Pretreatment Program Purpose

The purpose of the USEPA National Pretreatment Program is to protect POTWs and the environment from the adverse impacts that may occur when “shock loadings” of criteria pollutants or hazardous or toxic wastes are discharged into a POTW system. This is achieved mainly by regulating nondomestic (industrial) users of POTWs that discharge toxic wastes or unusually strong conventional wastes. The Federal Water Pollution Control Act, known as the Clean Water Act (CWA), was passed in 1972 to maintain and improve the quality of ambient waters. Its goal was to eliminate the introduction of pollutants into navigable waters and to achieve fishable and swimmable water quality. The NPDES and its permit programs establish requirements for point source direct dischargers to the water environment. The National Pretreatment Program, a component of NPDES, requires indirect industrial and commercial waste dischargers, or those that discharge wastewater to a POTW, to obtain permits that specify the effluent quality to be obtained by pretreatment or other controls before discharge to POTW systems. Thus, the CWA gives the EPA the authority to establish and enforce pretreatment standards for discharge of industrial wastewaters into POTW facilities.

Pretreatment Specific Goals

1. To prevent the introduction of pollutants into POTWs which will interfere with the operation of the POTW, including interference with its use or disposal of municipal sludge.
2. To prevent the introduction of pollutants into POTWs which pass through the treatment works into the receiving waters or cause upsets to the treatment works.
3. To protect the sludge quality and improve the possibility of recycle and reuse of municipal and industrial wastewaters.
4. To reduce the health and environmental risk of pollution by the discharge of toxic pollutants into the collection system and POTW.