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.