diversions during rainy weather. The National Association of Clean Water
Agencies and the Natural Resources Defense Council announced Oct. 27 that they
had agreed on draft guidance for such diversions. The two groups have sent their
proposed language to the Environmental Protection Agency, which will determine
whether to issue it as formal federal interpretive guidance.
NACWA says that during large storms, flows of influent sometimes exceed the
capacity of the secondary treatment units in many localities. Those flows then
can be diverted around those facilities and with flows from the secondary
treatment units or discharged from the plant directly into waterways.
The proposed joint guidance applies only to the flows from separate sanitary
sewer systems as they are recombined. (To read the draft language, click here
and here )
The NACWA-NRDC plan follows a EPA policy that the agency proposed in 2003 and
withdrew last May. The House of Representatives had voted to bar the policy from
becoming final. NRDC had contended that the EPA "blending" rule would have
allowed wastewater facilities to discharge untreated sewage into water bodies
"virtually any time it rains."
EPA encouraged NACWA and NRDC to meet and develop mutually acceptable language
for the flow diversions. Nancy Stoner, director of NRDC's Clean Water Project,
says, "We put our heads together and came up with a workable plan that will
protect public health."
NACWA Executive Director Ken Kirk says that the proposal "demonstrates that
sound policy can result when organizations stay focused on the critical mission
of improving water quality and protecting the public health."
Under the draft language, a permitting agency can allow peak wet weather
diversions if the wastewater treatment plant can show there are "no feasible
alternatives" to that diversion. The publicly owned treatment works must file an
analysis to the permitting authority that evaluates alternatives to a diversion,
such as storage; have limiting collection-system extensions or slug loadings
from indirect dischargers; using technologies such as biological or chemical
treatment, ballasted flocculation, deep bed filtration and membranes; and the
local area's ability to finance such improvements.
The proposed regulatory guidance also includes provisions for the permitting
authority to follow in reviewing the facility owner's analysis and in making
information available to the public.