NJPDES
Permit Fees
The
NJPDES program rules are set forth at N.J.A.C. 7:14A. All
persons who wish to discharge wastewater in the state are
required to obtain a NJPDES discharge permit from the Department.
Pursuant to Section 9 of the State Act, the Department is
authorized to "establish and charge reasonable annual
administrative fees, which fees shall be based upon, and shall
not exceed, the estimated cost of processing, monitoring and
administering the NJPDES permits." Fees are assessed
to cover the Department's costs to issue and manage NJPDES
permits.
The
NJPDES budget and fee schedule covers activities including:
the review of NJPDES permit applications,
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the development of specific permit terms and conditions
including wasteload allocations and water quality based
effluent limitations,
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stream monitoring and modeling,
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conducting compliance and 24-hour sampling inspections,
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ground water compliance sampling,
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supervising the installation of ground water monitoring
wells,
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evaluating and approving ground water remediation alternatives,
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evaluating compliance with the terms and conditions of each
NJPDES permit, and
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providing for the general administrative costs of the NJPDES
program including regulatory support, data processing, and
budgeting.
N.J.S.A.
58:10A-10 provides the Department with the authority to seek
civil administrative penalties for failure to pay assessed NJPDES
permit fees.
The
Department first established a fee assessment program in 1981.
Individual permit fees were based on the facility's potential
environmental impact, the billing rate for the category of discharge,
and the minimum fee for the category of discharge. The billing
rate for each category of discharge is determined annually by
subtracting the total minimum fees paid by the permittees in
the category of discharge from the total budget for the category
of discharge, and then dividing that value by the sum of the
calculated environmental impact potentials for all of the dischargers
within the category.
The
fee schedule is assessed in accordance with the current fee
regulations found at
N.J.A.C. 7:14A-3.1 (pdf).
FEE
RELATED DOWNLOADS
Proposed fee rule changes for Discharge to Groundwater permits:
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