Industrial Pretreatment

The Lafayette City-Parish Consolidated Government currently operates four (4) municipal waste-water treatment plants (POTWs) with a combined total design flow of 18.5 million gallons per day.

According to the EPA’s National Pretreatment Rules:

“Any POTW with a total design flow greater than 5 million gallons per day (MGD) and receiving from Industrial Users pollutants subject to Pre-treatment Standards will be required to establish a POTW Pretreatment Program … ”

Since first approval by the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ) in 1984 (with modifications made in 1993 and 2004), the City-Parish’s POTW pretreatment program was put in place to protect our wastewater treatment facilities, our employees, the community and the environment.

The LUS Environmental Compliance Division oversees this Pretreatment program by working with commercial and industrial customers to control discharges of harmful pollutants. LUS is committed to protecting Lafayette’s water resources, wastewater treatment facilities, public health, employees, and the environment.

All businesses, including industrial, commercial, and governmental establishments, that discharge non-domestic wastewater are subject to the requirements of the National Pretreatment Program, the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ)’s pretreatment program, and Lafayette City-Parish Ordinance No. O-037-2004. For most businesses, this simply means that they must not discharge anything that will adversely affect the POTW’s operation.

Businesses that want to discharge commercial or industrial waste to the City-Parish POTWs, must go through a permitting process and obtain approval to discharge their pre-treated, non-hazardous wastewater into the LUS wastewater collection system.