This bill amends two provisions of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (Clean Water Act): it expands the scope of state reviews of water quality standards to specifically include waters that receive discharges from municipal combined storm and sanitary sewers (CSOs) and directs those reviews to assess the cost‑effectiveness of CSO controls. It also adds a new requirement for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to consider the cost and commercial availability of treatment technologies when developing or revising national water quality criteria under section 304(a).
The changes shift economic and technological feasibility into the statutory framework that governs both state standard-setting and EPA criteria development. For municipalities, permit writers, and state regulators, the bill embeds explicit cost and market-availability considerations into processes that have historically prioritized scientific and use-based protections — a change that could affect permit limits, TMDL calculations, and the stringency of standards applied to waters impacted by combined sewer discharges.
At a Glance
What It Does
The bill amends section 303(c) to require state reviews to include any water quality standard applicable to waters receiving municipal combined storm and sanitary sewer discharges and to evaluate whether CSO controls are cost‑effective. It also amends section 304(a) to require EPA to take into account the cost and commercial availability of treatment technologies when developing or revising water quality criteria.
Who It Affects
Directly affected parties include municipalities operating combined sewer systems, publicly owned treatment works (POTWs) that apply for or hold NPDES permits, state water quality agencies that conduct standards reviews, and EPA program offices that develop criteria and oversee approvals. Indirectly affected stakeholders include permittees subject to effluent limits, ratepayers funding upgrades, and entities that manufacture or supply wastewater treatment technologies.
Why It Matters
By inserting cost and ‘commercial availability’ into both state review and federal criteria development statutory language, the bill makes economic feasibility a formal factor in standards-setting. That creates a pathway for less stringent numeric or use-based protections where treatment technologies are costly or unavailable, and it changes the analytical record states and EPA must create when setting or revising standards.
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What This Bill Actually Does
The bill takes two concrete steps inside the Clean Water Act's existing architecture. First, it narrows the focus of state reviews under section 303(c) to explicitly capture any water quality standard that applies to a body of water receiving discharges from municipal combined storm and sanitary sewers.
The statutory text directs those reviews to examine standards with an eye toward whether combined sewer overflow controls would be cost‑effective. The amendment also makes plain that states must transmit the results of such reviews to the EPA Administrator.
Second, the bill adds a new paragraph to section 304(a) requiring EPA, when it develops or revises national water quality criteria, to take into account the cost and commercial availability of treatment technologies that point sources might need to meet standards. That instruction is phrased as a consideration — not an absolute bar — but it elevates economic and market factors into the federal criteria-setting process.Practically, the changes create two linked administrative effects.
States conducting triennial or other reviews will need cost‑effectiveness assessments for CSO controls and a record showing how that analysis affected use designations or numeric standards. EPA, in turn, must document how treatment costs and market availability influenced any criteria it proposes or finalizes.
Those administrative records matter for permitting (NPDES), TMDL development, and potential judicial review because they supply the evidentiary basis for why a standard was tightened, loosened, or left unchanged.The bill does not appropriate funds for CSO upgrades nor does it add new funding mechanisms for municipalities. It also does not define ‘‘cost‑effectiveness,’’ ‘‘commercial availability,’’ or standards of analysis — leaving significant interpretive work to states and EPA and opening space for administrative guidance or litigation over how those terms are applied.
The Five Things You Need to Know
The bill amends section 303(c)(1) of the Clean Water Act (33 U.S.C. 1313(c)(1)) to require that state reviews include any water quality standard for a waterbody into which, pursuant to a permit, order, or decree, a municipal combined storm and sanitary sewer discharges, and to assess the cost‑effectiveness of combined sewer overflow controls.
It inserts subparagraph (C) in 303(c)(1) making states’ review results explicitly subject to transmission to the EPA Administrator: “Results of each review under this paragraph shall be made available to the Administrator.”, Section 303(c)(2)(A) is amended to require states, when evaluating uses and designations, to consider “the cost and commercial availability of treatment technologies that may be required to be applied to point sources” for compliance.
The bill adds a new paragraph 304(a)(10) (33 U.S.C. 1314(a)) directing EPA to consider the cost and commercial availability of treatment technologies when developing or revising water quality criteria under section 304(a).
The statutory language ties the review obligation to discharges occurring under a ‘‘permit, order, or decree,’’ thereby focusing the new review and cost‑effectiveness inquiry on regulated municipal combined sewer discharges (CSOs) rather than on all uncontrolled stormwater or nonpoint sources.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
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Short title: Water Quality Standards Attainability Act
This is the captioning clause; it gives the bill its short title but contains no substantive policy content. Including a descriptive short title matters for docketing and for how agencies and stakeholders refer to the changes, but it does not affect legal operation of the amendments themselves.
