When it comes to wastewater compliance in Alaska, the state is now taking over the reins from the federal government.

Up until recently, the Environmental Protection Agency was responsible for issuing discharge permits. Those permits set the amount of waste things like seafood processing plants, mining operations, and sewage treatment centers can release under the Clean Water Act. Over the past four years, the EPA has handed over control of the permitting process to the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation. First, they were given the authority to issue to permits to logging companies and hatcheries, and then they took on federal and municipal buildings. Yesterday, the final phase of the takeover was completed: the DEC is now taking over permitting for the oil and gas industry and all other facilities that hadn’t been transferred yet.

While the transfer was happening, Unalaska was dealing with its own problems involving wastewater discharge permits. The city was sued by the EPA for exceeding its discharge limits, and ultimately had to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines and commit to building a new wastewater treatment plant. One of the city’s main defenses was that DEC made an error when helping determine what sort of permits they should be issued.