Wastewater Treatment Workgroup Conference Call May 7, 2008 Highlights and Action Items • DECISION: The jurisdictions agreed to do a data query and to submit as much information as they are able to on industrial non-significant facilities by June 1st. This will be Phase 1 of the data compilation. Phase 2 will be discussed by the workgroup at a future meeting. o Post conference call: John Kennedy clarified that for Phase 2, the workgroup will form a work plan and get agreement on how much time/effort will be devoted and the methodology to use. • Topics to be discussed at an upcoming workgroup meeting include: o How to select the industrial facilities that are nutrient dischargers o Details on a possible Phase 2 for industrial non-significant facility data collection Handouts • Industrial Non-Significant Plant Data Discussion Items Handout • Industrial Concentration Analysis Based on 2006 • Industrial Concentration Analysis Based on 2000-2006 Minutes • The conference call began at 2:00 pm. Introductions were made and the meeting's agenda was reviewed. • The purpose of this call was to discuss how to account for industrial non- significant facilities. Previously, the workgroup had made the decision to follow up with this discussion after the May 1st deadline for municipal non-significant facilities. • The Bay Program would like to have data for industrial non-significant facilities similar to the data that they received for sewage treatment plants. • The modelers must receive the input decks by June 1st in order for the data to be incorporated into the model calibration. Ning is currently working on the municipal facility input deck. As long as the industrial input deck is completed by early June, it can still be incorporated into the model. • John Kennedy, VADEQ, asked: What will the modeling team do for the watershed model calibration if this data isn't submitted by June 1st? o Ning Zhou answered: The modelers will proceed with the calibration whether or not this data is received. What is in the input deck and what is not in the input deck will be made clear in the documentation. • When the workgroup made the decision to focus on the municipal facilities first, and then the industrial facilities, members indicated that they thought that the industrial facility deadline was going to be extended longer than just four weeks. 1 ------- • Representatives from VA, PA, NY, and MD said that collecting this data would involve a lot of work and that they would not be able to collect all of it by June 1st. • Q: If the data is not submitted by the deadline, how big of an impact will this have on the calibration? o A: Ning didn't think that there would be a very big impact since the load from these facilities is relatively small. • If this model is going to be used in the TMDL process, this emphasizes the need to do this right rather than quickly. • It was suggested that a placeholder ratio be used for the non-significant industrial facilities in the calibration and that this data collection exercise be saved for the TMDL. Ning said that although this data set would likely help improve the model's ability to support load allocation for a TMDL, we do not know at this time how this is going to relate to the TMDL since details on the load allocation have not yet been worked out. • The workgroup needs to decide how to select the industrial facilities that are nutrient dischargers. Ning laid out several options for selecting these facilities: a. By the existing industrial facility list defined by jurisdiction as nutrient dischargers. b. By effluent guideline industrial categories as recommended by Randy Sovic in his message to the workgroup on April 9th. c. By nutrient load equivalent based on the default concentration determined by Step 2. The workgroup said that they could not make a decision on this at this time. They need to look at the data that they have before they can judge which of these options is best. • For the issue of biocides in non-contact cooling water, Ning said that Randy Sovic, WVDEP, suggested that the Bay Program Office begin to gather and review biocides related nutrient information from major power plants in the Bay watershed. Allan Brockenbrough, VADEP, said they prefer to handle this information gathering by themselves for VA facilities. • Since the states indicated that they would not be able to gather all of the requested data on industrial non-significant facilities by June 1st, it was suggested that there be two phases of data collection. In Phase 1, the states would provide the Bay Program Office with as much data as they could by June 1st. They could then submit the rest of the data in Phase 2. • Ning suggested that the documentation include information on what the workgroup plans on submitting in the future for this industrial portion. • Is there a way to prioritize this work? Concentration, load, and flow would all need to be considered. • The workgroup was not prepared to discuss a timeline for Phase 2 at today' s meeting. • DECISION: The jurisdictions agreed to do a data query and to submit as much information as they are able to on industrial non-significant facilities by June 1st. This will be Phase 1 of the data compilation. Phase 2 will be discussed by the workgroup at a future meeting. 2 ------- • Post conference call: John Kennedy clarified that for Phase 2, the workgroup will form a work plan and get agreement on how much time/effort will be devoted and the methodology to use. • The meeting was adjourned at 3:00 pm. Participants Sally Bradley Allan Brockenbrough Art Buehler John Kennedy Marya Levelev Lori Mitzel Ed Reilly John Wetherell Ning Zhou CRC/CBPO VADEQ VADEQ VADEQ MDE PA DEP NY DEC PA DEP VA Tech/CBPO sbradlev@chesapeakebav.net abrockenbrough@deq .Virginia, gov ahbuehl er@deq. vir gini a. gov i mkennedv@deq .Virginia, gov mlevelev@mde. state, md.us lmitzel@state.pa.us exreilly@gw.dec. state, ny. us iwetherell@state.pa.us zhou. ning@epa. gov 3 ------- |