Clean Water Advocacy - Newsroom - AMSA in the News
Strategy for Setting Effluent Guidelines
Should Be Based on Risk, Dischargers Say
A draft strategy to help the Environmental Protection Agency devise a new
plan for regulating industrial dischargers should focus on those facilities that
pose a risk to human health or environment, industry commenters said.
An environmental group said the agency should also try to improve the process
for establishing effluent limitation guidelines (ELGs) while considering the new
strategy.
EPA published the draft Strategy for National Clean Water Industrial Regulations
for comment Nov. 29, 2002 (67 Fed. Reg. 71,165; 230 DEN A-5, 11/29/02 ). The
comment period closed Feb. 25.
The American Chemistry Council said that industries for which limits based on
best available technology have already been promulgated have controlled the
relevant pollutants and most likely do not pose significant risks to public
health or the environment.
"Such industries then should not be reevaluated unless it is determined that
fundamental and substantial changes have occurred in a particular industrial
category," the chemistry council said. "This should then limit the number of
categories potentially subject to revision to only those that discharge mass
loading of toxic pollutants at levels that in the aggregate are of concern."
Limiting Evaluations
This sentiment was echoed in comments from other organizations representing
industrial and municipal dischargers. These groups also generally agreed that
just because a new control technology or pollution prevention strategy becomes
available or because a facility implements a process change does not mean EPA
should necessarily revisit the effluent guideline for possible revision.
Section 304(m) of the Clean Water Act requires EPA to establish a plan every two
years setting a schedule for reviewing and revising, if necessary, effluent
guidelines. The agency was sued by the Natural Resources Defense Council for
failure to do so and has operated under a consent decree since early 1992 laying
out a schedule for issuing and revising effluent guidelines.
The strategy being developed is the agency's plan for the effluent guidelines
program once all obligations under the consent agreement are fulfilled, a
milestone that will be reached in June 2004.
More Reductions, Multi-Media Approach
NRDC said that the strategy should include a plan for developing effluent
guidelines more rapidly, mandate more reductions achievable through pollution
prevention approaches, and do more to coordinate effluent guidelines with
technology standards under the Clean Air Act and other environmental laws.
"Too often, recent effluent guidelines have been single media, treatment only
technologies, that merely bring the standard up to the average of the worst,"
the NRDC comments said, adding that the goal should be to reduce the amount of
pollution going into the environment.
The Utility Water Act Group, which represents electric utilities, disagreed. To
employ multi-media considerations in the effluent guidelines program goes beyond
the scope of the Clean Water Act, the group said.
UWAG also said the agency should not "bind itself to a particular schedule for
effluent guidelines development."
To do so would limit the agency's ability to adjust how it uses its resources as
particular environmental problems emerge, such as the control of nonpoint
sources of pollution, UWAG said.
UWAG also agreed that agency consideration of industries to review or regulate
should be based on the risk posed. However, the group went further, saying that
if an effluent guideline has been revised or been subject to a data summary or
other evaluation in the past 10 years, it does not need to be reevaluated for
further revision.
EPA said in the draft that those subject to evaluation within the past seven
years should be given a low priority for consideration.
Risk-Based Approach Questioned
NRDC questioned the risk-based approach, saying EPA has failed to set adequate
standards even for those industries it has chosen to regulate. It cited as
examples effluent guidelines for concentrated animal feeding operations,
announced in December 2002, which environmental groups criticized as being
inadequate.
The Association of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies said EPA should identify the
key threat to the environment where development of an effluent guideline will
have the most impact so that resources can be provided for actions that will
actually benefit the environment.
The development of ELGs should be prioritized based on time, expense, and effort
needed for their promulgation in addition to the considering the cost of the
technology, AMSA said.
"EPA must be sensitive to the already tight budgets of the nation's POTWs, who
will be responsible for implementing and enforcing any new categorical
pretreatment standards," AMSA said.
Poor Candidates for Regulation
The Air Transport Association, which represents the airline industry, said EPA
should be aware that some industries are "poor candidates for the rigid style of
control embodied by effluent guidelines." Some industries are trying to reduce
their impact on the environment on their own, ATA said. The airline industry,
for example, is trying to improve the efficiency of its deicing operations to
reduce the amount of deicing fluid necessary to maintain safe operations, ATA
said.
"The Draft Strategy allows appropriate and supportable 'off-ramps' for
industries that might otherwise be subjected to an ill-fitting nationwide
rulemaking," ATA said.
While some industry groups supported an EPA proposal to defer consideration of
an industry for the ELG program if the industry is already doing voluntary
reductions, others, such as UWAG, said the agency needed to flesh out the idea
more before it could take a position. For example, there is the issue of whether
reductions taken through other media count toward those that would affect the
ELG program, UWAG said.
The National Association of Homebuilders said it agreed with statements in the
EPA draft suggesting that the usefulness and benefit of the effluent guidelines
program may have waned somewhat and the remaining water quality problems may not
be adequately addressed through effluent limits.
"NAHB believes that ... the societal costs of continuing the ELG program are
disproportional to the environmental benefits of the program," the group's
comments said. "Thus, NAHB urges EPA to put into place a criterion for new ELGs
and revisions to ELGs that addresses the societal costs vs. the environmental
benefit."
Most of the groups agreed that a strong "stakeholder" process will benefit EPA
in establishing how to proceed with the ELG program.