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By Janice Kaspersen
Do you know how often construction-site inspections are occurring in your state—and who’s conducting them? The number is set to increase next year, and there might be some players involved that you haven’t seen before. Now is the time to start planning.
Late in 2007, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance issued a “compliance monitoring strategy” for the NPDES program with a new emphasis on wet-weather discharges. The memo outlining the strategy sets goals for how many inspections the EPA and the states should be conducting. The new inspection frequency is scheduled to begin in 2009, and it will continue through 2011, after which the EPA will review the overall results and decide whether the inspections are accomplishing what they’re supposed to.
Much of the guidance deals with “core” activities regulated under NPDES, such as discharges from publicly owned treatment plants and industrial facilities. However, the EPA is also placing additional emphasis on wet-weather programs. Into this category fall combined sewer systems and sanitary sewer systems, which will be inspected with regard to combined and sanitary sewer overflows, as well as animal feeding operations, municipal separate storm sewer systems, and, of course, construction sites.
The memo recommends inspections—either by the EPA or by the states—of 10% of Phase I construction sites and at least 5% of Phase II construction sites. The EPA lists estimates for the number of Phase I and Phase II construction starts each year—157,000 and 87,875, respectively—although it doesn’t say which years those data are based on; new starts might significantly slow in the coming year because of the slowdown in the housing market. If that’s the case, and if the EPA still aims for inspecting the same percentages of each type of site, the odds of your site being inspected will increase.
For construction sites of any size, the EPA wants inspections to occur whenever there is an indication of a problem or unpermitted activity, perhaps as a result of a complaint. Inspections conducted for this reason count toward the overall percentage goal. Keep in mind, though, that inspections by county or local authorities are not part of the 5% or 10% goal; these new goals are above and beyond what the local inspectors are already doing.
When talking to readers and interviewing people for articles for this magazine, we hear a gamut of attitudes toward NPDES and its enforcement. In most parts of the country, the way contractors implement ESC measures on construction sites, their knowledge of ESC practices, and the amount of assistance they ask for from those who provide sediment control services have all changed dramatically in the last few years. In a few places, the concern seems to be less—“It hasn’t really affected us too much yet,” someone occasionally tells us. But the EPA has said that as the first five-year period for Phase II permits ends and the permits come up for renewal, the agency will focus more on enforcement, and this new strategy looks like a step in that direction.
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EC - January/February 2007 |
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