Please comment on EPA’s proposed General Permit. New comment deadline is midnight on Fri., March 11, 2011.

On Nov. 4,  2010, EPA released for public comment a proposed NPDES General Permit for owners of Small Municipal Separate Storm Sewer Systems (MS4s) in the “Interstate, Merrimack and South Coastal Watersheds” of Massachusetts, an area that encompasses more than 63 Massachusetts communities, including most towns on Cape Cod.  To determine if your river, lake, town or estuary is covered by this draft permit, look at the MS4 Map and Appendix C of the permit.  Once final, this permit, along with the proposed North Coastal Watershed permit, will significantly improve stormwater treatment and management in Massachusetts.

How you can help:

1) Submit a letter supporting the permit and ask friends and members of your organization to do the same. Letters can be very short! A sample membership alert and sample comment letter are provided below.   Written comments should be e-mailed to Kate Renahan at Renahan.Kate@epa.gov, or sent via postal mail to Kate Renahan, U.S. EPA-Region 1, Office of the Regional Administrator, 5 Post Office Square-Suite 100, Mail Code-ORA01-1, Boston, MA 02109-3912.  Comments should also be e-mailed to Ann Lowery Ann.Lowery@State.MA.US, or sent via postal mail to Ann Lowery, Deputy Assistant Commissioner, MA Department of Environmental Protection, One Winter Street, Boston, MA 02108.  EPA must receive written comments on the draft permit by midnight on Fri., March 11, 2011.

• Sample Action Alert (for organizations to send to their members)
• Sample MS4 Comment letter (for organizations and individuals)

2) Testify in person at the Wed., March 9, 2011 public hearing at 11:00am at the Leominster Public Library, 30 West Street, Leominster, MA 01453. (The hearing is preceded by a public meeting on the proposed permit from 10-11am at the same location.)

• Sample Testimony

3) Submit written comments and testify at rescheduled hearing (sometime in Feb. or March).

To learn about the proposed General Permit, we recommend that you read the EPA Fact Sheet on Phase II Stormwater (MS4) Permit Program (3 pages), EPA’s Summary of changes from the MA & NH 2003 stormwater permits to the current draft (2010) stormwater permits (5 pages), and one of the Reports submitted by a municipality you are familiar with in EPA’s 2003 Permit Archives (about 10 pages).  This may sound like a lot of material, but the proposed permit is 51 pages long, not including appendices! It is available on EPA’s website at  Interstate, Merrimack and South Coastal Draft Permit. EPA staff will present an overview of the proposed permit and answer questions about it at the final public meeting on March 9, 2011 from 9:30-10:30am in the Leominster Public Library, Community Room.  Note: EPA’s public hearing starts at 11:0am following the public meeting.  EPA accepts testimony at public hearings, but not at public meetings.

*You can also download an EPA presentation on the proposed MS4 permits at  EPA PowerPoint Presentation on MS4 Program in New England.

An important change the EPA should make in the proposed permit (also addressed in the Sample MS4 Comment letter):

Don’t let EPA weaken the development thresholds! The proposed permit is much better for rivers, wetlands, and coastal waters than the  (2003) stormwater permit, and we need to show the EPA it has our strong support. However, the proposed permit is not perfect.

In response to pressure from MA DEP, EPA has weakened an important permit provision included in the proposed General Permit for the North Coastal Watersheds Massachusetts (released to the public in 2/10). That draft permit required new development and redevelopment projects of one or more acres to meet five of DEP’s Stormwater Standards for new and redevelopment.

By contrast, the proposed General Permit for Interstate, Merrimack and South Coastal Watersheds, EPA requires only projects that result in two or more acres of impervious surface to comply with those standards.  Reducing the number of projects that must meet these standards will increase stormwater treatment costs for municipalities and could undermine existing municipal construction and post-construction ordinances required by EPA’s current (2003) stormwater permit. See  MA DEP’s Comments on the North Coastal Permit and the Summary of the differences between the 2003 and 2010 Interstate, Merrimack and South Coastal Permits for more details.

Questions? If you have questions, please contact Sue Beede at susanbeede@massriversalliance.org.

* * *

Additional MS4 background documents for those preparing detailed comments:  EPA’s proposed General Permit for the Interstate, Merrimack and South Coastal Watersheds is nearly the same as the proposed General Permit for North Coastal Watersheds in Massachusetts, which EPA released for public comment in February 2010, so you can also use comments submitted on the North Coastal Permit in March 2010 as a reference.  EPA posted most of  the comments it received on this permit at Massachusetts North Coastal Small MS4 Comments.  Below are some of the comments submitted by environmental groups: