Last year EPA proposed some changes to the construction stormwater rules, referred to as effluent guidelines.  Overall, TCWN was supportive of more stringent requirements and assurances to protect our water quality.  The most discussed draft language was a numeric turbidity limit of 13 NTU.  I won’t bore you with too much explanation of what NTU means, but put simply it measures the clarity of water.  And 13 NTU is pretty clear water.  However, in the final rules issued last month, EPA upped the numeric limit to 280 NTU… quite a change.  As you can guess, 280 NTU isn’t nearly as clear as 13 NTU. 

Another big change was the application of these requirements to 20 acres and eventually 10 acres rather than larger sites, which was initially proposed.  This is good news.  There will most likely be challenges to these rules in the near future – perhaps from both sides.  For now, feel free to check out these new rules here.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 10th, 2009 at 12:34 pm and is filed under Enforcement, Stormwater. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.