21918 Federal Register / Vol. 79, No. 75 / Friday, April 18, 2014 / Notices 

EIS No. 20140118, Draft Supplement, 

USN, GU, Guam and Commonwealth 

of the Northern Mariana Islands 

Military Relocation (2012 Roadmap 

Adjustments), Comment Period Ends: 

06/16/2014, Contact: CDR Curtis 

Duncan 703–602–3825. 

EIS No. 20140119, Final EIS, USCG, FL, 

Proposed New Bridge across the 

Manatee River, Review Period Ends: 

05/19/2014, Contact: Randall Overton 

305–415–6736. 

EIS No. 20140120, Draft EIS, USACE, 

CA, Delta Islands and Levees 

Feasibility Study, Comment Period 

Ends: 06/02/2014, Contact: Brad 

Johnson 916–557–7812. 

EIS No. 20140121, Draft EIS, DOE, HI, 

PROGRAMMATIC—Hawaii Clean 

Energy, Comment Period Ends: 07/17/ 

2014, Contact: Dr. Jane Summerson 

505–845–4091. 

EIS No. 20140122, Draft EIS, USFS, MT, 

Greater Red Lodge Area Vegetation 

and Habitat Management Project, 

Comment Period Ends: 06/02/2014, 

Contact: Amy Waring 406–255–1451. 

EIS No. 20140123, Final EIS, BIA, CA, 

Los Coyotes Band of Cahuilla and 

Cupeno Indians Fee-To-Trust and 

Casino-Hotel Project, Review Period 

Ends: 05/19/2014, Contact: John 

Rydzik 916–978–6051. 

EIS No. 20140124, Final EIS, USACE, 

CA, Westbrook Project, Review Period 

Ends: 05/19/2014, Contact: Kathy 

Norton 916–557–5260. 

Amended Notices 

EIS No. 20140069, Draft EIS, USFS, MT, 

Divide Travel Plan, Helena National 

Forest, Comment Period Ends: 06/12/ 

2014, Contact: Heather DeGeest 406– 

449–5201. 

Revision to the FR Notice Published 

03/14/2014; Extending Comment Period 

from 04/28/2014 to 06/12/2014. 

Dated: April 15, 2014. 

Cliff Rader, 

Director, NEPA Compliance Division, Office 

of Federal Activities. 

[FR Doc. 2014–08890 Filed 4–17–14; 8:45 am] 

BILLING CODE 6560–50–P 

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION 

AGENCY 

[FRL–9909–75–OW] 

Stakeholder Input; Experts Forum on 

Public Health Impacts of Blending at 

Publicly Owned Treatment Plants 

AGENCY: Environmental Protection 

Agency (EPA). 

ACTION: Notice. 

SUMMARY: The Environmental Protection 

Agency is announcing plans to hold a 

forum of public health experts in June 

2014 to discuss the public health 

implications of discharges of ‘blended’ 

effluent from publicly owned treatment 

works (POTWs) served by separate 

sanitary sewers into waterways. The 

discussion will include public health 

implications of such discharges. 

Today’s notice asks for 

recommendations of public health 

experts who would be interested and 

qualified to participate in the forum. In 

addition, today’s notice seeks 

recommendations of wastewater 

treatment plant design and operation 

experts to serve as advisors to the public 

health forum participants. Today’s 

notice also provides the public with an 

opportunity to submit data regarding the 

performance of municipal wastewater 

treatment plants during wet weather 

conditions. 

Blending is a practice used by some 

POTWs to manage wastewater when 

flows to the plant exceed the capacity of 

the secondary treatment units, which 

happens most often during wet weather 

conditions. POTWs engaged in the 

practice of blending divert excess flow 

around secondary treatment units and 

subsequently blend the diverted flows 

to the portion of flow that received 

secondary treatment. In some cases the 

diverted flows receive some additional 

treatment before blending. The Agency 

is interested in evaluating the public 

health implications of different blending 

scenarios, including scenarios where the 

diverted flow is subject to supplemental 

physical/chemical treatment prior to 

blending and where the diverted flows 

do not receive any additional treatment 

prior to blending. 

The Agency is undertaking this 

outreach to help advance the Clean 

Water Act (CWA) objective to restore 

and maintain the chemical, physical 

and biological integrity of the nation’s 

waters (CWA, Section 101(a)). 

DATES: Suggestions on experts should be 

made on or before May 4, 2014. Other 

technical information requested in this 

notice should be provided on or before 

May 19, 2014. We expect to hold the 

public health forum during June of 

2014. 

