Clean Water Advocacy - Newsroom - AMSA in the News
No. 139
Friday, July 19, 2002 Page A-6
ISSN 1521-9402
News
Water Pollution
Plan Links Funds for Nonpoint Sources To Development of Cleanup Strategies
PORTLAND, Ore.--Federal funding to address nonpoint sources of pollution
would be contingent on the development of detailed strategies that include
approved plans for cleaning up impaired waters under a proposal being considered
by the Environmental Protection Agency.
The agency is drafting a proposal to revise the total maximum daily loads
program under the Clean Water Act. The proposal would mark another attempt to
revise a program that has been largely driven by lawsuits.
In July 2000, EPA published a final rule to revise the program but was
immediately sued by groups representing a broad spectrum of interests, and
Congress later barred the agency from implementing it. The TMDL program
currently operates under a 1992 regulation.
The new proposal, which is undergoing internal agency review and was outlined to
EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman July 2, would have as its central
component a continuous planning process to be developed by the states. This
instrument is actually called for under the little-used Section 303(e) of the
Clean Water Act.
The CPPs, as they are called, would be developed by the states and would contain
plans for addressing pollution problems on a watershed basis. These watershed
plans would incorporate the requirements of the National Pollutant Discharge
Elimination System permit program and the Clean Water Act Section 319 program,
which provides funding to implement best management practices for controlling
nonpoint sources.
Key to Nonpoint Source Regulation
Charles Sutfin, director of the Assessment and Watershed Protection Division in
the EPA Office of Wetlands Oceans and Watersheds, told BNA July 18 that the key
to bringing nonpoint sources of pollution into the regulatory program would be
through this CPP, which would essentially tie the 319 program to the
implementation of TMDLs.
"You can't spend 319 money on building best management practices unless you have
a watershed plan that incorporates approved TMDLs," he said.
Sutfin will present the agency's plans for the proposal July 19 at the summer
meeting of the Association of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies.
The proposal would contain several significant changes from the 2000 rule,
including the removal of a requirement that each TMDL contain an implementation
plan that would have to be approved by EPA. In a summary of the presentation
made to Whitman, which was obtained by BNA, the agency said the 2000 rule was to
"inflexible" and had "too much EPA control."
Rather than requiring implementation plans for each TMDL and subsequent EPA
approval, the proposal would call for the agency to review state CPPs every five
years "from a performance standpoint to see if it's meeting expectations,"
Sutfin said. These performance reviews would also be open for public scrutiny,
he said.
The proposal, Sutfin said, "deals with both ends of the TMDL process." The CPP
would contain a plan for implementation as well as provisions for monitoring and
assessment to gauge whether the strategy is working or not, he said.
Research Council Report
In addition, the proposal would incorporate some of the recommendations
contained in a June 2001 report from the National Research Council. One of the
recommendations was that EPA should have an adaptive management approach in the
TMDL program that would allow for revisions and adjustment as the plan moves
forward. The five-year reviews would provide an opportunity for those revisions,
he said.
If a CPP is not meeting its performance objectives, Sutfin said, the agency
could revoke its approval of the plan.
"If they don't fix it, we could take further steps," he said. These might
include revoking a state's permit authority, he said.
The proposal also would revise the 10-year schedule for developing TMDLs that
was included in the 2000 rule. The proposal would go back to the eight- to
13-year schedule called for by the agency in earlier guidance.
The agency is also considering separating out some aspects of the 2000 rule and
addressing them through guidance, including the provisions on the TMDL schedule,
the presentation summary said. Guidance could also address planning on a
watershed scale and adaptive management, the summary said.
The proposal would also give EPA the authority to object if states do not
reissue expired permits, Sutfin said. However, this would be discretionary under
the proposal. The 2000 rule said the agency would have to object after one year.
"If a state doesn't propose a new permit and issue it, or if just sits on a
permit, there's nothing we can do about it now," he said.
The proposal would also call for integrating the Section 305(b) water quality
reports and Section 303(d) lists of impaired waters and having them be issued
every four years instead of every two years as is required now.
EPA plans to send a draft of the proposal to the White House Office of
Management and Budget for review in August and publish as proposal in November.
A final rule is not expected until the spring of 2004, more than a year later
than the agency said when the 2000 rule was withdrawn for an 18-month review and
revision.
By Susan Bruninga