Environmental Protection Agency October 21, 2008 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The Director, Office of Water and Watersheds, EPA Region 10, is issuing a draft modification to the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) general permit in response to a settlement agreement between Union Oil Company of California and XTO Energy, Inc. (Petitioners) and EPA (Ninth Circuit, Case No. 07-72656). On May 25, 2007, EPA issued the final Permit, with an effective date of July 2, 2007 (May 31, 2007, 72 FR 30377). The Permit included the following provisions, among others: 1. Condition II.A.10: ``If any discharges are commingled, the most stringent effluent limitations for each individual discharge shall be applied to the resulting discharge. If the Individual discharge is not authorized, the commingled discharge is not authorized. Monitoring for compliance with technology based limits, such as the oil and grease concentration of produced water must be accomplished prior to commingling.'' 2. Condition II.C.3: ``Commingled Waste Streams. If deck drainage is commingled with produced water, then this discharge shall be considered produced water for monitoring purposes (see Section II.G). However, samples collected for compliance with the produced water oil and grease limits shall be taken prior to commingling the produced water stream with deck drainage or any other waste stream. The estimated deck drainage flow rate must be reported in the comment section of the DMR (i.e., discharge monitoring report).'' 3. Table 7-A, Footnote 1: ``The sample type shall be either grab, or a 24-hour composite which consists of the arithmetic average of the results of 4 grab samples taken over a 24-hour period. If a sample is unavailable to be analyzed and the permittee has explained the reason in the DMR, averaging of the remaining samples is permitted. Samples shall be collected prior to the addition of any seawater to the produced water waste stream. See Section II.G.6.b of this Permit.''

In compliance with the Paperwork Reduction Act (44 U.S.C. 3501 et seq.), this document announces that an Information Collection Request (ICR) has been forwarded to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review and approval. This is a request to renew an existing approved collection. This ICR is scheduled to expire on November 30, 2008. The ICR, which is abstracted below, describes the nature of the information collection and its estimated burden and cost.

The Environmental Protection Agency recognized municipalities and industries for outstanding and innovative technological achievements in wastewater treatment and pollution abatement programs. An inscribed plaque was presented to first and second place national winners at the annual Clean Water Act Recognition Awards presentation during the Water Environment Federation's Technical Exposition and Conference (WEFTEC). Recognition is made for outstanding programs and projects in operations and maintenance at wastewater treatment facilities, biosolids management and public acceptance, municipal implementation and enforcement of local pretreatment programs, cost- effective storm water controls, and combined sewer overflow controls. This action announces the 2008 national awards winners.