Significant Non-Compliance

Federal general pretreatment program regulations require the Charles River Pollution Control District to publish annually a list of all industrial users that violate any of the District's Significant Non-Compliance Criteria. According to 40 CFR 403.8 (f) (2) (vii), significant noncompliance is a violation(s) which meets one or more of the following criteria:

  1. Chronic violations of wastewater discharge limits, defined here as those in which sixty-six percent or more of all of the measurements taken during a six-month period exceed (by any magnitude) the daily maximum limit or the average limit for the same pollutant parameter;
  2. Technical Review Criteria (TRC) violations, defined here as those in which thirty-three percent or more of all of the measurements for each pollutant parameter taken during a 6-month period equal or exceed the product of the daily maximum limit or the average limit multiplied by the applicable TRC;
  3. Any other violations of a pretreatment effluent limit (daily maximum or longer-term average) that the District determines has caused, alone or in combination with other discharges, interference or pass through, (including endangering the health of the Publicly Owned Treatment Works (POTW) personnel or general public);
  4. Any discharge of a pollutant that has caused imminent endangerment to human health, welfare or the environment or has resulted in the POTW's exercise of its emergency authority;
  5. Failure to meet, within 90 days after the schedule date, a compliance schedule milestone contained in a local control mechanism or enforcement order for starting construction, completing construction, or attaining final compliance;
  6. Failure to provide, within 45 days after the due date, required reports such as baseline monitoring reports, 90 day compliance reports, periodic self-monitoring reports, and reports on compliance with compliance schedules;
  7. Failure to accurately report noncompliance;
  8. Any other violation or group of violations which the District determines will adversely affect the operation of implementation of the local pretreatment program.

The EPA requires that the District review each user file every three (3) months for Significant Non-Compliance (SNC) criteria A and B, evaluating the user's previous six (6) month compliance status. If an industrial user exceeds the compliance percentages specified in the SNC Criteria A or B, even for just one (1) quarterly evaluation period, the user is in SNC and must be listed in the newspaper. It is important for an industrial user to sample early and often during each quarterly data review period, especially for any parameters for which the industry may periodically experience exceedances above the discharge limits.

Compliance with criteria A and B is evaluated throughout the year for each quarter. Each evaluation period is six months long and uses data from the current quarter and the previous quarter. For example, the first quarter evaluation period begins in April and continues through September. The second quarter evaluation period starts in July and continues through December. Please refer to the graphic below for an illustration of the evaluation periods. If an IU is found to be in SNC during that evaluation period, then the IU is in SNC for the year and will be published in the Local Newspaper at the end of the Pretreatment Year as a significant violator.

Significant Non-Compliance

The District reviews each user file annually to determine the user's compliance status with EPA criteria C through H. Based upon the review, if an industrial user is found to be in SNC for any of these criteria, then the user must be listed in the newspaper.

Refer to the District’s Enforcement Response Plan for further details.