The United States Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) has published a draft of a new General Permit (MAG590000) for medium-sized wastewater treatment facilities (“WWTF”) in Massachusetts under the Clean Water Act’s National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (“NPDES”).
This General Permit will authorize owners and operators of any privately or publicly owned facility that treats domestic sewage in Massachusetts with a design flow between 1 and 5 million gallons per day (MGD) to discharge wastewater to the Commonwealth’s waters pursuant to applicable effluent limitations, monitoring requirements, and other conditions. Table 1 on Page 4 of the draft permit outlines the effluent limitations and monitoring requirements to be met. Other permit requirements apply to certain facilities or to facilities that discharge into certain bodies of water. The General Permit requires annual sampling of six PFAS compounds in addition to other types of industrial discharges into the facility. The EPA has published a fact sheet with additional information about permit coverage and exclusions, proposed effluent limitations, monitoring, reporting, and record-keeping requirements, and instructions for public participation.
The public comment period for the draft permit closes on April 11, 2022. Written comments may be mailed to U.S. EPA Region 1, Water Division, Attn: Michele Duspiva, 5 Post Office Square, Suite 100, Mail Code 06-4, Boston, Massachusetts 02109-3912, or sent via email to Duspiva.Michele@epa.gov.
To obtain coverage under the General Permit, eligible facilities may submit a Notice of Intent pursuant to Part IV of the permit. The EPA identified 44 specific facilities that meet the eligibility requirements. The EPA may notify a discharger that it is covered by the General Permit even if the discharger has not submitted a Notice of Intent.
For advice about how your facility may be impacted by this new General Permit, please reach out to the attorneys at Mackie Shea Durning, P.C.