What are effluent guidelines?
Effluent guidelines are national standards that are developed by EPA on an industry-by-industry basis, and are intended to represent the greatest pollutant reductions that are economically achievable for an industry. To develop these technology-based regulations, EPA first gathers information on the industry’s practices; characteristics of discharges (stormwater flows and pollutants); technologies or practices used to prevent or treat the discharge; and economic characteristics. EPA identifies the best available technology that is economically achievable for that industry and sets regulatory requirements based on the performance of that technology. The effluent guidelines do not require facilities to install the particular technology identified by EPA; however, the regulations do require facilities to achieve the regulatory standards which were developed based on a particular model technology. The standards are then incorporated into National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPD
