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Expanding discharge options would be risky<\/a> though, given all we are still learning<\/a> about the chemicals in wastewater, potential toxicity, treatability and potential health risks.<\/p>\n The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will soon release a study of discharge practices<\/a>, including the pros and cons of current regulations. States like New Mexico<\/a> and Oklahoma<\/a> are also working with EPA to better define their own authorities and options.<\/p>\n As states and EPA consider what a future for produced water discharge might look like\u2013 it\u2019s important to know what the standards are today.<\/p>\nTrump's EPA may weaken restrictions on disposal of oilfield wastewater -- here's what you need to know <\/a><\/span>Share on X<\/a><\/span>\n What do the current rules say?<\/strong><\/p>\n The Clean Water Act requires a permit to discharge pollutants into waterways. The key permitting program — the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System<\/a> (NPDES) — looks at both the capabilities of treatment technologies as well as water quality objectives in order to determine what kind of permit is appropriate.<\/p>\n Existing options for wastewater discharge<\/strong><\/p>\n The technology aspect, also known as \u201ceffluent limitation guidelines\u201d (ELGs) can vary from industry to industry based on the ability of treatment technologies to remove constituents of concern to acceptable levels. EPA\u2019s study of the technologies and pollutants for an industry results in an ELG that sets the national baseline for discharge permits.<\/p>\n The main ELG for oil and gas facilities sets a baseline of \u201cno discharge\u201d of pollutants into navigable waters of the United States. In 2016, the EPA went further, and prohibited companies who operate \u201cunconventional wells\u201d from disposing of their wastewater into municipal treatment systems, known as Publicly Owned Treatment Works (POTW), since these city-owned facilities are not designed to handle this type of industrial waste.<\/p>\n However, there are some noteworthy exceptions to this rule:<\/p>\n Outside of this baseline rule for discharges directly from an oil and gas wellsite, there is a second optional route. Operators may also transport their wastewater to what EPA calls a Centralized Waste Treatment Facility (CWT). These facilities can accept and treat industrial wastes that include metals, oil, organics and blended waste streams. However, while the guidelines for these facilities may be more robust than municipal treatment plants, they still weren\u2019t created with the oil and gas industry\u2019s wastewater in mind, meaning that the baseline rules may not currently offer the protections needed to ensure pollutants of concern from oil and gas wastewater don\u2019t reach rivers and streams. (You can learn more about CWTs and the oil and gas industry from EPA\u2019s detailed 2018 study<\/a> of CWT\u2019s accepting this type of waste, including their own concerns.)<\/p>\n How to define \u201cclean\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n The ELG\u2019s are not the final word, though. As a complement to the technology standards, states also have the power to determine how clean they want their water to be by setting their own water quality based guidelines. This allows states to monitor and limit particular pollutants of concern to protect certain qualities or uses of their water bodies. When permit writers are developing a final NPDES permit, they will consider both the baseline technology standard and the water quality standard that applies to the receiving water body and develop requirements based on both standards.<\/p>\n This is important to keep in mind. Even if EPA were to modify the technology standards, states have an opportunity to chime in to address any risks they may see for their water bodies with modifications to their water quality standards.<\/p>\n What might change?<\/strong> That\u2019s why it\u2019s so important to keep an eye on what EPA might do to either strengthen or weaken standards for industry\u2019s wastewater. It\u2019s hard to predict what EPA might do, they may:<\/p>\n\n
\nClean water protections are extremely complicated. And as we learn more about the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing, as well as the pollutants that may naturally come up from underground, we are also learning our existing standards may be ill suited for the massive volume of chemical-laden wastewater generated in the oilfields.<\/p>\n