2023-02288: Final Updated Clean Water Act Financial Capability Assessment Guidance

Summary

When municipal discharges cause violations of the Clean Water Act (CWA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sets a schedule for the municipality to address them as soon as possible. EPA considers factors such as public health, environmental protection, and a community's financial capability when developing schedules to implement the compliance measures. The updated Clean Water Act Financial Capability Assessment Guidance (FCA Guidance) may be used by municipalities when making certain water quality decisions and when developing or revising plans to dramatically reduce sewer overflows. The FCA Guidance describes the financial information and formulas the Agency intends to use to assess the financial resources a community has available to implement controls to meet the requirements of the CWA. It also provides transparent benchmarks for negotiating schedules to put those controls in place and for states and authorized tribes to assess potential changes to water quality standards. This guidance also helps ensure national consistency in CWA implementation. The FCA Guidance replaces EPA's 1997 Combined Sewer Overflows--Guidance for Financial Capability Assessment and Schedule Development (1997 FCA Guidance) to evaluate a community's capability to fund CWA control measures in both the permitting and enforcement context. Additionally, Section III of the FCA Guidance is intended to assist states and authorized tribes in the consideration of economic impacts to public entities for supporting revisions to designated uses, water quality standard (WQS) variances, and antidegradation reviews for high quality waters. The FCA Guidance reflects EPA's consideration of public comments received in response to its February 23, 2022 Federal Register publication. The contents of this guidance document do not have the force and effect of law and are not meant to bind the public in any way. This document is intended only to provide recommendations to the public regarding existing requirements under the law or agency policies.

The agency’s own summary, as published.