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Report to Congress on Sewer Overflows
Delayed Until Spring 2004, EPA Official Says
A report to Congress on the volume, frequency, impacts, and costs associated with sewer overflows that was to be issued Dec. 15 will probably be postponed until the spring of 2004, the Environmental Protection Agency said Dec. 15.
The agency was directed in the fiscal year 2001 Consolidated Appropriations
Act (P.L. 106-554) to issue two reports regarding the status of efforts to
reduce sewer overflows and the number and effects associated with them.
An agency official told BNA that a draft of the report on combined sewer
overflows and sanitary sewer overflows due Dec. 15 was sent to the White House
Office of Management and Budget for review in early November, but that it was
not complete.
"When we got to a certain point, we made the decision to do some additional
analyses that took longer than we thought," the EPA official said. He would not
say what that analysis involved.
However, he said he hoped to send the remaining portions of the report to OMB by
the end of the year with the hope that the 90-day review period actually started
when the main part of the draft was sent.
First CSO Report
EPA published the first report called for under the fiscal 2001 law in January
2002 showing that discharges from combined sewer overflows had dropped by 170
billion gallons per year since 1994. Still, more than 1.2 trillion gallons of
discharges are still released annually into U.S. waters, the report said (21 DEN
A-1, 1/31/02). The agency also reported that plans by municipalities to reduce
the number of overflows varied widely.
The January 2002 report was viewed as a setup for the Dec. 15 report, which will
also address sanitary sewer overflows, agency officials said at the time. It
will help the agency set policy regarding the regulation of sewer overflows.
Currently, municipalities are directed under a 1994 policy that was subsequently
codified to implement nine minimum controls to reduce the frequency and impact
of CSOs. These controls include sound operation and maintenance of sewer
systems, public education programs, and pollution prevention strategies.
SSO Rulemaking
EPA has been working for several years on a regulation for SSOs. Work on the
rulemaking was sidetracked until the agency completed work on its draft blending
guidance, which was released Nov. 3 (213 DEN A-3, 11/4/03 ). Blending is a
practice that has been used since the 1970s by sewage treatment plants to
prevent the biological treatment system from being inundated during wet weather
when wastewater flows often exceed the facilities' storage capacity. The
question of blending had been part of the SSO rulemaking, but EPA decided to
address it separately.
An official with the Association of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies told BNA he
expected the upcoming report to Congress on CSOs and SSOs to play an important
role in developing the SSO rulemaking.
For one thing, the report may help determine whether there is a link between
overflows and effects on human health and the environment, he said.
"The policy issue on SSOs and CSOs will rest on what link is found," he said.
The report also will discuss the resources being spent by municipalities to
control overflows as well as the various types of technologies being employed.
Municipal treatment officials have met with EPA to discuss the complications and
costs of curbing overflows, he said. They want the agency to view the problem
more holistically and on a watershed basis rather than focusing on the problems
of overflows from individual facilities, the AMSA official said.]
By Susan Bruninga