Member Pipeline - Regulatory - Alert (RA 99-3a)
ATTACHMENT A
SANITARY SEWER OVERFLOWS (SSOs)
February 17, 1999
WHAT ARE THE PROBLEMS?
- SSOs can be a significant health and environmental problem
- Many municipalities need to significantly increase their investment in sanitary sewers. Lack of investment has lead to a deteriorated infrastructure with:
- 40,000 overflows/year
- Capital improvement needs of $78 billion
- an additional $1.5 billion/year needed in O&M
- Poorly understood performance objectives
- Unclear requirements
- National inconsistency in interpretation of NPDES regulations
- Under reporting
WHAT ARE THE OBJECTIVES OF THE REGULATORY ACTION?
- Use NPDES standard permit conditions to establish a clear, comprehensive regulatory framework. The framework will:
- Clarify long term capacity and O&M objectives;
- Clarify expectations and requirements for systems that must make significant capital improvement
- Comprehensive requirements for reporting, public notice, preventive maintenance, remediation
- Responsibility for satellite portions of the collection system (e.g. portions of the collection system not owned/operated by the entity that operates the POTW).
- Guiding principles for developing the approach are that the framework must:
- Be protective of human health and the environment
- Establish clear requirements, including realistic compliance endpoints
- Be enforceable
- Be action forcing and set transitional expectations and requirements.
- Be technically supportable
HOW DO WE GET THERE? (What is the roadmap?)
- Clarify long-term objectives for system capacity and O&M that account for risk and are technically supportable/achievable
- Clarify transitional expectations and requirements for systems that must make significant capital improvement.
HOW DO PERMITS SET COMPLIANCE ENDPOINTS?
- Permits prohibit SSOs and provide a closely circumscribed framework (analogous to the bypass provision) for evaluating the specific circumstances of an event to identify exceptional incidents when the NPDES authority will not bring enforcement to define interim and long-term capacity requirements and O&M objectives.
- Permits for discharges from excess wet weather flow treatment facilities must include effluent limitations based on secondary treatment requirements or more stringent WQBELs.
TIMING
- On 12/98, EPA circulated a draft Federal Register notice for Region/State review.
- A Region/State meeting was held on February 9-10 to discuss draft approach.
- A subset of the meeting attendees will consider alternative approaches and analyze options during March and will develop a report for the Regional/State work group. State representatives on this smaller group include IL (Tom McSwiggin (217/782-0610)) and OK(Carl Parrott (405/702-8142)).
- An additional Region/State meeting is scheduled for April 28 in Washington, DC
- EPA will begin sharing its draft approach with the public (through its SSO Federal Advisory Committee ) by the end of May 1999.