Regulatory Advocacy

Multi-agency Negotiation Alleviates Requirement to Construct Sewage Pipeline – Missouri

With only eight months remaining until the deadline, The Forrester Group enabled our client, a sewer commission outside of St. Louis, to obtain relief from a permit requirement to construct a 9,000-foot, $7 million pipeline to deliver effluent to the Mississippi River. Although the commission had constructed a new sewage treatment facility, and the effluent now met the Clean Water Standards, the permit modification was outside MDNR’s authority because the pipeline was required by the Water Quality Management Plan developed by a regional agency. Consequently, both USEPA and the area-wide agency were involved.

The Forrester Group obtained MDNR’s support to work through the issue without the requirement of a formal permit variance. By facilitating dialogue between the three entities and the sewer commission and negotiating a $2 million disinfection solution, we were able to achieve removal of the pipeline requirement from the Water Quality Plan and subsequently obtain a revised permit for our client in less than 6 months, which saved the client in excess of $5 million.

Our client’s appreciation for our efforts is expressed below.

“I want to give our consultant, Mr. John Young, a tremendous amount of credit for bringing this to a successful conclusion. He helped us to find the way to ‘update’ the original St. Louis 208 Water Quality Management Plan. I am not aware of this being done previously in the State of Missouri…. It truly has been a ‘team’ effort!”