The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) was passed in August 2022 and outlines aggressive action to address climate change. While the $740 billion package is not focused directly on water, many of the provisions in the bill include potential impacts to clean water via the nexus with climate change, clean energy, conservation, and environmental justice.

After the midterm elections, Congress was faced with a hefty to-do list before the end of the year - including reauthorizing the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), passing the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA), and reaching compromise on a funding agreement to keep the government open, to name a few.

U.S. EPA Assistant Administrator Radhika Fox issued a new memorandum, Addressing PFAS Discharges in NPDES Permits and Through the Pretreatment Program and Monitoring Programs, to states’ regulatory authorities on December 5 detailing recommendations on how the Agency would like states to leverage Clean Water Act National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits to reduce PFAS discharges into waters.

In a notice published in the Federal Register on November 30, EPA seeks to collect information from wastewater laboratories, including POTWs, on the “analytic ability of laboratories that perform chemical, microbiological and whole effluent toxicity analyses.”

Earlier this year, the U.S. Census Bureau revised and finalized new criteria for how it defines urban areas based on the 2020 Census. The Bureau's new criteria eliminate the term "urbanized areas," which will have a subsequent impact on how EPA and states designate and regulate Phase II municipal separate storm sewer systems (MS4s) under the Clean Water Act.

As anticipated, EPA recently proposed a rule to eliminate the de minimus reporting exemption that allows facilities to avoid reporting PFAS to the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) under the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA).