TMDL? What’s a TMDL?

The federal Clean Water Act requires states to identify lakes and streams that do not meet state water quality standards (“impaired waters”) and develop Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) plans to clean them up. These plans can be extensive and can involve cities, businesses, farms, lake associations and multiple state agencies. Some state agency staff have expressed concern about cities not always being “at the table” to speak up for themselves and ensure they get treated fairly in TMDL development. A restrictive wasteload allocation adopted in a TMDL can have expensive treatment impacts for cities. To find out if any local TMDL projects affect your city, please contact the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency staff responsible for issuing and enforcing your city’s wastewater treatment permit. For more information, please visit the MESERB website at www.meserb.org and click on the “Links” page for state agency information.