The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) held a stakeholder committee meeting today in Austin to kick-off the process of revising and reissuing their statewide permit for regulated small municipal separate storm sewer system (MS4) operators. If you are a true stormwater geek you can watch the entire meeting online at AdminMonitor.

MS4’s are the system of pipes and channels operated by your local city or county to carry rainwater away from homes and businesses and towards natural bayous and creeks.

Under the federal Clean Water Act and the Texas Water Code, certain MS4’s must obtain a permit (basically a permission slip) to discharge pollutants in stormwater runoff from their MS4 to waters of the United States.

The permit requires regulated storm sewer system operators to development and implement programs to:

• Educate the public on stormwater pollution prevention;
• Find and eliminate non-stormwater discharges to the storm sewer;
• Reduce pollution from active construction sites;
• Reduce pollution from operating new development areas;
• Reduce pollution from city or county operations;
• Addressing industrial sites; and,
• Addressing discharges to impaired waters or waters with a pollution budget.

The current permit was issued in December 2013.  All Clean Water Act permits typically last for five years, so the current one will expire in December of 2018.  Due to the time required to draft the permit, issue formal public notices, take comments, and publish responses to comments — not to mention conduct negotiations with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) — it takes a long time to get a new permit issued.  This means the TCEQ needs to start drafting the new permit now!

The anticipated changes discussed at the meeting today breakdown into two main types:

First, the permit will be revised to implement federal digital reporting requirements, which shift paper submittals of compliance reports to a digital format.

Second, the permit language will be tightened up to better define compliance obligations that are clear, specific, and measurable. These changes will reduce or eliminate the use of words like “if practicable,” “as necessary,” “if feasible,” and similar words that can be viewed as making permit provisions optional or subject to permit holder discretion. These changes stem from a new rule known as the Remand Rule, which clarifies how states must alter their permitting process to include substantive public review (TCEQ’s process was already compliant with this) and directs states to write more explicit permit provisions.

If you have comments or questions on this post, please leave a reply below.  If you have comments on how the new TCEQ permit should be drafted, please send them to TCEQ at swgp@tceq.texas.gov by April 4, 2017.