State reviews must cover standards for waters receiving combined sewer discharges and assess CSO control cost‑effectiveness
The bill restructures 303(c)(1) into lettered subparagraphs and adds a new subparagraph that forces states, when they do the routine reviews of water quality standards, to evaluate standards that apply to waterbodies receiving municipal combined storm and sanitary sewer discharges. Importantly, the text directs those reviews to include an assessment of whether combined sewer overflow controls are cost‑effective. Practically, this requires states to bring economic analyses into their biological and use‑support evaluations and to create an administrative record aimed at answering not only whether a standard is scientifically justified but also whether available CSO controls make meeting that standard achievable at reasonable cost.
States must weigh treatment cost and commercial availability in use designation decisions
This amendment inserts a third factor into the list of considerations states must apply when designating uses and setting criteria. By adding “the cost and commercial availability of treatment technologies” to the list, the bill requires states to document consideration of technological feasibility and marketplace realities when determining uses and numeric criteria. In regulatory practice that could change both the substance of designations and the analytic steps states must take to justify a designation, particularly where stricter uses would require significant capital investment by point sources.
EPA must reflect cost and market availability in national criteria development
The bill creates a new paragraph in section 304(a) directing EPA to take into account cost and commercial availability of treatment technologies when developing or revising water quality criteria. The statutory command is to ‘‘take into consideration’’ these factors; that phrase leaves discretion to EPA about what weight to give them, but it compels EPA to include economic and availability information in the preambles and administrative record for any proposed or final criteria. That will affect the scientific-policy interface of federal criteria documents and may influence how states adopt or depart from EPA criteria.
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Explore Environment in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Municipalities that operate combined sewer systems — They gain a statutory hook to argue that strict standards should be relaxed or staged where CSO controls are costly or where technologies are not yet commercially viable, potentially reducing immediate upgrade obligations.
- State environmental agencies — The bill formalizes economic and technology assessments into state reviews, giving states greater defensible discretion to calibrate standards against local fiscal realities and market conditions.
- Suppliers of commercially available treatment technologies — By elevating ‘‘commercial availability’’ as a statutory consideration, the bill favors technologies already on the market, creating more predictable demand for suppliers whose products meet the defined needs.
Who Bears the Cost
- EPA and state regulatory programs — Agencies must expand review processes to include cost‑effectiveness and commercial availability analyses, increasing analytical, permitting, and documentation workload without accompanying appropriations in the bill.
- Environmental and public‑health advocates and downstream users — If cost and technology constraints are used to justify less stringent standards, communities that rely on affected waterbodies for recreation, drinking water sources, or habitat may see reduced protection.
- Ratepayers and municipal finance systems in jurisdictions that choose to pursue CSO controls anyway — While the bill can be used to limit obligations, localities that still opt to upgrade will confront higher capital and operating costs, which typically pass through to customers.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The central dilemma is whether water quality standards should be driven primarily by scientific determinations of desired uses and pollutant impacts or by what is economically and technologically achievable for permitted dischargers; the bill moves policy toward feasibility and market availability, but doing so risks weakening environmental protections that the Clean Water Act originally prioritized.
The bill substitutes economic and market‑availability considerations into processes that have long been dominated by scientific and use‑based analyses. That raises three practical uncertainties.
First, the statute does not define ‘‘cost‑effectiveness’’ or ‘‘commercial availability,’’ nor does it set evaluation standards (e.g., lifecycle costs, discount rates, or thresholds for what constitutes ‘‘commercial’’). States and EPA will therefore need to develop methodologies — through guidance or rulemaking — and those choices will substantially affect outcomes and legal vulnerability.
Second, the phrasing ‘‘take into consideration’’ gives agencies discretion but also invites litigation: stakeholders may challenge both the substance of cost and market analyses and the weight agencies placed on them relative to scientific criteria. The bill also lacks funding for CSO mitigation or technical assistance, so even where analyses find controls are cost‑effective, municipalities may lack the capital to implement them — creating a gap between standard-setting and achievable compliance.
Finally, the statutory text and the bill’s title/summary diverge on process: the title references public hearings, but the operative amendments do not impose a new, explicit public‑hearing requirement. That mismatch raises procedural questions about legislative intent and could complicate stakeholder expectations during implementation.
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