EPA · National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System

Clean Water Act discharge permits — report

The National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System register is the federal list of permits to discharge into rivers, lakes and coastal waters, held by treatment plants, factories, livestock operations, mines, storm sewers and construction sites. What is sold here is one state of that register, published as a dated document: every permit, its holder, its receiving water and its current standing, each figure carrying the filing it came from.

• 398,004permits on the register

What you get

• Every permit in the state, with the holder's name as the register records it
• The receiving water for each permit, named as the register names it
• The kind of operation permitted, from treatment plant to livestock yard to mine
• The current standing of each permit on the day the document is published
• A dated cover page and a source line for every figure, ready to file or cite
• A bound document to hand to a board, a lender, a regulator or a court

Who buys it

Buyers are the people who have to put one state's discharge record in front of someone else: environmental counsel and their clients, treatment and utility managers, plant, mine and livestock operators, river and conservation groups, lenders and insurers weighing permit exposure, and state and local officials answering for the waters in their state.

Questions

What is in the document?

The document holds every permit the register carries for one state on the day it is bought: the holder, the receiving water, the kind of operation permitted, and the permit's current standing. Each figure carries the filing it came from, so the record can be checked against its source.

Is it dated?

Yes. The state report reflects the register as it stands on the day it is bought and is dated that day. The date appears on the cover, so a reader can tell exactly which version of the register the document reflects.

Can I file it or hand it to a regulator?

That is what it is for. The document is a dated, sourced record of one state's permits, in a form a board, a lender, a regulator or a court can read and keep on file. Nothing in it is a legal opinion about any permit.

Does it cover the entire state?

It covers the register's permits for one state, wherever in that state the discharge is permitted, with each permit's receiving water shown as the register shows it. Permits appear as the register lists them, so the document reads the way the register reads.