Beneath the streets of every city and many smaller communities, a system of sewers and pumps conveys wastewater away from homes, factories, offices, and stores. This disposed water, which may contain a variety of domestic, commercial, and industrial wastes, flows through the sewers to a wastewater treatment plant. There, pollutants are removed and the cleansed water is discharged into an adjacent water body, such as a river, bay, lake or ocean.
Industrial plants are only one of many sources of wastewater discharged into municipal sewers.
These wastes can pose serious hazards. Because sewage collection and treatment systems have not been designed to treat them, industrial wastes can damage the sewers and interfere with the operation of treatment plants, or pass through the systems untreated, resulting in contamination of nearby water bodies and increase the cost and environmental risks of sludge treatment and disposal. The undesirable effects resulting from the discharge of industrial wastewater into municipal sewers can be prevented. Industrial plants, using proven pollution control techniques, can remove pollutants from their wastewaters before discharging them into the municipal sewage treatment system. The national pretreatment standards consist of two sets of rules, prohibited discharge standards and categorical pretreatment standards.