Clean Water Advocacy - Newsroom - NACWA in the News
Volume 14, No. 48 November 28, 2005
Highlight story from the current issue of WaterWeek
USEPA Considering Proposed Wastewater Blending Policy
A joint proposal by the National Association of Clean Water Agencies (NACWA)
and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) on blending of storm-caused
sewer overflows with treated wastewater could resolve issues that shelved draft
USEPA guidance on the practice.
Submitted to USEPA in October, the NACWA/NRDC proposal is intended to replace
USEPA's controversial draft guidance of 2003, which the agency in May decided
not to adopt after finding that blending "is not a long-term solution." The
draft guidance would have permitted blending of wet weather overflows with
biologically treated effluent under certain conditions, providing uniform
national guidance for regulating such bypass flows.
USEPA cited some 98,000 public comments in deciding in May to withdraw the draft
guidance in favor of considering "other options to address pollutant discharges
during wet weather conditions."
As described in an Oct. 24 letter to USEPA Water Office chief Benjamin Grumbles,
NRDC and NACWA officials urged the agency to adopt their proposed alternative
blending policy, which they said "would ensure that peak wet weather flow
bypasses of secondary treatment in separate sewer systems are authorized only
after an analysis of the wastewater collection and treatment system demonstrates
to the permitting authority that there are no feasible alternatives to an
anticipated bypass."
The cover letter to the proposed policy also emphasized that it "would provide
needed certainty to wastewater treatment operators regarding the showing they
need to make to their permitting authorities and public to receive authorization
to bypass peak wet-weather flows when full treatment is not feasible."
A joint press release from the two organizations further asserted that their
proposed policy "provides EPA with a sound path forward on an issue that had
become highly politicized and appeared to have reached an unfortunate impasse."
The proposal, they said, "would benefit the nation's water quality by minimizing
publicly owned treatment works' reliance on peak wet weather flow diversions as
a long-term wet weather management approach to the maximum extent feasible,
taking into account the economic and real-world factors detailed in the
guidance."