Member Pipeline - Fax Alerts - March 7, 2003
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March 7, 2003
AMSA Urges Enforcement Office to Support Blending Policy
In a March 3 letter to EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance (OECA), AMSA urged OECA to support the Office of Water’s effort to release a draft policy for public comment that endorses the practice of blending. The letter re-emphasized the position AMSA took at a February 13 meeting with OECA staff that blending is not a bypass under the Clean Water Act or EPA regulations, and urged EPA to authorize permitting agencies to incorporate blending as an “alternative flow routing scenario” in permits. As AMSA’s letter states, “[i]f blending is prohibited, POTWs [publicly owned treatment works] will be forced to reject peak flows once a plant reaches its design capacity, forcing the flows to be released in the collection system without any treatment. This is unquestionably an environmental step backwards.” AMSA also pointed out that to ensure collection system improvements and reduce some blending occurrences, the Agency should publish for public comment a proposed, comprehensive sanitary sewer overflow (SSO) regulation, which will bring thousands of satellite collection systems into the national permitting program and require the implementation of capacity, management, operations and maintenance programs to address collection system weaknesses. AMSA’s letter to OECA on blending is available at http://www.amsa-cleanwater.org/private/legreg/outreach/03-04-03blending.pdf.AMSA Files Brief in Key Phase II Stormwater Case
AMSA filed an amicus curiae brief today in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals urging that the court rehear its troubling Phase II municipal separate storm sewer (MS4) regulation decision, Environmental Defense Center Inc. v. EPA (EDC). AMSA argues that the court failed to follow Clean Water Act requirements when it held that that MS4 discharges are subject not only to the "maximum extent practicable" (MEP) MS4 standard but also to “general effluent limitations.” AMSA highlights that the court ignored its 1999 Defenders of Wildlife v. Browner decision, in which AMSA also was amicus, which held that the MEP standard, not effluent limitations, was the applicable standard for MS4s. AMSA is concerned that citizen groups and regulatory agencies will use EDC to pressure municipalities to accept numeric effluent limitations in MS4 permits. AMSA was joined on the brief by the National League of Cities, the American Public Works Association, and the National Association of Flood and Stormwater Management Agencies. The court’s decision may not be forthcoming for several months. In the meantime, AMSA will continue its efforts to support municipalities in ensuring that numeric effluent limitations are not included in MS4 permits. AMSA’s brief will be posted to the Litigation Tracker section of AMSA’s web site at http://www.amsa-cleanwater.org/private/littrack/littrack.cfm.AMSA Seeks Member Input on EPA Compliance Database
AMSA urges its members to review information on EPA’s Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO) database, which gives the public and industry direct access to the environmental compliance records of more than 800,000 regulated entities nationwide, including water and wastewater facilities. Several AMSA members have already contacted the National Office with inaccurate information they found on ECHO. Presently, ECHO contains a two year compliance history for each facility, but EPA plans to expand this to five years. EPA is seeking comments on ECHO’s content, design, and data accuracy and has extended the comment deadline to March 31, 2003. AMSA will file comments on ECHO prior to the deadline and requests that members submit comments on ECHO to AMSA by March 21, 2003. More information is available on ECHO via Regulatory Alert 03-04 available at http://www.amsa-cleanwater.org/private/regalerts/ra03-04.cfm. The ECHO database is located on EPA’s web site at http://www.epa.gov/echo. Please submit comments on ECHO to Will Pettit, AMSA, at 202/833-3280 or wpettit@amsa-cleanwater.org.