ADDRESSES: Submit your 

recommendations for experts or other 

input by one of the following methods: 

• Email to weiss.kevin@epa.gov. 

• Mail: Kevin Weiss, Water Permits 

Division, U.S. Environmental Protection 

Agency, Room 7421J EPA East, 1200 

Pennsylvania Avenue NW., Washington, 

DC 20460. 

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: EPA 

will post the date and location of the 

public health experts’ forum at: 

www.epa.gov/npdes/peakflowsforum. 

For further information about this 

notice, contact Kevin Weiss, EPA 

Headquarters, Office of Water, Office of 

Wastewater Management at tel.: 202– 

564–0742 or email: weiss.kevin@

epa.gov. 

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: 

I. Background 

Wastewater collection systems collect 

wastewater from homes and other 

buildings and convey it to wastewater 

treatment plants for proper treatment 

and disposal. The collection and proper 

treatment of municipal wastewater is 

vital to the public health in our cities 

and towns and to the viability of our 

receiving waters. 

During and immediately after wet 

weather events, flows to wastewater 

collection systems and to treatment 

facilities typically increase. Significant 

flow increases in a wastewater 

collection system can cause overflows of 

untreated wastewater and sewage 

backups into buildings. For some 

municipalities, an important component 

of their strategy to reduce collection 

system overflows and backups into 

buildings is to increase the conveyance 

of wet weather flows to a treatment 

plant. Significant increases in flow at 

the treatment facility can cause 

operational challenges, especially for 

biological-based secondary treatment 

units. Activated sludge systems are 

particularly vulnerable to high volume 

peak flows. Peak flows that approach or 

exceed design capacity of an activated 

sludge unit can shift the solids 

inventory from the aeration basin to the 

clarifier(s), and can result in excessive 

solids losses from the clarifier(s). If a 

clarifier experiences excessive loss of 

solids, treatment efficiencies can be 

lowered for weeks or months until the 

biological mass in the aeration basins is 

reestablished. In addition to these 

hydraulic concerns, wastewater 

associated with peak flows may have 

low concentrations of oxygendemanding pollutants, which can also 

decrease treatment efficiencies. 

Biological nutrient removal processes 

typically have an increased sensitivity 

to the hydraulic and loading 

fluctuations associated with wet 

weather flows. 

Design and operational options that 

are routinely employed to maintain the 

effective capacity of biological-based 

secondary treatment units include: 

• Providing alternative feed patterns 

in the aeration basin(s); 

• Increasing the returned activated 

sludge rate relative to those needed for 

steady flow; 

mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with NOTICES

Federal Register / Vol. 79, No. 75 / Friday, April 18, 2014 / Notices 21919 

• Increasing the size of secondary 

clarifiers; and 

• Damping peak flows to biologicalbased secondary units by providing flow 

equalization (i.e. storage) prior to the 

biological-based secondary unit either at 

the plant or before flows get to the plant. 

These options may temporarily 

decrease treatment efficiencies for the 

biological-based secondary treatment 

units and may have limited 

applicability to biological nutrient 

removal processes. As a result, there are 

limitations on the variation in flow 

volumes and influent strength that 

biological-based secondary treatment 

units can accommodate. 

Many POTW treatment plants have 

been designed with primary treatment 

capacity that is significantly greater than 

the biological-based secondary 

treatment capacity. These plants 

typically provide screening and primary 

clarification of all flows entering the 

plant. In order to protect biologicalbased secondary treatment units during 

wet weather events, flows that exceed 

the capacity of the biological-based 

secondary treatment units are diverted 

around the biological-based secondary 

treatment units after they receive 

primary treatment. At some treatment 

facilities diverted flows are disinfected 

and discharged directly to a surface 

water from a separate outfall. Other 

facilities blend the diverted flows with 

flows that receive biological-based 

secondary treatment and discharge the 

combined flow after it has been 

disinfected. Some facilities provide 

some additional treatment of the 

diverted flows while other facilities 

provide no additional treatment, other 

than disinfection. 

Operators of treatment facilities have 

several design and operational options 

that can be used to increase pollutant 

removals during high flow conditions, 

including: 

• Adding chemicals to the primary 

treatment process that increase solids 

removals; 

• Providing additional primary 

treatment capacity, thereby lowering 

overflow rates in the facility’s primary 

treatment units; 

• Providing structural changes to 

primary treatment units, such as the 

installation of lamella settlers; 

• Providing supplemental side stream 

physical/chemical treatment units, such 

as high rate clarification systems or fine 

screen systems, to provide supplemental 

treatment to flows that are diverted 

around biological-based secondary 

treatment units. 

