Lagoon Wastewater Treatment Systems
Many small, rural, and tribal communities across the United States rely on lagoon systems to treat their municipal wastewater. As we learn how to keep the water clean and protect the environment, new regulatory requirements can require installing more complex and costly wastewater treatment technology to comply with permits. This can be particularly challenging for rural, small, and tribal communities as they may need more financial and technical capacity to identify the best-fit, most affordable technologies or process improvements for their lagoon system. They may also need more capacity to successfully seek funding for infrastructure investments to achieve associated water quality improvements; this can lead to human health, recreational, and aquatic life impacts in the most disadvantaged small communities and lead to environmental justice concerns.
Lagoon Wastewater Treatment: Action Plan 2022-2026
The Implementation of a Lagoon Action Plan between 2022 and 2026 will support small, rural, and tribal communities, identify alternative and retrofit technologies, and provide other assistance to make progress toward the vision of creating workable programs that support equity and result in clean waterways that small, rural, and tribal communities can sustain.
As part of this plan, the Office of Water and Office of Compliance are focusing its efforts on the following areas of need:
- Identifying the Universe (Inventory) of Lagoons Nationally
- Developing Cost and Performance Data for Alternative or Retrofit Technologies
- Developing Financial and Other Technical Assistance Tools
- Developing Regulatory Support Tools, Including Tools to Streamline Economic Impact Evaluations
- Developing plans for community engagement, communication, and partnerships to support the Lagoon Action Plan
Lagoon Inventory Dataset
The Lagoon Inventory Dataset contains information on a list of over 4,500 known discharging lagoon wastewater treatment systems with National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits that are publicly or semi-publicly owned, in which lagoons serve as the main form of secondary treatment (without more advanced treatment or add-on technologies). This list of lagoons was compiled from 18 datasets containing lagoon facilities from EPA, states, and the Rural Community Assistance Partnership (RCAP). The following data for facility locations are also included:
- Compliance data (from EPA’s Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO) database as of September 20, 2021);
- Socioeconomic data (from U.S. Census American Community Survey using Census place-level geography five-year averages from 2015-2019); and
- Environmental justice data (from EPA’s EJSCREEN: Environmental Justice Screening and Mapping Tool as of July 2021).
This lagoon inventory dataset was updated in May 2022 to reflect the most up-to-date information from states, while The Universe of Lagoons Report (see below) was written based on a previous version of the dataset. In July 2022, EPA revised the dataset to incorporate updates provided by the state of New Hampshire and to clarify if each NPDES permit is state or EPA-issued.
Universe of Lagoons Report
The Universe of Lagoons Report describes the methodology used to aggregate state and tribal lagoon wastewater treatment systems in the Lagoon Inventory Dataset. The report includes an analysis of lagoon wastewater treatment system data, including socioeconomic, environmental justice, and compliance data patterns in communities that use lagoons based on data gathered in 2020-2021.