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NACWA is pleased to announce the availability of two issue papers developed through the Association’s Critical Issues Action Initiative.  The two issue papers focus on the legal and technical arguments against a one-size-fits-all, technology-based approach to controlling nutrient discharges from clean water agencies, as contemplated in the 2007 Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) petition to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to change the definition of secondary treatment to include limits for nitrogen and phosphorus.

Both papers are available now on NACWA’s website.  Members are welcome to share the technical paper with interested stakeholders, but NACWA asks that the legal issue paper not be circulated beyond the membership, as it will form the basis of NACWA’s strategy should legal action on the issue be necessary.  NACWA continues to brief EPA on the findings from the papers to outline why EPA must deny NRDC’s petition and will meet with the new Assistant Administrator for Water in the coming weeks to discuss nutrient issues as well as other top NACWA priorities.

Issue Papers Demonstrate Flaws in NRDC Legal, Technical Analysis

Nearly two years after NRDC filed its petition, there is still no official response from EPA.  The questions at hand for the Agency are whether its statutory obligation to review the definition of secondary treatment “from time to time” also requires them to update this definition and whether Congress intended secondary treatment to include removal of nitrogen and phosphorus.  The legal issue paper outlines how NRDC’s core legal arguments are without merit and notes that EPA’s authority to include limits for other pollutants under the secondary treatment regulations is actually very limited.  Based on a review of the extensive legislative history on the issue, the legal issue paper highlights that Congress never intended secondary treatment to include nutrient removal and recognized that additional, separate treatment would be needed to achieve significant nutrient reductions.

If EPA believes that it has the legal authority to include limits for nitrogen and phosphorus in the definition of secondary treatment, NACWA’s technical analysis points out the implementation challenges and unintended consequences that would arise from such an approach.  Nutrient-related impacts are dependent on a wide range of factors that would be impossible to predict on a national level.  The technical issue paper outlines the various considerations that must be evaluated when developing nutrient loadings for a particular waterbody.  Costs to remove nutrients at clean water agencies rise rapidly as regulatory levels approach the limits of technology and the ancillary impacts, including power/chemical consumption and increased emissions/carbon footprint, become important considerations.

NACWA Working to Ensure Progress

With nutrient pollution remaining a top water quality challenge, however, NACWA understands that action is clearly needed.  NACWA is active on multiple fronts to ensure that additional progress can be made.  While working to inform EPA’s response to the NRDC petition, NACWA is also engaging the environmental activist community on the Association’s draft 21st Century Watershed Act and ways to achieve meaningful controls on nonpoint sources of nutrients. 

Again, both issue papers are now available on NACWA’s website.  If you have any questions about the issue papers, please contact Chris Hornback at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .