The Environmental Protection Agency made two announcements in the past week that will affect stormwater permitting.
Last Thursday, Administrator Lisa Jackson announced the agency’s Clean Water Act Enforcement Action Plan, which was drafted based on ideas EPA has solicited from the public. EPA acknowledges that even though large point sources of pollution have been quite successfully brought under control, the problems of nonpoint-source pollution and uneven enforcement are still threatening water quality. The plan proposes to target enforcement toward smaller sources of pollution such as animal feeding operations and nonpoint sources such as stormwater runoff, as well as to “intensify vigorous civil and criminal enforcement against traditional end-of-pipe pollution.” It also proposes to make sure states enforce clean water laws more evenly, and to “improve transparency and accountability” so the public is better informed about where water-quality violations are occurring and what’s being done about it. The agency hopes to take better advantage of existing information technology to identify and track problems. You can read more about the plan here.
EPA also announced this morning that it is seeking public comment on its proposal to extend the 2008 stormwater construction general permit by one year. The permit applies in states where EPA rather than the state is the permitting authority (Alaska, Idaho, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and New Mexico), as well as in Washington, DC, and in many territories and Indian lands. EPA wants the extension to allow time to integrate the new construction-site effluent limitation guidelines—the final version of which is due out in December—into the new permit. More information on the general permit and on the effluent limitation guidelines are available on EPA’s web site.