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By Janice Kaspersen
As most everyone working in the construction industry is aware, the EPA’s Construction General Permit expires this July. The good news—at least for those comfortable with the existing permit—is that the EPA is proposing to reissue it relatively unchanged. The reissued version will be good for about two more years.
The more serious news—good or bad, depending on your perspective—is that within two years the EPA plans to issue a brand new CGP, one that will incorporate its new national Effluent Limitation Guidelines for construction activities.
The reissued CGP that the EPA is coming out with right now mainly affects the states in which the EPA, rather than the state, is the permitting authority, as well as territories and tribal lands. The new CGP, however, will affect everyone. Some are cheering it as a victory for clean water, and others are gritting their teeth, having narrowly escaped a few years ago what they view as an onerous burden for developers.
This isn’t the first go-round for numeric effluent guidelines. The EPA proposed them for construction sites in 2002 but withdrew the proposal in 2004, stating that it would rely instead on the existing—and varied—programs and standards at the state and local levels to protect water quality. Relying on existing programs would allow the states more flexibility, the EPA said at the time.
The Associated General Contractors of America, Associated Builders and Contractors, and other groups had opposed the first set of requirements; by some estimates, enforcing them would have cost builders (and therefore homebuyers) $3.5 billion per year. Groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Coucil and Waterkeeper Alliance have been equally vocal in calling for the EPA to move ahead with numeric effluent guidelines, sometimes in court.
For some developers and in some states (many of which already have some sort of numeric criteria in place), the upcoming Effluent Limitation Guidelines might not represent a great change. In other places, however, especially where inspection and enforcement have been lax, or where the “narrative standard” has been interpreted very loosely, the expense and the learning curve have the potential to be very steep. It will be harder to continue placing BMPs around a construction site primarily for appearance rather than with regard to whether they really function as they should.
Of course, no matter what the new guidelines say, they still have to be enforced to be effective, and that’s another battle altogether: allocating the resources to make sure the numeric limits are met. We don’t know yet exactly what limits the EPA will mandate—although some groups like the Waterkeeper Alliance have suggested a limit of 50 nephelometric turbidity units for discharges from a site, which is comparable to some existing state limits. (Some states limit the NTUs to a certain percentage over background turbidity rather than set a specific limit.) Enforcement will require a new set of skills. Ultimately the new limits represent a step forward for clean water, and they also present new opportunities for ESC professionals who can help developers and contractors interpret and meet the new guidelines.
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EC - July/August 2008 |
