HDR Engineering, Inc. 1/20/2023 - Laserfiche WebLink

9  A January 13, 2022 Order Granting Petition for Judicial Review and Declaratory Judgment from the Thurston County Superior Court has invalidated Ecology’s actions on Puget Sound dissolved oxygen as violations of the administrative procedure act by failing to follow rulemaking requirements and exceeding their authority. • Water Quality Standards Rulemaking/Appeals o Including official records of correspondence and comments during rulemaking.  Ecology’s triennial water quality standards rulemaking process addresses a variety of parameters. Ecology submitted a Triennial Review Report to EPA in April 2022 with planned updates to Washington's Surface Water Quality Standards anticipated for 2022 through 2024. • Ecology’s Water Quality Standards Rulemaking Work Plan Summary 2022-2024 includes: o Freshwater criteria for dissolved oxygen and fine sediment o Aquatic life criteria for toxics o Natural Conditions Provision o Designations of Antidegradation Tier III Outstanding Resource Waters (ORWs) for publicly nominated waters • National Toxics Rule and Toxic Loading Studies o Washington’s water quality standards include 91 numeric human health-based criteria that Ecology must consider when writing NPDES permits. These criteria were established in 1992 by EPA in its National Toxics Rule (40 CFR 131.36). • Human Health Criteria (and fish consumption) Tracking o Including national tracking of other state standards/rulemaking technical information and viability of testing methods. o Human Health-Based Water Quality Criteria (HHWQC) for Washington are currently pending final federal action by EPA.  These proposed revisions of Washington’s surface water quality standards regulation, WAC 173-201A, resulted from a multi-year public engagement activity led by the Department of Ecology. The state of Washington adopted this rule package in August 2015. The proposed criteria were considered to be the most stringent set of toxic pollutant standards in the United States. The EPA responded by partially approving and partially disapproving Washington’s adopted rule in a November 2016 Federal Register notice. In late 2016, EPA proposed and subsequently adopted a more stringent set of HHWQC based on re- consideration of tribal fish consumption, the incremental cancer risk level, and other input factors germane to the derivation of numeric criteria. A 2017 industry petition to the EPA requested a reconsideration of the partial disapproval determination and repeal of the November 2016 HHWQC. EPA granted this petition in May 2019, which then had the effect of returning Washington’s HHWQC to the set adopted by the state in August 2015. The state of Washington, certain Indian tribes, and various environmental groups followed with a legal