Preface

     The Environmental Protection Agency's Industry Strategies Division is working with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection , US EPA Region 2, and a Stakeholder group made up of industry, environmental group, union, and community representatives on a project with the batch chemical manufacturing industry in New Jersey. The New Jersey Chemical Industry Project is an effort to assess current environmental protection strategies on a sector basis and develop better approaches.

     The project started by asking what inspires companies to achieve - or keeps them from achieving - better environmental performance. From this information, the Stakeholder group developed a list of 45 issues for possible pilot projects to test new environmental protection strategies. The Effluent Trading Pilot was developed as one of four pilot projects selected by the New Jersey Chemical Industry Project Stakeholder group. The other pilots selected by the group include: reuse of "waste" materials across facilities, compliance assistance, and flexible track for good environmental performers.

     A subset of the Stakeholder group formed the Pilot Team for the Effluent Trading Pilot, along with several additional experts who were invited to participate. The Pilot Team worked together to facilitate trading of local effluent pretreatment limits within the Passaic Valley Sewerage Commissioners'  treatment area. This report documents the lessons learned from establishing a trade of pretreatment limits, as well as providing information on the structure and background of the trade. It is hoped that this information will be helpful to others seeking to establish effluent trades, especially among industrial dischargers.

     In addition to this report, the New Jersey Chemical Industry Project has prepared reports on the work of the Materials Recycling Pilot Team, the Compliance Assistance Pilot Team, and the Flexible Track Pilot Team. The Materials Recycling report, titled Promoting Chemical Recycling: Resource Conservation in Chemical Manufacturing, EPA 231-R-99-001, May 1999, describes five typical batch chemical process scenarios that present opportunities to recycle materials, explains how the hazardous waste regulations would apply to each scenario, and documents the environmental and economic benefits that have been realized to date by the one scenario that has already been implemented. The scenarios and regulatory interpretations may be helpful to other facilities with similar processes that wish to improve their materials reuse and recycling, including facilities outside of New Jersey. Because the New Jersey hazardous waste rules are the same as the federal rules, the information in this report may be useful to facilities in other states where the Federal rules apply.

     The Compliance Assistance report describes how the Pilot Team developed compliance assistance materials for New Jersey companies as an Industry-Government Team. The materials include plain language descriptions of many NJ state environmental regulations and NJ DEP compliance assistance activities, applicability flowcharts for six key regulations, and an extensive bibliography of compliance assistance resources. The cooperative approach allowed the Pilot Team to develop materials that were targeted to industry needs, used less agency resources, and improved relationships between industry and regulators. The report is titled Inspiring Performance: The Government-Industry Team Approach to Improving Environmental Compliance (EPA-231-R-99-002, May 1999). The compliance assistance materials that were developed can be viewed on the Internet at http://www.state.nj.us/dep/ enforcement/home.htm. 

     The Pilot Team for the final pilot, Flexible Track, has published a "Proposed Framework For a Flexible Track Program" which has served as the foundation for NJ DEP's Silver and Gold Track Programs . These programs provide incentives to facilites that are good environmental performers to maintain and improve their performance. The first element of the Silver Track Program was implemented in September 1999. The NJ DEP is continuing to work with a group of stakeholders from industry and environmental groups in developing the Silver Track II and Gold Track Programs.

     For more information about the New Jersey Chemical Industry Project and the Effluent Trading Pilot, contact:

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Last Revision: March 9, 2000
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