Construction General Permit Renewal Advocacy for the California Construction Industry
TMDL Implementation Approach for the Stormwater Construction General Permit Renewal
Assembling expert scientific, engineering, and legal teams to address critical water quality compliance issues for the construction industry is a core function for CICWQ.
Over the past few months, CICWQ’s technical team has been busy developing summary presentations of more than three years of work on the California Construction General Permit renewal process. The work focuses on an extensive examination of the scientific basis for imposing numeric effluent limits in a construction general permit, including the State’s proposed use of water quality monitoring surrogates for meeting pollutant-specific numeric effluent limits.
These two presentations go deep into the legal and technical fundamentals of attempting to incorporate Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) pollutant limits into an NPDES stormwater permit for construction.
1) Select Conference on Industry Litigation, November 19, 2022
Starting more than three years ago, CICWQ assembled an expert legal and technical team on behalf of the construction industry to evaluate available and feasible approaches for meeting numeric limits as proposed in the renewal of the Construction General Permit for stormwater. Paramount in this effort was identifying the available and relevant scientific data to support the water quality effluent limit setting process for pollutants identified in a TMDL or in California Regional Water Quality Control Board basin plan.
The presentation highlights the legal and technical evaluation done to examine the consequences of potentially complying with a TMDL at the point of discharge from a construction site using numeric limits as proposed by the State Water Resources Control Board. And it includes a summation of evidence presented on the record between 2020 when the permit was first released as a preliminary draft and the final permit adoption hearing held on September 8, 2022. The Select Conference on Industry Litigation is hosted by the California Building Industry Association and the Building Industry Legal Defense Foundation.
2) Tri-State (Arizona – California – Nevada) Environmental Seminar, August 8, 2022
CICWQ was invited to deliver a presentation at the 37th annual Tri-state Environmental Seminar, focusing on the California Construction Industry’s approach to renewing the Construction General Permit for Stormwater. The presentation emphasizes the challenges of incorporating Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) permit requirements into the Construction General Permit and the implementation impacts for permit holders, including feasibility to comply and potential costs. Tri-State comprises the AZ Water Association, California Water Environment Association, and Nevada Water Environment Association.
