Enforcement and Inspection

Does the New Stormwater MSGP Affect You?

EPA’s new stormwater multisector general permit (MSGP) applies to industrial facilities in all or parts of dozens of U.S. states, territories, and possessions. Make sure you know whether your workplace is affected and what you need to do.

In September, EPA issued a new MSGP requiring an estimated 4,100 industrial facilities in 29 different industrial sectors to implement site-specific stormwater pollution prevention plans (SWPPP)to protect water quality. Facilities are required to install control measures that meet established technology- and water-quality-based effluent limits, and they must develop an SWPPP.

“These new controls will help prevent stormwater pollution, one of the country’s greatest threats to water, and improve reporting and accountability at industrial sites,” said Benjamin H. Grumbles, EPA’s assistant administrator for water.


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The new permit offers several improvements from the previous MSGP, including easier to understand discharge requirements; fast and easy electronic filing of Notices of Intent (NOIs) and monitoring reports; Web-based tools for locating water bodies and determining impairment status; and updated monitoring, inspection, and corrective action schedules.

The MSGP applies to facilities in states and territories not authorized to implement EPA’s National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) program. These include Alaska, Idaho, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Mexico, parts of Texas and Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the District of Columbia, and the territories of Guam, American Samoa, Johnston Atoll, and Midway and Wake Islands. The MSGP also applies to facilities located in Indian country lands in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, Arizona, California, Nevada, Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington, as well as to industrial activities taking place at federal facilities in Vermont, Delaware, and Washington.

Under the Clean Water Act, all facilities that discharge pollutants into waters of the United States must obtain a NPDES permit. The new permit replaces the MSGP issued in 2000, which expired in October 2005.

If you are one of the facilities affected by the new MSGP, you have the option of filing either a hard copy NOI or an electronic version (eNOI). Our sister website, Enviro.BLR.com, say the eNOI choice may be your best bet.

The eNOI system allows industrial stormwater operators to submit and modify NOIs and Notices of Termination (NOTs), as well as submit No Exposure forms under EPA’s MSGP. The eNOI system:

  • Saves forms as drafts so they can be worked on at a later time
  • Allows modification of the forms submitted electronically
  • Allows information already in the system to be prepopulated
  • Allows you to view the status of forms saved in the system
  • Maps the site location and the latitude/longitude value to provide a visualization
  • Provides additional help text, including a keyword search function for frequently asked questions and glossary terms, as well as hyperlinks to definitions and explanatory text
  • Provides dropdown menus to reduce errors

Users may need a little time to get accustomed to the system, but EPA estimates that submitting NOIs electronically will take 2 weeks less than the processing time for traditional hard copy NOIs. Stormwater construction permit NOIs and NOTs may also be submitted through eNOI, and EPA expects that discharge monitoring reports and other required monitoring information will be able to be submitted to eNOI by March 2009.


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Enviro.BLR.com’s MSGP and eNOI materials represent just a few of the nearly 200 documents under the website’s Stormwater topic, including state and federal regulatory analysis, news and features articles, proposed and final regulations and notices, forms, checklists, guidance documents, training sessions, trainer’s guide, and more.

And Stormwater is just one of 140 topics covered by Enviro.BLR.com, ranging from Aboveground Storage Tanks to Wetlands. This is truly a one-stop solution to your environmental compliance and training needs. A subscription includes:

  • Federal and state regulatory activity, updated daily
  • Training materials covering the topics you need, including both Spanish and audio-only training materials
  • Compliance tools, including more than 8,000 forms, sample plans, guidance documents, and checklists to download and use
  • AN MSDS database containing more than 3.5 million MSDSs that you can download and use
  • Answers to your toughest questions provided within 1 business day by our staff of environmental professionals, and access to our database of more than 600 environmental questions and answers, organized by topic
  • And, coming soon, a plan builder that will enable you to quickly create, find, and modify the policies you need for creating a custom Environmental Compliance Plan.

You can try Enviro.BLR.com for 14 days with no obligation, or get more information.

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