Environmental Progress - Winter 2000

"Cleaner, cheaper, smarter..."
Goal of Progect XL

Project promotes excellence, leadership toward better methods, results

Bill Seith, depty director of the IEPA, signs the Project XL agreement. Terrence J. O'Brien, president of the board of the MWRDGC, looks on.

In recent years, there have been many pilot projects that encourage innovative thinking to find better ways of protecting the environment. One of these initiatives under national implementation is Project XL, being sponsored by U.S. EPA. Project XL stands for "eXcellence and Leadership." Project XL encourages testing of cleaner, cheaper and smarter ways to attain environmental results that are superior to those achieved under current regulations and policies. It is important that each project tests new ideas with the potential for wide application and broad environmental benefits.

One of the approved XL projects now being implemented under this initiative in Illinois is sponsored by the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago. This is a Publicly-Owned Treatment Works (POTW) that treats wastewater from domestic, commercial and industrial sources in Chicago and numerous surrounding communities. A signing ceremony was held on August 30, 2000, at the District headquarters in Chicago. Bill Seith, IEPA Deputy Director, signed the agreement for the Illinois EPA.

Goal is better results more easily

Many POTWs with approved pretreatment programs have mastered the administrative and procedural requirements of the national pretreatment regulations. Several POTWs wanted the opportunity to implement local pretreatment programs with effectiveness measured against environmental results rather than strict adherence to programmatic and administrative measures. The MWRDGC was one of five POTWs to apply for participation under this XL project. Under this specific experiment, a participating POTW will be allowed to test new ideas that focus resources on activities that they believe would provide greater environmental benefits than are achieved by complying with current regulatory requirements. The approach being tested will indicate if a POTW can produce superior environmental performance by reducing administrative requirements and oversight for good performers, and reinvesting resources in alternative, non-regulatory environmental improvement activities.

Under the MWRDGC's final project agreement, the district proposes to investigate ways to increase the effectiveness of the National Pretreatment Program to obtain greater environmental benefit. There are four interrelated components in the district's project:

1. ) Obtain flexibility from required inspections and sampling for small Categorical Industrial Users (CIUs) with good compliance records. This will allow the district to reallocate resources from these requirements to other activities with greater potential for environmental benefit. Regulatory flexibility will be granted to the district to allow self-monitoring and reporting to be done once a year instead of twice for qualifying Categorical Industrial Users. The district will be required to inspect and sample these CIUs once every two years instead of annually.
   
   
2. ) Revise the district's Pretreatment Program Annual Report to include information on environmental performance that is not currently required, and only information on Significant Industrial Users found in significant noncompliance during the report year.
   
   
3. ) Create strategic performance partnerships with industry sector leaders to develop, test and implement alternative measurement systems that demonstrate environmental performance.
   
   
4. ) Develop toxic reduction action plans to address pollutants of concern that are not managed under the current regulatory system.

According to Rich Sustich, Assistant Director of Research and Development at the MWRDGC, "This project has the potential to dramatically change the National Pretreatment Program. These four project components, when operated together, can transform Pretreatment Programs from their current rigid, programmatic and reactionary focus to a flexible, performance-based and anticipatory focus that will allow POTWs to efficiently and effectively identify and address emerging environmental issues without needing to wait for the regulatory system to catch up."

In order to participate in Project XL the sponsor of a specific project must assemble a stakeholders group. Under the district's project, several organizations were invited to participate in a stakeholder group with the district, U.S. EPA and the Illinois EPA to develop the project. Both the U.S. EPA and Illinois EPA are developing rule changes so the project can be implemented and testing of the innovative approaches can begin in the near future.