Clean Water Advocacy - Newsroom - AMSA in the News
Thursday, July 18, 2002 Page A-8
ISSN 1521-9402
News
Water Pollution
Cities Sue EPA Alleging Uneven Application Of Mandates Relating to Wet Weather
Issues
PORTLAND, Ore.--Guidance issued by several Environmental Protection Agency
regional offices banning the practice of blending storm water that has bypassed
biological treatment with treated effluent is not evenly applied and is contrary
to historical practice, three municipalities said in a lawsuit filed July 8
(Pennsylvania Municipal Authorities Ass'n v. WhitmanD.D.C., 1:02CV01361,
7/8/02).
The Pennsylvania Municipal Authorities Association, the Tennessee Municipal
League, and the City of Little Rock Sanitary Sewer Committee filed a complaint
in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia addressing three issues
of importance to publicly owned treatment works.
The groups alleged that EPA has inconsistently applied various mandates relating
to sanitary sewer overflows and other wet weather concerns even though no
regulations are in place calling for these directives, the suit said.
Specifically, the suit said EPA Region III in Philadelphia, Region IV in
Atlanta, and Region VI in Kansas City, along with the agency's Office of
Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, have issued guidance stating that
"blending" is illegal. Blending is the practice of routing excess storm water
around a POTW's secondary treatment system and then blending it with the treated
effluent before discharging it. The resulting blended discharge also meets the
statutorily required secondary treatment standard because the rerouted storm
water is so diluted to begin with, one municipal official said.
The lawsuit was discussed July 17 at the summer meeting of the Association of
Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies, which plans to request permission to intervene.
The secondary treatment process involves the removal of biochemical oxygen
demand components of wastewater, usually by putting it in a tank where the
contaminants are consumed by microbes. The Clean Water Act requires that
wastewater discharges meet secondary treatment standards.
Municipal wastewater treatment officials have said that if they are not allowed
to let some storm water bypass this process before blending it with the treated
water, the excess flows during wet weather events could wipe out the biological
process for several days, resulting in no discharges meeting secondary treatment
standards.
Wastewater Officials Want Blending
The blending option should be allowed, the officials have said, because the
resulting effluent still meets that requirement even though a portion of it
bypassed one aspect of the treatment process.
The lawsuit points out that blending is allowed in some EPA regions.
"Although blending can be authorized in NPDES permits, certain EPA Regions do
not authorize or allow their approved NPDES states to authorize blending in
NPDES permits," the complaint said.
The lawsuit also said EPA Regions III and IV prohibit states from issuing
National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permits for "emergency outfalls"
in the municipal collection system, despite historic practice and regulations
allowing such permits.
Finally, the lawsuit charges that EPA now requires that discharges from sanitary
sewer overflows (SSOs) meet secondary treatment standards even though it has not
issued regulations mandating such a requirement.
The plaintiffs want the court to declare that:
blending is not prohibited under the Clean Water Act;
EPA lacks the authority to direct plant design or use of specific processes to
achieve effluent limitations;
emergency outfalls in municipal collection systems can be permitted under the
NPDES system; and
best available technology economically achievable (BAT) and best conventional
pollutant control technology (BCT), not secondary standards, should apply to
SSOs.
The case is important because EPA is developing a rule regulating SSOs that will
address treatment levels for overflows and the blending issue. EPA, during the
Clinton administration, signed a proposed SSO rule in January 2001, but it was
never published. The agency is in the process of revising the rulemaking so that
the preamble addresses comments received so far and provides more options (see
related story in this issue).
Kevin Weiss, SSO program manager in the EPA Office of Wastewater Management,
said at the AMSA conference that the agency is paying particular attention to
the question of wet weather flows and the application of secondary treatment in
the context of the blending issue. In addition, the agency is studying how to
address peak excess flow treatment facilities.
Both issues were the subject of draft guidance dated Dec. 1, 2001, clarifying
NPDES permit requirements during wet weather under certain scenarios (4 DEN
AA-1, 1/7/02 ).
The draft also addressed bypasses, where excess flows are routed around the
secondary treatment process but not blended with the treated water before being
discharged. These are prohibited under current regulations except for certain
extreme situations that make them unavoidable, but they are not addressed in the
lawsuit.
The complaint lays out a long history of EPA's practices and policies on each
issue and alleges that the agency has not acted consistently, particularly among
its regional offices.
Among other things, the complaint said blending is not only an appropriate way
to handle peak excess flows, but that construction grants appropriated through
EPA's budget have allowed for treatment systems employing this particular
design.
The concern about blending and other peak excess flow issues is whether the
effluent containing pathogens is being adequately treated. Environmental groups
cite an EPA-sponsored study published in the August 2001 issue of the American
Journal of Public Health showing that more than half of the waterborne disease
outbreaks in the United States in the past 50 years were preceded by heavy
rainfall.
One AMSA official said the lawsuit probably would not go very far and that the
court would most likely not act on it until EPA completes its rulemaking.
By Susan Bruninga