### MEMORANDUM

TO: Record

FROM: Lisa Biddle, U.S. EPA, Office of Water (OW)

DATE: March 27 , 2015

SUBJECT: Summary of EPA

- State Pilot on Improving Regulatory

Implementation (DCN SGE00762 )

EPA is proposing pretreatment standards for discharges from onshore unconventional oil and gas (UOG) extraction facilities to municipal wastewater treatment plants (also referred to as publicly owned treatment works or POTWs). The proposed rule would add pretreatment standards to the onshore subcategory of the Oil and Gas Extraction Point Source Category (40 CFR part 435). Si nce announcing initiation of this effluent limitations guidelines and standards (ELGs) rulemaking activity, EPA has actively reached out to interested stakeholders to solicit input from well operators, industry trade associations, interested regulatory aut horities, technology vendors, and environmental groups. Stakeholder involvement in the regulatory development process is

essential to the success of this effort.

As part of stakeholder engagement efforts for this ELG, EPA initiated an EPA

State Implement ation Pilot workgroup with the goal of improving regulatory implementation. EPA participants included staff developing the pretreatment standards

and staff from the Office of Policy. T he Environmental Council of States (ECOS), and

the Association of Clean Water Administrators (ACWA) identified the state representatives and the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission (IOGCC) also added a state representative after the workgroup had convened. State participation varied between the calls and included repres entative from various oil and gas producing states such as Wyoming, Colorado, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and West Virginia.

EPA convened five EPA

- State ELG pilot workgroup meetings as follows:

 OW hosted a “kick

- off” conference call with s tate participan ts to discuss the pretreatment standard generally, goals and expectations of EPA and the state representatives, etc

.

 OW hosted a conference call to provide background on the ELG development process: “ELGs 101”

 OW hosted a conference call to discuss best available and innovative approaches to address the discharges from unconventional oil and gas extraction facilities, and to solicit information from the states generally.

 OW hosted a conference call to describe its data collection activities, the prelimina ry results of its analyses, and its preliminary thoughts on regulatory approaches for the rulemaking. In addition to sharing information, OW wanted to hear from the participants on any additional data or information that mightMemorandum

March 27 , 2015 Page 2 support or alter its prelimin ary results. OW also solicited feedback on possible regulatory approaches. EPA shared that based on the information collected to date, it could not identify any existing discharges from UOG extraction facilities

to POTWs. Several states were able to confi rm that such discharges never existed in their states, or in a few cases, ha d been discontinued (e.g., West Virginia).

 OW hosted a conference call to update the participants on the status of the rulemaking and its likely proposed regulatory approach. OW a lso discussed a separate but related activity: the Centralized Waste Treatment (CWT) ELGs Study. OW described the scope of the study, its data collection process, and solicited information about oil and gas CWT facilities in the s tates, their discharge

s tatus, and how such facilities are currently regulated.