The Industrial Wastewater Systems Handbook

Ralph L. Stephenson, James B. Blackburn, Jr.

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351410205
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Environmental Science
• Index: Technology & Engineering

From explanations of laws and regulations to hands-on design and operation-the Handbook has it covered!

1	Laws and Regulations

INTRODUCTION

All wastewater systems in the U.S. and in virtually all foreign countries are subject to laws and regulations. The number and stringency of these laws and regulations has increased exponentially in the last few years. Furthermore, in the U.S., the overlap of these laws and regulations also has increased.

Nearly all environmental compliance actions, including the design, construction, and operation of wastewater systems, are driven by environmental laws and regulations. Industry is driven by competition and the profit motive, and it is a rare industry that can afford to install expensive environmental controls and still maintain competitiveness and profits. However, most people in industry, including management, are as concerned about the industries impact on the environment as the public is. Management in most cases wants to comply with environmental regulations and wants to preserve the environment. Industry does need a level playing field, however, to ensure that all the competition is conforming to the same rules and is spending as much on environmental protection as it is. Otherwise, the non-complying industry will have a competitive advantage.

Environmental laws and regulations provide somewhat of a level playing field where all industries are required to meet the same environmental compliance goals, and are basically required to protect the environment to the same extent as their competitors. Although U.S. industry has complained about having to meet what are regarded as strict environmental requirements vis-à-vis the foreign competition, foreign environmental laws and regulations are fast catching up with U.S. standards. Indeed, in many cases West European and some Asian standards exceed U.S. Standards.

It is noteworthy that the power of the profit motive by looking at environmental conditions in the former Soviet Empire. In that society, where the state controlled all profits, profits were used to finance a huge bureaucracy and the military. As a result, little was left for environmental concerns, and the result is the former Soviet Empire is an environmental disaster of monumental proportions (Ref. 1). Health, safety, and the environment came near last in priority compared to the military and the bureaucracy. The world and the countries and peoples of the former Soviet Empire are paying the price for this short- sighted view. Environmental laws help reorder priorities and ensure a healthier, cleaner, environment for all the peoples of the world.

As people become more affluent, they worry more about the quality of their lives, and they want cleaner air and water, and they want a healthier environment. To illustrate this, many years ago an engineer from a rapidly developing country was asked what his governments environmental policy was. His reply was the government told the people “you can eat or you can have a clean environment.” A few years ago a plastics factory tried to build a grass roots plant in this country, which had become quite prosperous. The local residents blocked construction of the plant for over four years on environmental grounds. The company abandoned the site in that country and built the plant in the U.S. This illustrates the power of politics and the NIMBY — not in my backyard—syndrome. It also illustrates the desire of people, worldwide, to live in a clean environment if they have the other necessities of life.

Although company officers have prime responsibility for conformance to environmental regulations, the environmental personnel in any company are there to assist and help it in assuring that the company’s facilities conform to all environmental regulations. Note that the companies legal department may have responsibility for regulatory interpretations, and any matter involving legal interpretations must be referred to the companies legal department. Only U.S. regulations are given in this book. Many foreign countries use U.S. laws and regulations as a base for their own laws and regulations, so knowledge of U.S. laws and regulations forms a basis of knowledge. For facilities in foreign countries, that country’s regulations should be consulted. The regulations of many foreign countries are available in some libraries, and if not available, English translations of any country’s regulations can be obtained from business information brokers.

There is an increasing interlocking and overlapping of regulations. There is a significant overlap of OSHA and RCRA, as well as of the CWA and the CAA, and a number of some other laws and regulations.

REFERENCE SOURCES FOR LAWS AND REGULATIONS

All state and federal environmental regulations are available from the U.S. Government Printing office, the Federal Register, and from information services companies. It is highly recommended that environmental professionals subscribe to an information service. A typical service is the Bureau of National Affairs, Inc., (BNA) service, which provides a complete and up-to-date library of all state and federal environmental regulations. The BNA books occupy an entire book case, which illustrates the number and complexity of the laws and regulations. The books must be kept up to date by inserting revised pages as soon as received from BNA. The revised pages are normally received a few weeks after publication in the Federal Register. There is also a service that issues all the laws and regulations on a CD ROM disk. This would be very useful as a specific regulation could be found quickly, and clean copies could be made.

The regulations are also available at government bookstores relatively inexpensively. Unfortunately, these books are only issued yearly, and there are many regulations and revisions issued regularly in the Federal Register — almost daily.

In some companies there are departments that maintain files of all current regulations, including foreign regulations.

