The Knoxville Utilities Board (KUB) is a municipally-charted corporation created under Tennessee law and incorporated by the Charter of the City of Knoxville, Tennessee (the City). KUB owns and operates four (4) wastewater treatment plants along with approximately 1,300 miles of collections and transmission systems regulated under the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit requirements of the Clean Water Act (CWA) as implemented by the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC).
KUB has had numerous sanitary sewer overflows (SSOs) from its sewer collection system as well as exceedances of the effluent limits of its NPDES permits and bypasses of secondary treatment works at its treatment plants (blending) resulting in violations of the CWA and KUB's NPDES permits.
With a goal of addressing SSOs from its collection system, KUB elected to participate in EPA Region 4's Management, Operations and Maintenance (MOM) Project. As a participant, KUB prepared a self-assessment of its wastewater facilities and collection systems in October of 1999. In cooperation with Region 4, TDEC took the lead in overseeing the appropriate regulatory response to ensure that KUB implemented necessary corrective actions such as management, operation or maintenance programs; sewer rehabilitation work; and sewer capacity projects. At that point, however, KUB's level of voluntary participation began to wane. After several years of failed attempts to achie