NPDES and SPDES Inadequacies 



The New York Bight is contaminated predominantly by discharges either directly 

 into the ocean or into the river and estuary system through pipelines. The contami- 

 nants enter the New York Bight directly through ocean outfalls, or after they are dis- 

 charged through an estuarine or river outfall and carried out to sea by the estuarine 

 outflow. They may also enter the Bight as a component of dredged material taken 

 from the channels within the estuarine system. Pipeline discharges to the ocean or 

 river and estuarine system are regulated under the Clean Water Act and are subject 

 to the permit procedures of this Act, known as the National Pollutant Discharge 

 Elimination System (NPDES) or the State Pollutant Discharge Elimination System 

 (SPDES), where a state assumes permitting responsibility under the terms of the 

 Act. 



The NPDES program relies on the direct control of waste discharges through a 

 series of effluent concentration standards in order to achieve the desired ambient 

 water quality characteristics. Central among the issues concerned with the NPDES 

 strategy and its implementation is the effectiveness of relying on uniform national or 

 regional effluent standards. The adoption of uniform effluent standards is advanta- 

 geous, particularly given the ease of the negotiation process between government 

 and a discharger (Energy and Environmental Analysis, Inc., 1975). However, the 

 adoption of uniform national standards has led inevitably to numerous cases in which 

 variances from these standards may be justifiable because o/ local environmental 

 conditions or constraints, or economic considerations, but no adequate mechanism 

 for granting such variances exists. At present any variances must be granted through 

 statutory exemption (Blumm, 1980). Such variances have been granted on a class by 

 class basis rather than on an individual discharger basis. The formal variances that 

 currently exist are those for power plants (Section 3 1 6 [a] of the Clean Water Act of 

 1977) and exemptions of municipal wastewater treatment plant discharges from the 

 secondary treatment requirement if discharge is through an ocean outfall where a 

 large amount of dilution is probable (Section 301 [h] of the Clean Water Act of 

 1977). It is likely that more variances will be requested as other parts of the Clean 

 Water Act, such as toxic substances controls, are implemented (Blumm, 1980) and as 

 more information concerning local environmental conditions becomes available. If 

 these variances from the national standards do in fact proliferate, particularly if they 

 are justified largely by local water quality conditions, then it has been suggested that 

 this would constitute a de facto movement back to standards based on water quality 

 and water use as opposed to the current technology-based standards (Blumm 

 1980). 



One shortcoming of the NPDES system is the problem of monitoring compliance 

 with permit conditions. Little hard information is available to enable the dimensions 

 of this problem to be adequately identified. However, it appears likely that because 

 of the self-monitoring aspects of the permit procedures and the limited data that the 

 permit procedures require, significant violations of permit conditions may take place 

 without detection. 



One of the major difficulties in applying the current national effluent standards 

 approach is that the standards are established on an industry by industry basis and, 

 where combinations of discharges occur or where unique plant or process streams 

 are concerned, the effluent stream may not fit into one of the categories for which 

 standards have been promulgated. In this case the effluent discharge limitations in- 

 cluded in the permit must be designed specifically for the particular discharger. This 

 situation leads to the possibility that a particular industry or process stream can ob- 

 tain a de facto variance from the effluent standards by establishing that the process 

 stream or plant concerned is unique and that different effluent standards should then 

 be written for it. 



A major inadequacy in the current NPDES program is the limitation of the 

 NPDES system in controlling toxic substances. Prior to the 1977 Clean Water Act, 

 the NPDES program and its predecessor concentrated primarily on conventional 



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