The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has set aside petitions filed by the Conservation Law Foundation and other environmental groups to force the agency to treat commercial and institutional property owners the same as municipalities when it comes to pollutants discharged into stormwater.

The petitions – filed last year for the EPA’s New England, mid-Atlantic and Southwest regions – urged the EPA to exercise its “residual designation authority” under the federal Clean Water Act to manage commercial runoff that violates water quality standards.

On March 11, the EPA’s Region 1 wrote to the CLF and its partners that it would neither grant nor deny the petition, instead committing to address the problem one water body at a time.

The EPA regulates municipal stormwater systems to deal with pollution that runs off municipal roofs, streets and sidewalks. The environmental groups argued that a large proportion of pollutants in stormwater systems comes from private property owners such as malls, office and retail parks, car dealerships and other paved parking lots.

The CLF and its partners point out that the burden of cleaning up after these thousands of polluting businesses currently rests with city and town governments – and, by extension, taxpayers.

In a Massachusetts pilot program in Bellingham, Franklin and Milford, the EPA has proposed regulations that would require businesses with at least two acres of impervious surface to take steps to reduce stormwater runoff as a means of reducing the discharge of phosphorus, the main cause of algae blooms that mar the Charles River each summer.

In its response to the petition from environmental groups, the EPA pointed out that the Massachusetts pilot program affected “stormwater sources in only three municipalities” and the designation has not been finalized.

The EPA added, however, that it “plans to revisit its proposal and consider whether it is appropriate to expand the designation to include sources in additional towns or throughout the entire watershed.”

The EPA said it “will conduct this effort in the context of the petition previously filed by CLF specifically related to the Charles River.”

Reducing phosphorus, according to the EPA, could cost businesses and other private landowners as much as $118,000 per acre, and a 2011 report written by the Horsley Witten Group found that the proposed regulations could cost municipalities, businesses and property owners in Bellingham, Franklin and Milford $180 million over the next 25 years.

The MMA argues that stormwater utilities could be an effective tool for complying with water quality standards, but they are rare in Massachusetts. The MMA has asked the EPA and Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection to launch a public education campaign about the benefits of stormwater utilities and to provide technical and financial support to municipalities for the creation of these utilities.

View Petition for a Determination That Stormwater Discharges From Commercial, Industrial, and Institutional Sites Contribute to Water Quality Standards Violations and Require Clean Water Act Permits

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