Clean Water Advocacy - Newsroom - AMSA in the News
Review Sought on Rule Establishing
Tests to Measure Whole Effluent Toxicity
A federal appeals court was asked to review an Environmental Protection
Agency rule establishing test procedures for measuring the chronic toxicity of
industrial effluents and the waters into which they are discharged (Association
of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies v. EPA, D.C. Cir., No. 03-1091, 3/31/03).
The Association of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies and several state groups
representing wastewater treatment facilities asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for
the District of Columbia Circuit March 31 to review the November 2002 rule
establishing procedures known as whole effluent toxicity (WET) test methods (67
Fed. Reg. 69,951; 223 DEN A-8, 11/20/02 ).
WET tests are intended to characterize the toxicity of effluent as a whole by
looking at its effects on a particular species, such as a flathead minnow.
However, the tests have been criticized for producing false positives that could
ultimately result in stricter limits in the National Pollutant Discharge
Elimination System permit of industrial and municipal dischargers.
The November 2002 rule was implemented to correct some of the problems in the
WET tests. The rule ratified 10 test procedures but withdrew two others.
When the rule was promulgated, AMSA officials said they still had problems with
the test methods.
Christopher Westhoff, assistant city attorney for the Los Angeles Department of
Public Works and chair of AMSA's legal affairs committee, said the test was not
a good indicator of the quality of the receiving water and that dischargers
needed more regulatory certainty.
Under the EPA rule, Westhoff said at the time, a discharger could be in
violation of an NPDES permit because testing for toxicity "killed one fish in a
90-day period. And you really can't say what it was that caused the critter to
go belly up."