SITE INFORMATION AND CORRESPONDENCE 1980-1999

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0 • EXHIBIT 3 Summary of Major Legal, Policy and Regulatory Issues 0 Associated with Draft WDR for the City of Lodi February 24, 1999 The City of Lodi submits this summary of legal, policy and regulatory issues as a supplement to the City's detailed comments regarding the draft Waste Discharge Requirements for the White Slough Water Pollution Control Facility. 1) The Proposed Effluent Limitations for Chlorine, Cyanide, Lead and Zinc Are Not Based Upon Lawfully Adopted Water Quality Objectives. Numeric effluent limitations for chlorine, cyanide, lead and zinc have been included in the draft permit based upon a finding that the discharge has the reasonable potential to cause or contribute to a violation of the Basin Plan narrative toxicity objective. (Finding No. 18.) The limitations are based upon U.S. EPA ambient water quality criteria. However, those criteria were developed for consideration by the States in adopting water quality objectives. USEPA guidelines contain the following statement concerning the use of the national criteria: Criteria produced by these Guidelines are intended to be useful for developing water quality standards, mixing zone standards, effluent limitations, etc. The development of such standards and limitations, however, might have to take into account such additional factors as social, legal, economic, and hydrological considerations, the environmental and analytical chemistry of the material, the considerations, the environmental and analytical chemistry of the material, the extrapolation from laboratory data to field situations, and relationships between species for which data are available and species in the body of water of concern. See Charles E. Stephan, et al., Guidelines for Deriving Numerical National Water Quality Criteria for the Protection of Aquatic Organisms and Their Uses (1985). The USEPA ambient water quality criteria have not been formally adopted as water quality objectives by the State Board or the Regional Board and, therefore, do not constitute water quality objectives applicable to Dredger Cut. The draft permit findings state that the proposed effluent limitation is based on the narrative toxicity objective contained in the Basin Plan. However, the use of the USEPA ambient criteria to determine compliance with the narrative toxicity objective is inconsistent with the express language of the Basin Plan. The Basin Plan states as follows: Compliance with this objective will be determined by analyses of indicator organisms, species diversity, population density, growth anomalies, and biotoxicity tests of appropriate duration or other methods as specified by the Regional Water Quality Control Board (emphasis added). The narrative toxicity objective mentions numerical criteria developed by USEPA only in the context of other material, relevant information, criteria and guidelines that the Regional Board will also consider in determining compliance with the narrative objective.