EPA Sees Legal Hurdles To Using Permits To Set Cities' Water Act Schedules

摘要

Epa officials say case law may prevent the agency from solely using Clean Water Act permits to establish long-term compliance schedules for infrastructure upgrades, forcing the agency to rely also on consent decrees or other enforcement actions to allow municipalities to undertake infrastructure projects sequentially as part of its integrated permitting approach. "We recognize there are legal constraints in what needs to go in a permit, what needs to go in [a consent] order, the constraints of commingling enforcement and permitting," Mark Pollins, chief of the water enforcement division of Epa's Office of Enforcement & Compliance Assurance (OECA), said Nov. 18 at a law conference here sponsored by the National Association of Clean Water Agencies (NACWA).