Greetings!

EPAs NEW NPDES General Permit for Construction is HERE!

Georgia, and many other states, will not be affected until their permits expire. 

Georgia's permit expires July 31, 2013 

The US EPA has finally come out with the new 2012 NPDES General Permit for Construction sites.  The Permit will be good for 5 years.

On November 5, 2010, EPA issued a direct final regulation and a companion proposed regulation to stay (or hold) the numeric limitation at 40 CFR 450.22 indefinitely. The Federal Register Notice - Final CGP stay took effect on January 4, 2011, resulting in an indefinite postponement of the implementation of the 280 NTU limit. Since the numeric portion of the rule was stayed, EPA and the states are no longer required to incorporate the numeric turbidity limitation and monitoring requirements found at §450.22(a) and §450.22(b). However, the remainder of the regulation is still in effect and must be incorporated into newly issued permits.

The final CGP is directly affected by the stay in that, due to the stay, the permit does not need to include the numeric turbidity limit. When EPA issued the draft permit for public comment, the Agency was uncertain whether its work to complete the recalculation of the numeric turbidity limit would be completed in time to incorporate into the final permit. To be able to implement the yet-to-be promulgated turbidity limit in the final permit, EPA included in the draft permit a placeholder for the effluent limit, as well as proposed implementation requirements such as turbidity monitoring and reporting protocols. Because EPA is still in the process of collecting data to support the recalculation of the numeric turbidity limit, and therefore a final numeric turbidity limit is not yet available to implement, the Agency has finalized the CGP without the numeric limit and related monitoring and reporting requirements. EPA has, however, implemented the remaining portion of the C&D rule that was not affected by the stay of the numeric limit.

The permit will be immediately effective in areas where EPA is the permitting authority: Idaho, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Washington, D.C., and most U.S. territories and in Indian country lands.  For states like Georgia, the changes will not take affect until our existing permits expire.  Georgia's NPDES General Permit for Construction doesn't expire until July 31, 2013. 

CLICK HERE FOR THE EPAs NPDES PERMIT for Construction.