New Jersey Administrative Code › Title 7 - ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION › Chapter 14A - NEW JERSEY POLLUTANT DISCHARGE ELIMINATION SYSTEM › Subchapter 3 - DETERMINATION OF PERMIT FEES › Section 7:14A-3.1 - Commercial trip limits and quotas

Current through Register Vol. 56, No. 14, July 15, 2024
(a) Except as
				provided in (j) and (l) below, the general conditions and applicability of the
				fee schedule for NJPDES permittees and applicants are as follows:
1. Except as provided by (k) below, the
				Department shall collect an annual fee for the billing year July 1 to June 30
				from all persons that are issued a NJPDES permit or authorization to discharge
				under a NJPDES general permit or submit a NJPDES permit application or request
				for authorization.
2. The
				Department shall not assess any fee to public schools or religious or
				charitable institutions.
3. All
				NJPDES permittees/applicants that are issued a draft or final NJPDES permit, or
				that are issued an authorization to discharge under a final NJPDES general
				permit, shall submit payment within 30 days of assessment of the fee by the
				Department.
i. Upon receipt of a completed
				application or request for authorization, the Department shall assess the
				minimum fee as set forth in Table III below.
ii. Upon issuance of the final permit or of
				an authorization to discharge under a final NJPDES general permit, the annual
				fee shall be calculated and pro-rated for the period of the fee year remaining.
				The minimum fee already paid shall then be subtracted from the pro-rated
				assessment. In no case, however, will such payment of a pro-rated fee result in
				a fee that is less than the minimum fee for the category of discharge. The
				permittee may request a fee recalculation as provided at (a)6 below, once the
				first required monitoring report has been completed.
4. Payment of all fees shall be made by check
				or money order, payable to "Treasurer, State of New Jersey" and submitted to:
New Jersey Department of the Treasury
Division of Revenue
PO Box 417
Trenton, New Jersey 08625-0417
5. If the permittee/applicant fails to submit
				payment to the Department of the Treasury within 30 days of assessment of the
				fee, the Department may, in its discretion, take one or more of the following
				actions:
i. Return the NJPDES permit
				application or request for authorization to the applicant;
ii. Deny issuance of a final permit or
				authorization under a final general permit;
iii. Revoke a final permit (including
				revocation of a permittee's authorization to discharge under a general permit);
				and/or
iv. Assess penalties
				pursuant to
				N.J.S.A.
				58:10A-10 and
				N.J.A.C.
				7:14-8.
6. If the permittee objects to the
				assessment, the Department shall recalculate a permit fee upon receipt of a
				request from the permittee in writing within 30 days of assessment of the fee.
				The Department shall not recalculate a fee where the permittee has failed to
				submit information in compliance with its NJPDES permit.
i. A permittee may only contest a fee imposed
				pursuant to (k) below based on the following:
(1) The Department has no factual basis to
				sustain the charges assessed in the fee;
(2) The activities for which the fee was
				imposed did not occur;
(3) The
				charges are false or duplicative; or
(4) The charges were not properly incurred
				because they were not associated with the Department's oversight or remediation
				of the case.
ii. A
				permittee may not contest a fee imposed pursuant to (k) below if the challenge
				is based on the following:
(1) An employee's
				hourly salary rate;
(2) The
				Department's salary additive rate, indirect rate, or fringe benefit rate;
				or
(3) Management decisions of the
				Department, including decisions regarding who to assign to a case, how to
				oversee the case or how to allocate resources for case review.
iii. A permittee objecting to a
				fee imposed pursuant to (k) below shall include the following in a request for
				a fee review:
(1) A copy of the
				bill;
(2) Payment of all
				uncontested charges, if not previously paid;
(3) A list of specific fee charges
				contested;
(4) The factual
				questions at issue in each of the contested charges;
(5) The name, mailing address and telephone
				number of the person making the request;
(6) Information supporting the request or
				other written documents relied upon to support the request.
7. The Department, in
				calculating Environmental Impact, shall use information reported by the
				permittee on MRFs for the 12-month period for which data is available on the
				Department's computer. The selected 12-month monitoring period will be
				documented in the Annual NJPDES Fee Schedule Report. Where this information is
				not available, the Department shall use permit limitations, information
				submitted in permit applications, technical reports prepared by the Department
				or submitted by the permittee, or other permits issued by the
				Department.
8. Except as provided
				by (k) below, the Department, upon the revocation of a NJPDES permit, or
				revocation of a NJPDES/SIU permit in accordance with
				N.J.A.C.
				7:14A-21.9, shall upon written request of the
				permittee prorate the fee for the number of days that the facility was in
				operation or was discharging under a valid NJPDES/SIU permit during the billing
				year and return to the permittee the amount that is in excess of the minimum
				annual fee for the specific category of discharge.
9. Except as provided by (k) below, the
				annual fee for all discharges is calculated by applying the formula:
Fee = (Environmental Impact x Rate) + Minimum Fee,
				  where:
i. Environmental Impact is the
				Department's assessment of potential risk of discharge to the environment as
				derived under (c) through (g) below.
ii. Rate is the dollar cost for each weighted
				unit of Environmental Impact. Rate is calculated as follows:
Rate = (Budget-Sum of Minimum Fees)/Total Environmental
				  Impact
(1) Budget is the total budget
				for the category of Discharge.
(2)
				The Sum of Minimum Fees is the total amount of minimum fees to be paid by all
				dischargers in the category of discharge.
(3) Total Environmental Impact is the sum of
				environmental impact for all dischargers in the category.
(4) The budget and the total environmental
				impact shall be adjusted to reflect those facilities, if any, assessed a
				maximum permit fee.
iii.
				The minimum fee is a base cost to which the product of the Environmental Impact
				and the Rate identified under (a)9i and ii above is added. The minimum fee for
				any permit category is calculated by using the following formula and rounding
				to the nearest $ 50.00 increment:
Minimum Fee = Hours x Cost Per Hour/5, where:
Hours = Total hours allocated by the Department on the
				  administration, including permit issuance, inspection and data management, of
				  the permit per facility over a five year period in each category.
Cost Per Hour = Total personnel cost per hour, including
				  fringe benefits and indirect costs.
The minimum fees are set forth in Table III below. For any
				  new or revised category of discharge, the Department shall calculate a minimum
				  fee and shall list it in the Annual NJPDES Fee Schedule Report for public
				  comment under (b) below.
10. The maximum fee to be assessed for any
				category of discharge shall be 10 percent of the budget for the category of
				discharge.
11. If a factual dispute
				involving a fee imposed pursuant to (k) below cannot be resolved informally, a
				permittee may request an adjudicatory hearing on the matter pursuant to
				N.J.A.C.
				7:14A-17.2.