EPA Plans To Revise Wastewater Regulations for Oil and Gas Extraction
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it plans to modernize outdated regulations on wastewater discharges for oil and gas extraction facilities to lower energy costs while supporting environmentally sustainable water reuse.
The agency’s review will evaluate modern technologies and management strategies to provide regulatory flexibility for oil and gas wastewater to be treated for reuse, including artificial intelligence and data center cooling, rangeland irrigation, fire control, power generation, and ecological needs.
“EPA will revise wastewater regulations from the 1970s that do not reflect modern capability to treat and reuse water for good,” said EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin. “As a result, we will lower production costs for oil and gas extraction to boost American energy while increasing water supplies and protecting water quality.”
Under current regulations, discharge of treated wastewater is only allowed for agricultural and wildlife water uses in the western United States. The EPA plans to consider expanding the geographic scope where treated wastewater can be used and discharged in the United States. In addition to prioritizing cost savings, EPA’s rulemaking to revise the regulations also plans to consider expanding opportunities for using treated wastewater, such as for the extraction of lithium and other critical minerals. The EPA said it also plans to explore additional flexibilities to discharge treated wastewater from centralized wastewater treatment facilities that manage wastewater produced in the extraction of oil and gas.
The Clean Water Act requires the EPA to revise industrywide wastewater treatment limits, called effluent limitations guidelines, to keep pace with innovations in pollution-control technology as technologies to treat produced water to a quality for safe discharge and reuse become more effective and affordable.
Effluent limitations guidelines and standards (ELGs) are national industry-specific wastewater regulations based on the performance of demonstrated wastewater treatment technologies (often called “technology-based limits”). They are intended to represent the greatest pollutant reductions that are economically achievable for an entire industry.
The announcement focuses on Subpart E of the current Oil and Gas Extraction Effluent Guidelines regulations at Title 40 Part 435 of the Code of Federal Regulations. The EPA promulgated the Subpart E regulations in 1979.
