NPDES Permit Implementation – Alternative Approaches

Draft---Revisions based on RWG discussion on July 13---Draft

Questions for RWG Discussion

1.  Comment on the “principles” for permitting solutions listed below? Additions?

2.  Are you aware of other permitting implementation problems or issues than those listed below? Are these known, existing problems or anticipated problems?

3.  Comment on the problem statements listed below.

4.  Which problems do you expect to be most likely to affect your sources in the near term? Which will be most difficult to address?

5.  Comment on the desired outcomes? Additions?

6.  Are there potential solutions that are not yet identified, at least as a general category? Are there variations to the solutions listed below that should be noted?

7.  Which of the solutions below do you anticipate being the best fit for problems you expect your sources will have implementing the revised criteria?

8.  Are there solutions below that you do not think are viable or should not be pursued? In other words, they just do not work for you no matter how they are constructed, conditioned, etc.

9.  For those solutions that have potential, what are the critical conditions for making them work?

Principles

1.  Meet water quality standards and protect beneficial uses wherever attainable.

2.  Approach/tool must be legally defensible.

3.  Approach/tool should provide a long term or permanent fix whenever possible.

4.  Where problems are widespread, solve problems at “highest” or most systemic administrative level possible rather than facility by facility in order to be efficient with DEQ resources and minimize economic impact to sources.

5.  Use solutions and tools with reasonable/low agency administrative costs.

6.  Prevent absurd results, such as imposing high costs/economic harm for no real/significant environmental gain (to facility that does not impose significant human health risk).

a.  Approach/tool should be practical; produce practical, near term results.

7.  Presume harm if (standards are exceeded) unless have adequate representative data to the contrary.

a.  Don’t impose permitting requirements to make up for lack of adequate ambient data.

b.  Sources should be responsible for monitoring, but can work together w DEQ or other 3^rd parties so that data is more useful.

8.  Each source should be responsible for their contribution, but it may not need to be treatment.

9.  Consider whether the solution creates inequities among like facilities across the state.

10.  Solutions should allow for site specific flexibility.

11.  Look ‘upstream’ as much as possible. (i.e. often source reduction preferable to treatment)

Problem Statements

1.  Some criteria will be below detection or quantitation limits.

2.  Municipalities may take in pollutants in source waters, which could be a mix of ground water and surface water sources; from conveyance piping (i.e. copper, others?); from inflow and infiltration of groundwater into piping (i.e. arsenic, others?).

3.  For some pollutants, no feasible treatment technology is available that will reliably treat to required levels, either because:

a.  The technology does not exist or is unproven that will perform to the required level for wastewater, or

b.  The technology is prohibitively expensive.

4.  Clean-up site discharges, in some cases, can not treat to the detection limit, particularly if detection limit is reduced (e.g. DDT detection limit is changing from 0.1 to 0.01 µg/l)

5.  In some places, standards may be incorrect (use or criteria).

6.  Limited data results in high levels of uncertainty for doing reasonable potential analysis and setting permit effluent limits. Higher uncertainty can lead to more stringent limits.

Desired Outcomes

1.  Do not create adverse environmental impacts.

2.  Do not adopt regulations that effectively require cost prohibitive treatment if other solutions are available that can provide equal or better environmental results.

3.  Develop policy/guidance on appropriate application of the methylmercury fish tissue criterion. Determine whether alternatives to WWT, such as Hg source reduction measures, may be applied rather than WQBELs.

4.  Sources should be responsible for providing data on their intake water and for characterizing the ambient water quality in the vicinity of their discharge for use in reasonable potential and mixing zone analyses.

5.  Sources should reduce/treat to the levels they can. At the same time sources should not be required to treat for those pollutants levels they can not achieve.

6.  Solutions should be as efficient as possible, not administratively onerous.

Possible Alternative Approaches/Tools (to WW treatment to meet WQBEL) to consider

This list of ideas has not yet been fully developed or evaluated. It is likely that some of these tools will work in combination with each other.

1. Permit compliance based on the quantitation limit (QL).

Although WQBELs must be based on the criteria and are calculated, if they are below the QLLL for the pollutant, the compliance point for discharge monitoring and reporting would be the QL because that would be the minimum level that is measurable.