SUMMARY OF U.S. GOVERNMENT LAWS AND REGULATIONS

This chapter presents a brief description of each specific law that specifies an environmental regulatory program in the U.S. A. The laws and regulatory programs briefly described are:

• National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA),

• Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA),

• Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA),

• Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act, Title III, (SARA),

• Clean Air Act (CAA),

• Clean Water Act (CWA),

• Endangered Species Act (ESA)

• National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA)

• The Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act

• The River and Harbor Act of 1899

• The Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA)

• Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA).

The above acts can only be briefly discussed in this chapter. Each act would require a book by itself, or in some cases many books, to describe. The brief description of each act in this book should provide indicate the complexity of environmental compliance actions, and illustrates the necessity for an environmental regulatory analysis for all facilities on a regular basis.

Wastewater facilities are regulated primarily by the Clean Water Act. Although it is important to understand the specific provisions of the Clean Water Act, the Clean Water Act does not exist in a void. Indeed, many statutes are related to the Clean Water Act and may be important in understanding the true implications of a particular situation. In the following sections, the provisions and applicability of various environmental laws will be set forth in general and an attempt will be made to explain their relationship to specific aspects of the Clean Water Act. In certain situations, these specific interfaces with the Clean Water Act will be expanded in later sections.

The federal environmental laws can be divided into two general sections — the natural resource statutes and the residual management statutes. This approach has been used in this chapter. Those laws addressing natural resources are presented first, followed by those laws that regulate the generation and disposal of residuals. Then, a section will be presented that discusses the agencies and administrative system within which these laws operate and how these statutes work together.

NATURAL RESOURCE STATUTES

Natural resource statutes are concerned with the protection of natural resources rather than with the regulation of pollution. As such, the implementation of these statutes tends to be more qualitative rather than quantitative and often is more subtle than is the case with the residual statutes.

NATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY ACT (NEPA) OF 1969

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) was passed in 1969 and became effective on Jan. 1, 1970. NEPA establishes the environmental policy of the U.S. government and sets forth procedures for implementing these policies. NEPA applies to federal agencies and federal actions and affects private actions only to the extent that some federal agency or action is involved.

NEPA was a governmental reorganization act. NEPA requires that every agency of the federal government consider the environmental impact of virtually every action that they undertake. NEPA gives every agency the responsibility to analyze the environmental impact of their action and the legal authority to make decisions, in part or in whole, on environmental considerations. In order to implement NEPA, the agencies had to add staff that understood environmental impact analysis and that could meet the NEPA procedures. Due to this, substantial government reorganization occurred at the time of NEPA’s passage. Whole sections now exist within federal agencies that did not exist prior to the passage of NEPA.

NEPA stopped short of mandating absolute environmental protection, however. Congress felt that it would not be prudent to protect the environment to the exclusion of all else; therefore, NEPA attempts to balance the environmental protection with other agency mandates. An agency may undertake actions that harm the environment as long as the agency fully considers the impact of those actions prior to making a decision. Our national environmental policy is to incorporate environmental considerations into the decision-making process but not to mandate absolute environmental protection in all cases.

The action-forcing part of NEPA is set forth in Section 102(2)(c). Here, the environmental impact statement (EIS) was created. All major federal actions significantly affecting the quality of the human environment must be considered in a document known as an EIS. The EIS includes alternatives to the proposed action, full disclosure of the environmental impacts of the proposed action, and a discussion of irreversible commitments of resources as well as short term gains vs. long term losses. The idea of the EIS is to place information in front of the decision-maker to allow that person to consider the environmental impacts of the proposed action when the decision about the project is made. NEPA requires that environmental impact be considered in decision-making and the EIS is the process by which the environmental impact is placed before the decision-maker.

In order to determine whether an EIS is required or not, often an environmental assessment (EA) is prepared. The purpose of this document is to consider environmental impacts in a very cursory manner to determine if significant environmental impacts exist. Many proposed actions are evaluated in an EA and found to have “no significant impacts.” In such situations, the completion of an EIS is not necessary to comply with NEPA.

NEPA is a difficult act in many respects. NEPA requires the agency to consider environmental impact but does not mandate that the environment be protected. This seems to be a contradiction to many people. If this act does not require environmental protection, then, some would argue, the EIS is a waste of time. However, this position fails to consider the long-term vision of the Congress in drafting NEPA. NEPA gave agencies the ability to make project decisions based on environmental impact and therefore enabled the agency to protect the environment. However, it did not require that the environment be protected in all situations and therefore did not mandate environmental protection. The EIS is document that helps the decision-maker decide whether and to what extent environmental protection, in his/her discretion, should be incorporated into the project. Therefore, the EIS is a key aspect of NEPA and the courts will require that the EIS includes correct information and analyses.

