North Carolina Water Quality Permitting for Composters

July 11, 2012 conference call

Your mission: The Maryland Composting Workgroup is charged to recommend statute, rule, or policy revisions to encourage the development of composting.

My mission today: Provide an overview of North Carolina’s experiences in revising our water quality permitting program for the composting industry.

Remaining slides:• What are we NOT talking about?• What’s the potential water quality problem?• Our public process: COSAG• Technical and regulatory principles.• Outcomes.

Maryland Conference Call, July 2012

What are we NOT talking about?

Mulch-only sitesStorm debris-only sitesOn-farm compostingAnimal mortality compostingBack-yard compostingRetail outlets for compostDOT use of compost on cut and fill slopesHome owner use of compostSmall Type 1 yard waste facilities (2 acres, 6000cy/q)

SWANA, April 2011

What’s the potential water quality problem?

Selected pollutant concentrations in site runoff from various composting sites:

North Carolina Composting Council, On-Farm Composting, October 2010SWANA, April 2011

Pollutant measure

Reported range for compost sites

Raw sewage range

Stormwater permit benchmark

COD 98 - 4400 mg/L 110 – 400 mg/L 120 mg/L

TSS 2 – 5000 mg/L 100 – 350 mg/L 100 mg/L

Fecal coliform bacteria

200-24,000,000Count/100 ml

1,000,000 -10,000,000

1000 Count/100 ml

Ammonia 0.1 – 1600 mg/L 12 – 50 mg/L 5.6/7.2 mg/L(Trout/non-trout)

Phosphorus 0.7 – 250 mg/L 4 – 15 mg/L 2 mg/L

Our public process: The COSAGDecember 2009 – September 2010

Session Law 2009-322, signed by Gov. Perdue 7/2009.A steering committee self-formed to assist NCDENR.Steering committee interviewed COSAG members for an understanding of the issues, and desired endpoints.Steering committee hired a paid facilitator to manage the process.Eight public COSAG meetings; probably twice that many steering committee meetings; several Monitoring committee meetings. 20 to 30 attendees at every COSAG meeting.The COSAG input to DENR took the form of 20 proposals as to the implementation of revised water quality permitting procedures. Unanimous approval of the proposals was obtained in the working meetings.DENR’s vote was in every case part of the unanimous consent.

SWANA, April 2011

Technical and regulatory principles

• Try to revise our water quality program without new law or rules.

• Stormwater vs. wastewater: NPDES federal definitions.

• Acknowledge that existing facilities may have difficulties in compliance that new facilities will not.

• Municipal operations vs. private sector operations. Yard waste facilities vs. other types of composters.

• Consider the financial impact on selected subsets of the industry.

•

Maryland Conference Call, July 2012

Outcomes

• Unclear if we have accomplished revisions to the water quality permitting of composters without new legislation.

• As recommended by the COSAG, a new combined wastewater and stormwater permit is available.

• As recommended by the COSAG, our program allows existing facilities an extended time for compliance, but requires new facilities to be compliant on day one.

• As recommended by the COSAG, DWQ has changed our implementation of state regulations on non-discharge systems at compost facilities.

• As recommended by the COSAG, ~120 small Type 1 yard waste facilities are excused from DWQ regulation for the first permit cycle, and perhaps beyond.

• Permit applications are rolling in, more or less in accordance with the publicized due date of July 1, 2012.

Maryland Conference Call, July 2012

Who can help me? Contact DWQ Stormwater Permitting Unit in Raleigh. (Ken Pickle: ken.pickle@ncdenr.gov, (919) 807-6376)

Contact DWM Solid Waste Composting and Land Application Branch in Raleigh. (Michael Scott: michael.scott@ncdenr.gov, (919) 508-8508)

Check the DWQ and DWM websites.

Check the COSAG website at: http://portal.ncdenr.org/web/mw/sw/stakeholder

END

SWANA, April 2011

DWQ Report #3 to the

Compost Operation Stakeholder Advisory Group

Compost runoff characterization dataFebruary 17, 2010

Interim period water permitting

• DWQ must issue interim permit extensions to: Composters applying for renewal of their DWQ permit; provided that there have been no significant changes to the DWM permitted quantities, feedstocks, and composting methods. <Exception for: water quality violations> No instances so far since July 2009. Still none.

• DWQ must establish appropriate permit coverage on a case-by-case basis for: Composters renewing DWM permits, but without any DWQ water quality permit. DWQ has advised the majority of sites to wait for this process to conclude.

• DWQ must address new water quality permit applications on a case-by-case basis for: Composters applying for the first time to DWM and DWQ. No applications for water permits received so far. Still none.

COSAG, December 2009/September 2010; SWANA, April 2011

Part V – COSAG Work Products – page 1 of 6

The early first product was the unanimous agreement in principle to revise the water quality permitting program via administrative, i.e. staff, actions rather than via new rules or new legislation, if at all possible.

Twenty ‘proposals’ that received unanimous approval in the final wording form. I’ve grouped them in the slides that follow by related and similar ideas.

Remember, according to the Session Law, the intent of the stakeholder group, COSAG, was to provide input to NCDENR as to how we should implement our revised water quality permitting program.

SWANA, April 2011