Clean Water Advocacy - Newsroom - AMSA in the News
No. 116
Monday, June 17, 2002 Page A-2
ISSN 1521-9402
News
Water Pollution
Noncontroversial Aspects of Sewer Proposal Unlikely to Be Made Separate,
Official Says
The Environmental Protection Agency currently has no plans to separate out
certain portions of rulemaking regulating sanitary sewer overflows, an agency
official told BNA June 14.
Environmental groups said raw sewage from overflows poses a significant health
risk to the public and the agency should move forward with the reporting and
public notification requirements of the proposed rule while it deals with how to
address the other more difficult issues of the rulemaking.
The Clinton administration signed the proposed rule in January 2001 but it was
never published and was pulled back for review by Bush administration officials.
EPA announced in November 2001 its intentions to propose the same regulatory
language but to revise the preamble based on comments it received on the
rulemaking to date.
Sanitary sewer overflows are discharges that occur during wet weather and are
illegal because they do not have Clean Water Act permits. The proposed
regulations are designed to reduce the number of SSOs by calling for increased
recordkeeping; improvements in capacity, management, operation, and maintenance;
and expanded permit coverage to satellite collection facilities.
Nancy Stoner, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the
regulations have been delayed for too long and would go a long way to prevent
illness among people who swim in waters polluted by raw sewage from these
overflows.
"Although we would prefer to see the full package of regulations finalized, we
urge EPA to move forward immediately at least with the regulatory provisions
that would require monitoring and reporting of SSOs, including required
notification of the public and of public health authorities of sewer overflows
that have the potential to affect human health," Stoner said in a May 23 letter
to the agency at the beginning of the summer swim season.
The provisions she cited enjoy near unanimous support of members of a federal
advisory committee convened to help EPA develop the SSO rule.
Municipal wastewater officials, however, said they oppose breaking up the rule,
fearing that it would delay further efforts to resolve the more contentious
issues, such as the enforcement provisions. Municipalities argue that overflows
are inevitable, even at the best run facilities, and want protection from
enforcement actions in these cases.
Kevin Weiss, the SSO program manager in the EPA Office of Wastewater Management,
told BNA June 14 that officials in his division met with EPA Administrator
Christine Todd Whitman April 1 but did not include much discussion on the
substance of the rule.
The agency plans to circulate a draft of the proposal for internal review
"soon," Weiss said. The goal is to send the completed draft to the White House
Office of Management and Budget for review in October and perhaps release the
proposal for comment by the end of the year, he said.
Stoner said she was concerned that operators of publicly owned treatment works
would hold the noncontroversial provisions "hostage" while they lobby EPA "for
regulatory rollback."
Officials with the Association of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies said in an
April letter that breaking up the rule would be "fatal" to the rulemaking
process.
"The history of this rulemaking and the negotiations surrounding it demonstrate
that collection system owners and operators wish to comprehensively understand
all requirements affecting them," the AMSA letter said. "The lack of substantial
progress in SSO control can be attributed solely to the absence of a single
federal rule which spells out all applicable requirements and compliance
standards."
Weiss said the agency may also send to OMB at the same time either guidance or a
proposal on the question of "blending." This would address situations where
excess flows during wet weather events are routed around the secondary treatment
to keep it from being inundated and then recombined with flows that were treated
to secondary standards. The agency is contemplating allowing these discharges to
be permitted if they meet secondary treatment standards and other requirements
(4 DEN AA-1, 1/7/02 ).
EPA envisions the "blending" guidance and SSO rulemaking "as two separate
documents" that should be viewed together. Thus, they may both appear in the
Federal Register at the same time, once the agency gets to that point, he said.
By Susan Bruninga