EPA is particularly interested in the 

relative risks associated with pathogens, 

sediments, nutrients, pharmaceuticals, 

toxics and other contaminants that may 

be discharged under blending scenarios. 

EPA is seeking nominations of public 

health experts to participate at a forum 

to discuss these issues. The experts 

should be nationally recognized in the 

fields of evaluating the risks associated 

with various levels of water quality and/ 

or of effluent from wastewater treatment 

plants. EPA, in consultation with key 

stakeholders, will identify wastewater 

treatment plant design and operation 

experts to serve as advisors to the public 

health forum participants. EPA is 

soliciting nominations for these experts 

as part of this Federal Register notice. 

After EPA selects the participants it 

will provide the participants with more 

detailed information to read prior to the 

forum and will provide specific 

questions on which participants will be 

asked to provide input. 

II. Purpose of Public Health Experts’ 

Forum 

The purpose of this forum is to enlist 

public health experts from federal 

agencies, local health departments and 

academia in an effort to ensure that EPA 

has appropriate health-based 

information associated with different 

engineering options available to address 

wet weather blending at POTWs served 

by separate sanitary sewers. EPA does 

not intend that this meeting be a forum 

for debating the application of the 

Agency’s bypass regulation at 40 CFR 

122.41(m) going forward. Rather, this 

forum is solely concerned with the 

potential public health impacts of 

blended discharges from POTWs. 

Further, it is not EPA’s objective 

during the forum to establish consensus 

among the parties or to obtain a 

collective set of recommendations. 

Rather, it is EPA’s intention to obtain 

individual input from knowledgeable 

experts so that the Agency can better 

understand the differences and 

commonalities among the individual 

recommendations. In this regard, EPA 

has determined that this workshop is 

not subject to the requirements of the 

Federal Advisory Committee Act. 5 

U.S.C. Appendix 2. 

III. Additional Information on the 

Forum 

EPA plans to schedule the forum in 

June, 2014. Information regarding the 

date and location of the forum, along 

with other logistics information, when 

available, will be posted at 

www.epa.gov/npdes/peakflowsforum. 

Members of the public are invited to 

participate as observers in the forum as 

capacity allows. Additional details 

concerning the participation of 

observers will be posted on this Web 

page when the location and time of the 

forum is set. 

Authority: Clean Water Act, 33 U.S.C. 1251 

et seq. 

Dated: April 9, 2014. 

Andrew D. Sawyers, 

Director, Office of Wastewater Management. 

[FR Doc. 2014–08925 Filed 4–17–14; 8:45 am] 

BILLING CODE 6560–50–P 

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION 

AGENCY 

[EPA–HQ–OPP–2014–0009; FRL–9908–54] 

Pesticide Products; Registration 

Applications for New Active 

Ingredients 

AGENCY: Environmental Protection 

Agency (EPA). 

ACTION: Notice. 

SUMMARY: EPA has received several 

applications to register pesticide 

products containing active ingredients 

not included in any currently registered 

pesticide products. Pursuant to the 

Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and 

Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), EPA is hereby 

providing notice of receipt and 

opportunity to comment on these 

applications. 

DATES: Comments must be received on 

or before May 19, 2014. 

ADDRESSES: Submit your comments, 

identified by docket identification (ID) 

number and the EPA File Symbol of 

interest as shown in the body of this 

document, by one of the following 

methods: 

• Federal eRulemaking Portal: http:// 

www.regulations.gov. Follow the online 

instructions for submitting comments. 

Do not submit electronically any 

information you consider to be 

Confidential Business Information (CBI) 

or other information whose disclosure is 

restricted by statute. 

• Mail: OPP Docket, Environmental 

Protection Agency Docket Center 

(EPA/DC), (28221T), 1200 Pennsylvania 

Ave. NW., Washington, DC 20460–0001. 

• Hand Delivery: To make special 

arrangements for hand delivery or 

delivery of boxed information, please 

follow the instructions at http://

www.epa.gov/dockets/contacts.html. 

Additional instructions on 

commenting or visiting the docket, 

along with more information about 

dockets generally, is available at 

http://www.epa.gov/dockets. 

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: 

Robert McNally, Biopesticides and 

Pollution Prevention Division (BPPD) 

(7511P), email address: 

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