Clean Water Advocacy - Newsroom - AMSA in the News
No. 226
Tuesday, November 27, 2001 Page A-1
ISSN 1521-9402
News
Water Pollution
Final Pretreatment Streamlining Rule To Be Delayed Until 2003, EPA Officials Say
A final rule to streamline regulations governing the pretreatment program
will be delayed until 2003 to allow the Environmental Protection Agency time to
obtain and review additional information pertaining to the regulation, an
official said Nov. 26.
Michael Cook, director of the EPA Office of Wastewater Management, told BNA that
in addition to needing more information on the question of acidity, the agency
has had to divert resources away from the rulemaking to other areas.
EPA proposed changes to its national pretreatment program in July 1999 that
would provide some regulatory relief to industrial users and the publicly owned
treatment works into which they discharge wastewater (64 Fed. Reg. 39,564; 148
DEN A-4, 8/3/99).
More than 1,500 publicly owned treatment works (POTWs) now have approved
pretreatment programs and can directly regulate the industrial users that
discharge into their systems. Where the treatment works does not have an
approved pretreatment program, EPA or the appropriate state agency will
establish and run the pretreatment program.
Among other things, the July 1999 proposal would:
change the criteria for determining facilities considered to be in significant
noncompliance,
allow POTWs to issue general permits for significant industrial users that are
covered by concentration-based standards or best management practices, and
relax the regulatory burden for municipal waste water treatment plants by
dropping users defined as nonsignificant industrial users from annual POTW
oversight, eliminating the requirement that POTWs review every two years whether
all of their significant industrial users (SIUs) must have a slug control plan,
and allowing POTWs to issue general permits to certain SIUs.
Slug discharges are "non-routine, episodic" discharges that can interfere with
the operation of a POTW, EPA said in the proposal.
Commenters Address pH Levels
The Association of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies and the Water Environment
Federation submitted comments suggesting the agency allow for brief discharges
of pollutants with a pH lower than the current standard of 5.0.
The agency proposed to allow alternative pH requirements if the POTW can show
there would be no corrosive structural damage resulting from discharges with
lower pH levels. To do this, the POTW would have to prepare a written technical
evaluation explaining its site-specific evaluation, among other requirements.
The AMSA-WEF paper recommended an approach that allows short-term discharges
between pH levels of 4.0 and 5.0 without requiring each individual POTW to make
a temporary site-specific demonstration.
Cook said the agency has asked AMSA to submit more information on the issue for
EPA to consider in the rulemaking.
Benita Best-Wong, acting director of the permits division in the EPA Office of
Water, told officials at a conference Nov. 8 that the agency had received
comments on the 1999 proposal for which the agency did not have adequate data to
provide a response.
EPA Has Had to Divert Resources
In addition, she said the agency did not have the resources at this time to
proceed with the rule. Rather, EPA has had to divert funding and personnel to
other areas such as the implementation of the National Energy Policy, revisions
to the total maximum daily loads program, and a new focus on wastewater
infrastructure security.
"We want to focus this year on gathering data and responding in a responsible
manner," Best-Wong said.
POTW operators have been anxious for EPA to complete work on the rulemaking,
saying it will ease their administrative burden. One municipal official said
that delaying the rule another year "really hurts" the pretreatment program.
By Susan Bruninga