MEC&F Expert Engineers : EPA TO TIGHTEN CONTROL OF UNMONITORED CHEMICAL RELEASES FROM POTWS

Monday, December 8, 2014

EPA TO TIGHTEN CONTROL OF UNMONITORED CHEMICAL RELEASES FROM POTWS



EPA to tighten control of unmonitored chemical releases from POTWs



The U.S.Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is tightening up oversight of chemical releases from publicly owned treatment works (POTWs) in response to an internal investigation that revealed poor regulation, according to a recent news article.
Office of Inspector General Investigation
The investigation, conducted by the EPA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG), showed several regulatory issues.
Chief among them was the EPA’s failure to clear clearly identify and regulate hazardous chemicals discharged from POTWs.
The OIG report also revealed uncertainty among EPA staff about regulating beyond Clean Water Act (CWA) Priority Pollutants—a list of 126 pollutants that has not been updated in 33 years—and poor reporting by industry of Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) hazardous wastes discharged to POTWs, among other issues.
Corrective action by September 2015
To improve oversight, the EPA plans to take corrective action by September of 2015.  They plan to review chemicals reported in the discharge monitoring reports from PTOWs, and to push for states to ensure industry compliance with CWA requirements, among other actions that may impact how these facilities manage chemical releases.


More Action Is Needed to Protect Water Resources From Unmonitored Hazardous Chemicals
What we found
Management controls put in place by the EPA to regulate and control hazardous chemical discharges from sewage treatment plants to water resources have limited effectiveness. The EPA regulates hazardous chemical discharges to and from sewage treatment plants, but these regulations are not effective in controlling the discharge of hundreds of hazardous chemicals to surface waters such as lakes and streams. Sewage treatment plant staff do not monitor for hazardous chemicals discharged by industrial users. This is due to a general regulatory focus on the priority pollutants list that has not been updated since 1981, limited monitoring requirements, limited coordination between EPA offices, a lack of tracking hazardous waste notifications required for submittal by industrial users, or a lack of knowledge of discharges reported by industrial users under the Toxics Release Inventory. Except for EPA Region 9, sewage treatment plant permits generally include very few monitoring requirements or effluent limits, which can limit enforcement actions.
The EPA developed whole effluent toxicity test results as a mechanism to identify toxic chemicals such as hazardous discharges to sewage treatment plants. However, these are not required for all permits, and are not tracked by the EPA to verify that sewage treatment plants are reporting results as required. Moreover, exceedances of chemical limits in permits and toxicity tests do not trigger notification to enforcement programs. Consequently, the EPA may not be aware of chemical discharge or toxicity exceedances that should be addressed to minimize potentially harmful contamination of water resources.
Recommendations and Planned Agency Corrective Actions
We recommend that the EPA develop a format for sharing annual Toxics Release Inventory data, develop a list of chemicals beyond the priority pollutants list for inclusion in permits, confirm compliance with the hazardous waste notification requirement, and track required submittals of toxicity tests and violations. The agency suggested a change to one recommendation, which the OIG accepted.  All recommendations are resolved.
Noteworthy Achievements
The EPA has designed the Discharge Monitoring Report Pollutant Loading Tool to provide access to surface water discharge and other data.