The Virginia Transportation Construction Alliance, representing nearly 300 transportation contractors, engineers, aggregate producers and supporting industries, appreciates the opportunity to provide comments on DEQ’s proposed 2024 Amendment and Reissuance of The Existing General Permit Regulation (9 VAC 25-880).

The Alliance has the following comments and concerns regarding the proposed dewatering monitoring regulatory language.

• The proposed instantaneous or daily turbidity benchmarks significantly exceed the EPA's established weekly average benchmarks and believe that the technical feasibility to meet the proposed turbidity benchmarks is not likely to be achieved on roadway construction projects without extensive, costly, and impractical control methods.  It is recommended that the Department establish consistency with EPA and several other states that have successfully implemented a higher weekly benchmark and a more practical daily average benchmark.
• Turbidity sampling at the dewatering point appears to be required regardless of distance from the dewatering location to the discharge location.  Since discharge locations could include upland areas where the water may never reach a given tributary, sampling should only be required at the discharge point to a jurisdictional tributary, not at the dewatering location.  This should be clarified in the proposed regulations.
• Achieving the benchmark will require the use of more extensive dewatering “structures” on construction sites.  The structures will need more space to be placed and operate requiring additional easements unnecessarily impacting land that would otherwise be left undisturbed.
• The proposed language adds all surface waters within the Chesapeake Bay watershed, which includes all wetlands, intermittent and ephemeral streams.  These features will be difficult, and perhaps non-existent, to obtain “upstream” grab samples as required to assess baseline conditions and should be excluded from the proposed regulation.
• As written, achieving compliance on construction projects with dewatering needs would impose significant time and economic burden on maintaining and improving the Commonwealth’s transportation system.  It is likely that the daily monitoring and daily threshold limit would lead to frequent work stoppage and significant, costly project delays.

The members of the Virginia Transportation Construction Alliance understand and are committed to protecting the environment as we deliver the transportation needs of Virginians.  Although a Technical Advisory Group was established to support development of the proposed changes, we believe that the proposed construction dewatering requirements fall short in technical feasibility, practicality, and economic impact.  We recommend that additional discussion with DEQ and industry partners be held to identify an efficient and practical balance to protect Virginia’s waters.  We look forward to being a part of those discussions.