Kentucky comment

Derek Willis

Description

Spokespeople for the Kentucky state government wrote the following when asked to provide or verify figures regarding the state's enforcement of the Clean Water Act: “Kentucky enforces the Clean Water Act in accordance with the National Pollution Discharge Elimination System Memorandum of Agreement Between the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the United States Environmental Protection Agency Region 4 and the annual CWA Section 106 Work Plan. In FY2009, Kentucky received a CWA Section 106 Federal grant award of $2,288,642.30, which requires a 20% match of state general funds. In addition to the Federal award in FY2009, Kentucky expended $9,266,074.75 of state funds for the implementation and enforcement of the Clean Water Act. As such, Kentucky must significantly over-match with state funds the limited Federal CWA Section 106 funds in order to provide sufficient funding to implement the programs required under Section 106 of the CWA. The data provided for verification by the New York Times originates from the Annual Non-Compliance Report (ANCR). The ANCR is a date-specific report that reflects the data in the Federal database at the time the report is generated. Any Discharge Monitoring Report (DMR) that has been received but not entered into the Federal database will show up on the ANCR as a Category I non-compliance. U.S. EPA Region 4 has provided data that breaks out the "non-receipt only" Category I violations from the total number of Category I ...

Informations

• Publié par: Vowyong
• Nombre de lectures: 15
• Langue: English

Extrait

Spokespeople for the Kentucky state government wrote the followingwhen asked to provide or verify figures regarding the state's enforcement of the Clean Water Act:

“Kentucky enforces the Clean Water Act in accordance with theNational Pollution Discharge Elimination System Memorandum of Agreement Between the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the United States Environmental Protection Agency Region 4and the annualCWA Section 106 Work PlanFY2009, Kentucky received a. In CWA Section 106 Federal grant award of $2,288,642.30, which requires a 20% match of state general funds.In addition to the Federal award in FY2009, Kentucky expended $9,266,074.75 of state funds for the implementation and enforcement of the Clean Water Act. Assuch, Kentucky must significantly over-match with state funds the limited Federal CWA Section 106 funds in order to provide sufficient funding to implement the programs required under Section 106 of the CWA.

The data provided for verification by the New York Times originates from the Annual Non-Compliance Report (ANCR).The ANCR is a date-specific report that reflects the data in the Federal database at the time the report is generated.Any Discharge Monitoring Report (DMR) that has been received but not entered into the Federal database will show up on the ANCR as a Category I non-compliance.U.S. EPA Region 4 has provided data that breaks out the "non-receipt only" Category I violations from the total number of Category I violations on the ANCR.In looking at the spreadsheet, 72% to 87% of the Category I violations reported on the ANCR are due to data not being entered in the Federal database, not on actual violations reported on a DMR.The CWA 106 Work Plan between Kentucky and U.S. EPA does not require or provide sufficient funding for Kentucky to enter DMR data for non-major facilties in the Federal database. That said, Kentucky does enter DMR data for non-major facilities into the Federal database as time, budget and resources allow.. Consequently, the compliance status of non-major facilities as identified in the ANCR report is not and would not be expected to be accurately captured given that all data is not required to be entered or is always able to be entered in a timely manner.

 The spreadsheet row labeled "Number of non-major NPDES permittees with only DMR Nonreceipt violations (PCS input of DMRs is not mandatory)" is comprised largelyof Category I violations due to data not yet entered into the Federal database at the time the ANCR was generated.The database interpretation of the “Non-Receipt Only” violations as Category I violations on the ANCR is erroneous.A percentage of those DMRs will be in compliance with KPDES permit limits,a percentage will be in violation of KPDES permit limits, and a percentage will be actual non-receipt violations.Since the ANCR is date-specific, the compliance status of the “Non-Receipt Only” violations is never corrected. TheANCR is a statistical report, and does not provide the background data for either the Category I or Category II violations.  The spreadsheet row labeled "Number of non-major NPDES permittees with only DMR Nonreceipt violations (PCS input of DMRs is not mandatory)" inflates the number of Category I violations reported on DMRs in Kentucky.The spreadsheet row labeled

"Number of non-major NPDES permittees in non-compliance with KPDES permit limits as identified by the Annual Non-Compliance Report" represents known Category I violations reported on the ANCR, but will undercount the number of Category I violations reported on DMRs due to that data not yet captured in the Federal database at the time the ANCR was generated.   Regarding data on non-major NPDES violations:  “Kentucky does not agree with the “Category I non-compliance” data from the ANCR. Given the potential for inaccuracy in that system the agency does not rely upon and is not required to use the ANCR reporting system. The ANCR is generated on a specific date and can only reflect the data that is entered into PCS as of that date..From CY2004 to present, DOW has had a DMR data entry backlog for non-major facilties that has ranged from 0 to 12 months on some of our permitted operations due to limited time, budget and resources to perform these functions.As stated previously, Kentucky is neither required or provided sufficient funding by EPA to enter non-major facility data into the Federal database. Data not entered into PCS at the time the ANCR is generated appears as a Category I violation and therefore gets counted on the ANCR.This may inaccurately reflect the actual compliance data submitted. For clarification purposes, Kentucky has th provided EPAs ANCR data for “Non-Receipt Only” in the 6column below to illustrate the inaccuracy of the ANCR data.The data provided primarily represent the DMR data entry backlog for non-major facilities discussed above. U.S. EPA Region 4 provides an additional data field on its ANCR form to quantify the number of "Non-Receipt Only" violations that were counted as Category I violations.Again, this number largely represents the DMR data entry backlog for non-major facilities.However, a small percentage of the "Non-Receipt Only" violations will be actual non-receipt violations, and a larger percentage of the "Non-Receipt Only" violations will be numerical violations once they are entered into PCS.Since there is no background data for the ANCR, it is not feasible to determine which facilities were counted on the ANCR and what their final compliance status actually was. To determine the compliance status of each facility, Kentucky does a compliance review of the submitted DMRs and of the data in PCS. ”  Regarding major NPDES violations data:  “Kentucky does not agree with the accuracy of these numbers.In the past 5 years, Kentucky has completed 163 formal enforcement actions with civil penalties for the wastewater program, and has collected $6,292,164.79 in civil penalties for water cases.”  