Municipalities will be required to obtain a permit to discharge pollutants under a bill passed by the Legislature April 23.<\/p>\n
LB413, introduced by Omaha Sen. Heath Mello, authorizes the state Department of Environmental Quality to issue permits to any political subdivision seeking to discharge pollutants from a point source into any body of water in the state.<\/p>\n
The political subdivision can request an evaluation to determine how best to meet federal requirements in a sustainable way. The department will evaluate several factors, including:
\n\u2022 the capability of the political subdivision to raise and secure necessary funding;
\n\u2022 affordability to ratepayers;
\n\u2022 growth potential of the political subdivision;
\n\u2022 efficacy of existing infrastructure for projected needs;
\n\u2022 overall costs and environmental benefits;
\n\u2022 environmental improvements made by the political subdivision; and
\n\u2022 other relevant economic and social concerns or environmental conditions.<\/p>\n
The department will have flexibility in deciding which criteria to use in evaluating individual permits.<\/p>\n
The bill passed on a 45-0 vote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Municipalities will be required to obtain a permit to discharge pollutants under a bill passed by the Legislature April 23.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[15],"tags":[87],"class_list":["post-17192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-natural-resources","tag-sen-heath-mello"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17192"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17193,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17192\/revisions\/17193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}