Ohio EPA Revising Water Quality Rules

Ohio EPA is reviewing the rules regarding the implementation of water quality standards.  This review addresses the technical procedures used by the agency to convert water quality standards into watershed allocations that can be used as limits in National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits.  The review also contains dissolved oxygen modeling and Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) procedures.

The following revisions are being considered at this time:

• Consideration of new rule language to provide for the use of alternate statistical techniques to determine background water quality if appropriate.
• Reviewing the intake credit provisions for relevancy.
• Clarifying dissolved oxygen modeling to take into consideration capabilities of current models.
• Update requirements for non-conservative parameters.

Comments are due June 27, 2016.  Contact OMA’s Rob Brundrett for more information.