Enforcement
Pursuant to CWC 13385(o), the State Water Board is required to report information on violations, enforcement actions, and the effectiveness of current enforcement policies, including mandatory minimum penalties. This requirement pertains to National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) wastewater and stormwater facilities within California. Historically, the Water Board produced an annual report (13385 Report) addressing these requirements and these reports were posted on the Water Board’s Internet site. The last report posted to our website was dated August 18, 2006.
In its 2006 report, the Water Board committed to measures to improve the quality and availability of these reports, including: increasing the quality and consistency of the data; increasing electronic submittal of data to decrease the burden of manual entry; and making the data available for live, public use on the Internet. As a result, data cleanup and consistency efforts are currently under way. The number of dischargers submitting their data electronically has increased, and this information is being used to identify and track violations. Most of the tables previously presented in our annual 13385 Reports are now available for public use via the State Water Board’s Internet site.
These electronic reports represent an entirely different approach to meeting our statutory reporting requirements. Past 13385 Reports only presented data on surface water dischargers in a static format. Transitioning to live, public reports allows the user access to violation and enforcement data from all dischargers regulated by the Water Boards, and gives the user control over how to sort and filter this data to meet specific information needs.
The Water Board’s public reports currently available can be found on the Water Board’s public website at:
http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/water_issues/programs/ciwqs/publicreports.shtml
The tables presented in past published 13385 Reports that are currently available for live, public access are listed below. Selecting the links listed below will direct the user to the public report, allowing them to view this data according to the criteria they select.
Table
1: NPDES Wastewater Facilities by Category and
Regional Office
Table
2: Number of Violations of NPDES Wastewater Permits
Table
4: NPDES Wastewater Violations by Category
Table
5: NPDES Stormwater Permits by Permit Type and
Regional Office
Table
6: Number of Violations of NPDES Stormwater Permits
by Year
Table
7: NPDES Stormwater Violations by Category
Table
8: NPDES Wastewater Violations Compared to Completed
Enforcement Actions
Table
9: NPDES Stormwater Violations Compared to Completed
Enforcement Actions
In addition, the following tables are currently being revised to improve problems noted in their functionality.
Table 3: Number of Violations Per Wastewater Facility
Table 10: Status of Violations Subject to MMPs
Table 3 is currently being modified and will be available later this year. We anticipate Table 10 will be available for public access by September 10.
Discussion of NPDES data for 2006
The discussion below is based on data stored in the California Integrated Water Quality System (CIWQS) database. Consistent with past 13385 Reports, the following discussion excludes federal facilities due to the difficulty pursuing traditional enforcement against violations at federal facilities. In addition, specific numbers included below will vary from day to day within the CIWQS database, as the data is in constant use statewide with records being added daily, and ongoing QA/QC work resulting in corrections as data entry errors are addressed. One of the limitations to statewide tracking and use of data on violations and enforcement actions is our reliance on manual review and entry of thousands of self-monitoring reports statewide. It is anticipated that as we transition to electronic submittal and review of these self-monitoring reports, quality and completeness of our compliance data will improve as well.
In 2006, the Water Boards were responsible for regulation of 2,233 wastewater dischargers. Of these, 250 facilities are classified as “major” dischargers – facilities with an average daily discharge greater than 1 million gallons per day (MGD) or posing a high degree of threat to water quality. The remaining 1,983 facilities are classified as minor facilities – facilities with discharge rates less than 1 MGD and with a lower threat to water quality. For NPDES stormwater, the Water Boards regulated nearly 37,000 individual permittees in 2006. 67% of these were construction sites, and 31% were for industrial stormwater discharges. The remaining permittees were municipal stormwater permits regulating communities with a population of 10,000 or more.
When violation data for these facilities is examined over the last five years, the numbers of violations vary from year to year, and there is no clear pattern trending up or down over time. The link to reports on violations can be found by clicking the hyperlinks for Tables 2, 4, 5, and 7 above. For wastewater facilities, these violations average more than 5,000 per year over the last several years, with more than 6,100 in 2004. This high number of violations in 2004 is in part due to increased diligence in recording violations prompted by the mandatory minimum penalties for late reporting violations commencing January 1, 2004. Implementation of the CIWQS database in mid-2005 resulted in a subsequent drop in violations recorded in 2005 as staff adjusted to use of the new data system.
For stormwater discharges, we see an average of about 2,000 violations per year statewide. While the overall number of stormwater violations trend downward over the last five years, there is a rise in violations in 2004.
In looking at the types of wastewater violations in 2006, 67% of the violations were effluent violations, and 25% were monitoring or reporting violations. For stormwater violations, where most compliance is performance based rather than compliance with strict effluent limitations, 68% of the violations are reporting violations, and 24% are other performance activities (best management, plans, permit conditions).
Regarding enforcement responses to these violations, 43% of the NPDES wastewater violations in 2006 have resulted in an enforcement response. This number is higher for NPDES stormwater dischargers, where 92% of the violations are linked to an enforcement action.
Beginning in 2000, a legislative requirement was put in place to ensure mandatory minimum penalties are assessed for certain NPDES violations. Based on current data, 47% of these penalties have been collected since 2000. This is an estimate based on a report that is still being developed. As mentioned above, we anticipate this report being made available for public use in early September of this year.
The Water Boards continue to work on needed improvements in our data collection and recording, and are committed to public availability of this data. While the data discussed above is only data for the NPDES wastewater and stormwater programs, the Water Board are working on a more comprehensive enforcement report. This report will describe all of the Boards' enforcement programs and accomplishments, and will make recommendations for improvement, set priorities for the coming year, and, identify performance measures by which to measure our progress in achieving the priorities. The Water Boards expect to complete this report January 2008.