CLF petition would hold commercial polluters accountable

The Conservation Law Foundation and other environmental groups are urging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to treat commercial and institutional property owners the same as municipalities when it comes to pollutants discharged into stormwater.

Christopher Kilian, a senior attorney with the Conservation Law Foundation, explained the EPA petitions during the Nov. 13 meeting of the MMA’s Policy Committee on Energy and the Environment.

The EPA regulates municipal stormwater systems through MS4 permits to deal with pollution that runs off municipal roofs, streets and sidewalks. The Conservation Law Foundation argues that a large proportion of those pollutants are coming from private property owners such as malls, office and retail parks, and paved parking lots.

“Currently, municipalities are held accountable by the EPA for pollution in public systems,” Kilian told the MMA committee. “It’s entirely fair and appropriate to ask someone who is causing a pollution problem to be accountable and to clean up their fair share of the problem.

“The EPA’s current regulations place a burden on municipalities,” he continued, “while not instituting similar regulations on the largest privately owned stormwater pollution sources.”

The petitions – filed for the New England, the mid-Atlantic and Southwest regions of the country – urge the EPA to exercise its authority under the federal Clean Water Act’s Residual Designation Authority to manage runoff from sources in violation of state water quality standards.

Kilian said property owners could face costly EPA mandates to curb phosphorus runoff by replacing asphalt in parking lots with permeable surfaces and installing drain systems that naturally filter pollutants, but he believes that businesses are not now required to do their part.

In Massachusetts, the EPA has proposed regulations as a pilot program in Bellingham, Franklin and Milford that require businesses with at least two or more acres of impervious surface take steps to reduce stormwater run-off as a means of reducing the discharge of phosphorus, the main cause of algae blooms that mar the Charles River each summer.

Reducing phosphorus, according to the EPA, could cost businesses and other private landowners as much as $118,000 per acre, and a 2011 report written by the Horsley Witten Group found that the proposed regulations could cost municipalities, businesses and property owners in Bellingham, Franklin and Milford $180 million over the next 25 years.