What Does the Industrial Pretreatment Program Do?

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Protecting Cheyenne's Sanitary Sewer Infrastructure


The EPA’s National Pretreatment Program is designed to protect the infrastructure for public sanitary sewer systems and to reduce pollutant levels discharged by industries and businesses into public sanitary sewer systems and into the environment. This is accomplished by approving state and/or local programs to perform permitting, administration, and enforcement tasks for discharges into the municipalities’ publicly owned treatment works (POTWs), also known as the sanitary sewer system and the facilities that treat the water from the sanitary sewers.

The role of the Board of Public Utilities in this National Pretreatment Program is as a local control authority. This means, that the Board of Public Utilities has a program that is required by and approved by the EPA. As a control authority, it is the responsibility of the Board of Public Utilities to prevent the discharge of pollutants into the sanitary sewer infrastructure (this includes sewer mains and the treatment facilities) that would result in the treatment facility’s inability to treat the wastewater or to prevent a contaminant from passing through our facility into the environment. This program is also responsible to ensure that all industrial users comply with all applicable federal pretreatment requirements. The Industrial Pretreatment Program (IPP) of the Board of Public Utilities has, and continues, to meet these requirements since the early 1990’s. IPP protects the infrastructure of the sanitary sewer system, by developing ordinances designed to protect the system, by issuing permits when necessary to industrial users, by conducting inspections and sampling events throughout the system, by evaluating compliance of industrial users in our jurisdiction, as well as the Board of Public Utilities' compliance with federal and state requirements, and by taking enforcement action as appropriate.