-  DEQ currently has the authority to apply the WQBELs this way. Does the RWG think this policy should be put into rule to provide certainty?

(Variation: “de minimis” approach described on FIIAC matrix).

2. Pretreatment for sources discharging to POTWs

Select sources are required to treat their waste before discharging it to a POTW.

- Should additional pretreatment requirements be considered for sources discharging pollutants to a POTW if the POTW has a reasonable potential to exceed a HHC?

- Should there be a DEQ rule on this or should that be up to the POTW/city?

3. Apply high-tech (i.e. Reverse Osmosis) treatment to a concentrated portion of the wastewater where that is more practical or economical than treating the full discharge volume.

-  Can someone provide an example of how this might work?

-  How is this different from “pretreatment”?

4. Source reduction

This refers to a variety of ways a facility could reduce the amount of a pollutant that enters its waste stream and therefore reduces the amount that would have to be removed from the wastewater prior to discharge. For the purpose of using this as a permitting implementation approach, it would include those types of actions that are within the control/authority of the permittee, such as drug take back or hazardous waste collection events, material substitutions, perhaps product bans by a municipality, regulations on the disposal of certain wastes into a POTW, and other alternatives to disposal of specified wastes into the POTW from households or small businesses.

-  In some cases, source reduction actions may allow a permittee to meet a WQBEL, although a compliance schedule may be needed to put programs in place and attain the reduced loading.

-  In other cases, the source reduction plan may need to be accompanied by a variance.

4. Trading/offsets

This refers to allowing a source to or reduce loading of a pollutant outside their facility in order to either:

a.  Create assimilative capacity for the discharge load of a pollutant by reducing that pollutant upstream and thereby meet their permit limit.

b.  Reduce the loading of a pollutant in another location in order to mitigate for the loading of the source. In this case, the benefit is off site and the source would not meet a WQBEL at the point of discharge. Therefore, a variance may be required to allow this approach.

5. Watershed or “bubble” permit

6. Variances:

a.  streamlined individual

b.  multiple discharger

c.  water body variances

Please see the description of variances provided for the last RWG meeting.

7. WQ benchmarks, phased implementation, similar to Phase 1 stormwater permits

This was from FIIAC matrix.

8. Sources could pool resources to obtain better ambient data (i.e. from 3^rd parties such as USGS). This could help provide more certainty in conducting reasonable potential analyses and calculating effluent limits.

9. Set site specific criteria and/or conduct UAA to remove beneficial uses where standards are incorrect. There may be waters of the state that are inappropriately designated for domestic water supply use, for example, some irrigation ditches. If DEQ removed domestic water supply as a designated use, the water + organism criteria would not apply to that water body.

11. Intake allowances.

Information on intake credits and a possible intake concentration allowance (de minimis increase) has been provided and discussed at prior meetings. These will be re-visited following RWG discussion of other tools.

a.  intake credit (GLI style) – no addition of mass, no increase in concentration.

b.  intake concentration allowance – no addition of mass, but some increase in concentration may be allowed for facilities that do not add the pollutant from anthropogenic sources.

13. Dynamic permits (i.e. flow based)

In this case, the dilution provided by the receiving water is tiered based on streamflow rather than assuming that the streamflow is always at the 7Q10 low flow. The source would be required to meet the criteria when flows are at the 7Q10 level, but when they are higher, some relief is provided.

14. Compliance schedules

This is an existing tool that provides time for a facility to put into place treatment technologies and/or other controls in order to attain an effluent limit in a defined period of time, generally not to exceed the 5-year permit term.

Revisions:

1. This issue was removed from above because DEQ is already working to correct it and this issue is not part of the permitting program:

Problem statement: WQL listings may not be accurate for a specific location, for example, because the geographic scope of the listing extends beyond the data locations. This may lead DEQ to unnecessarily prohibit the use of a mixing zone. If a stream is listed as WQL, mixing zones are not allowed for the listed pollutant.

Desires outcome: Do not overextend 303d listings to stream reaches that are not actually impaired if this will unnecessarily prohibit a mixing zones that would otherwise be legal and will not impair beneficial uses.

Approach: Ensure 303d listings are correct and properly “segmented” so mixing zones are not unnecessarily prohibited.