The scope and content of an EIS is an extremely difficult and important issue. All EISs must comply with the rules of the Council on Environmental Quality (40 CFR 1500 et sequation). A thorough analysis of alternatives must be included in a procedurally correct EIS and various types of impacts must be disclosed. These various types of impact include direct impacts, secondary (or induced) impacts and cumulative impacts. Often, a proposed action may be more important for the impacts that it induces than for those that directly ensue from the proposed action itself. All of these impacts, as well as a full range of alternatives, must be included in a procedurally correct EIS.

NEPA interacts with the Clean Water Act in at least two respects. First, if federal grants are made to construct sewage treatment plants, NEPA applies to this grant. Second, NEPA applies to the issuance of Section 402 NPDES permits to certain new facilities (non-municipal) and to major expansions of certain pre-existing facilities (non-municipal). In both of these situations, the clear implication is that environmental impacts beyond those regulated under the Clean Water Act could be considered in a decision to release a grant or in a decision to issue a federal permit under the Clean Water Act. In this manner, NEPA expands the jurisdiction of the agency making a decision under the Clean Water Act to issues not specifically covered by the Clean Water Act.

ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT

The Endangered Species Act was passed in 1973 and has been amended several times since then. The Endangered Species Act is substantive as well as procedural. Congress intended that this act protect endangered and threatened flora and fauna. The reason for passing this act was not aesthetic nor morality although these aspects were considered by Congress. Instead, the primary reason for passing this act was to preserve the biological diversity of the United States, thereby preserving the gene pool. Ultimately, the cure for human cancer or other diseases may be found in the DNA of an endangered or threatened species.

The ESA sets up several distinct processes to protect endangered and threatened plant and animal species. First, endangered and threatened species are identified through listing in the Federal Register. In many instances, designated critical habitat is identified as well as the species, indicating that much of the effort in protecting species is directed at protecting habitat.

Two separate procedures exist for protecting species. All federal agency actions are subject to evaluation under Section 7 of the ESA. Section 7 requires that each federal agency that is proposing an action evaluate that action to ensure that it does not jeopardize the continued existence of the endangered or threatened species. Provisions exist under Section 7 for the preparation of a biological assessment of impact and for the issuance of an opinion by either the USF&WS or NMFS regarding potential jeopardy to the species. Ultimately, a federal action cannot proceed if it jeopardizes the continued existence of an endangered or threatened species.

Under Section 9 of the ESA, no person may “take” an endangered or threatened species. “Take” is defined broadly to include killing, capturing, harassing or otherwise interfering with the species. “Take” has been defined sufficiently broadly that the destruction of habitat utilized by an endangered or threatened species may be included within the list of prohibited actions. Unlike Section 7, Section 9 applies to all persons and not just to the federal agencies.

Together, Section 7 and Section 9 provide substantial protection to endangered and threatened species. These two provisions interact with the Clean Water Act in several ways. First, all NPDES permit actions will trigger Section 7 as will all grants that are issued under the program. Each permit will need to be evaluated to determine if its issuance will jeopardize the continued existence of any endangered or threatened species. Further, Section 9 prevents any person from “taking” an endangered species by any action regardless of whether it is authorized by the Clean Water or not. Of the two, Section 7 is most likely to be triggered by most EPA actions.

NATIONAL HISTORIC PRESERVATION ACT OF 1966

The National Historic Preservation Act applies to federal actions. Under this act, each federal action must be evaluated to determine if it has an adverse effect upon a property that is listed upon, or eligible for listing upon, the National Register of Historic Places. Historic places are defined broadly under the act t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Prologue — What is Water?
• Chapter 1 U. S. Laws and Regulations
• Chapter 2 International Treaties, Laws, and Regulations
• Chapter 3 Wastewater System Planning and Analysis
• Chapter 4 Wastewater Collection Systems
• Chapter 5 Equalization and Storage Systems
• Chapter 6 Physical Processes
• Chapter 7 Chemical Treatment Processes
• Chapter 8 Biological Treatment Processes
• Chapter 9 VOCs in Wastewater
• Chapter 10 Sludge and Solid Wastes Management
• Chapter 11 Specialized Unit Processes
• Chapter 12 Instrumentation
• Glossary of Wastewater and Environmental Terms
• Index