Water Quality Fees 2021

Administrative Order No. DEQ-15-2021
Filed: Sept. 30, 2021
Effective: Nov. 1, 2021
See Oregon Bulletin, October 2021

Rule contact: Angela Rowland, 503-229-5740

The Environmental Quality Commission adopted rule amendments to increase water quality fees in 2021 for fiscal year 2022.

The Water Quality Program's mission is to protect and improve Oregon's water quality. Protecting Oregon's rivers, lakes, streams, and groundwater quality keeps these waters safe so they can be used for drinking water, fish habitat, recreation, and irrigation. DEQ accomplishes this by developing and implementing water quality standards and clean water plans, issuing water quality permits, regulating sewage treatment systems and industrial dischargers, collecting and evaluating water quality data, providing grants and technical assistance to reduce nonpoint pollution sources, and giving loans to communities to build treatment facilities.

DEQ needed the fee increase to help account for the anticipated increase in the cost of administering the permit program. This increase will also help DEQ achieve its objective for a sustainable water quality permitting program that issues timely, high quality permits, and to ensure compliance with permit conditions through inspections, enforcement, and reporting to the Environmental Protection Agency.

In October each year, DEQ publishes a permit issuance work plan to identify the individual National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permits DEQ intends to issue in the coming year. DEQ identified 51 permits for development in the 2021 federal fiscal year (Oct. 1- Sept. 30). Permit issuance updates are provided quarterly online.

Advisory committee

DEQ is convened an advisory committee to review the fiscal impacts related to the proposed rules. In convening this committee, DEQ appointed members that reflect the range of entities that are both directly and indirectly affected by proposed changes to the rules.