Now that the final rule has been published in the Federal Register, the stage is set for official implementation of the U.S. EPA’s Steam Electric Power Generating Effluent Guidelines on Jan. 4, 2016. From a wastewater perspective, the updated guidelines (revising regulations from 1982) seek to curb pollution resulting from processes/elements including flue gas desulfurization (FGD), fly ash, bottom ash, flue gas mercury control, and gasification of fuels such as coal and petroleum coke.
Legal analysts at Morgan Lewis & Bockius provided the following summation of the rule and its impacts:
“The rule creates more stringent effluent limitations on arsenic, mercury, selenium, and nitrogen for flue gas desulfurization waste streams and ash transport water. The rule also puts a limit on total dissolved solids in flue gas desulfurization wastewater and creates a voluntary program incentivizing plants to meet the more stringent voluntary limits by 2023. In addition, the rule establishes zero discharge pollutant limits for existing plants’ flue gas mercury control wastewater, and stringent limits on arsenic, mercury, selenium, and total dissolved solids in coal gasification wastewater. The rule is significantly more stringent for new coal or petroleum coke plants, in particular.”
The 2023 deadline referenced is the long end of a compliance schedule determined by a number of factors. The EPA wants compliance “as soon as possible” beginning on November 1, 2018, but no later than December 31, 2023. According to EPA’s technical development document, the flexibility considerations include “time to expeditiously plan (including to raise capital), design, procure, and install equipment to comply with the requirements,” timing of the plant’s National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit renewal, and any competing/additional changes being made at the plant to satisfy other standards and regulations.
The EPA has also published its findings on what treatment and control strategies are well-suited to satisfy the new requirements, based on tried-and-true use in the field. The following technologies, then, are not touted as the most innovative; rather, they are the most popular as deemed by an EPA industry survey. Culled from a supporting document to the Final Rule, the most trusted treatment solutions for seven power plant wastewater streams are described below.*