Compliance with Impingement Mortality Performance Standard Via Option 7 - Could Biological Sampling be a Feasible Alternative to Technology-Based Compliance?

The Final Rule for implementing §316(b) of the Clean Water Act provides roughly seven options for compliance with the impingement mortality standards. Option 7 allows compliance with the numeric impingement mortality performance standard and requires that a facility achieve a 12-month average of impingement mortality for all lifestages of fish and shellfish of no more than 24 percent, including latent mortality. Although EPA anticipated that few facilities would avail themselves of this option, we suggest that Option 7 may be a less costly option, particularly for estuarine or marine sited facilities where crustaceans and/or hard-bodied species may dominate impingement catches. In this talk, we will examine impingement data collected from marine, estuarine and freshwater settings in Connecticut and determine the feasibility of compliance via Option 7. As the Final Rule stipulates a minimum monthly frequency for biological sampling, we will provide an estimate of the total cost for a monthly sampling program and discuss how this may compare with technology-based compliance options.