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Draft Final Water Quality Regulations Issued

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The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection ("DEP") has developed draft final regulations under its Regulatory Basics Initiative. The package includes amendments to the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System ("NPDES") permit and water quality standard regulations. Proposed regulations were published on August 29, 1998. These draft regulations reflect comments received at that time. DEP is now seeking additional comments until November 17, 1999.

Among the changes in the draft regulations is a rewriting of the pollution prevention provisions to place the responsibility to encourage pollution prevention on DEP rather than the NPDES permittee. Language that would have required a permittee to identify unregulated pollutants in its discharge and explain how the discharge of these pollutants would be eliminated has been deleted. In addition, provisions that would have established effluent limits in general NPDES permits for any toxic or hazardous substance and authorized the use of these general permits in High Quality Waters have been deleted. Warm water fish is proposed to be reinstated as the base level of aquatic life use protection.

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