Title 33, Navigation and Navigable WatersRelease 119-110

§1274 Watershed Pilot Projects

Title 33 › CHAPTER 26 — WATER POLLUTION PREVENTION AND CONTROL › SUBCHAPTER I — RESEARCH AND RELATED PROGRAMS › § 1274

Last updated Sep 22, 2026|Official source

Summary

The Administrator, working with the States, may give technical help and grants to cities or city agencies to run pilot projects. These projects cover six areas: managing sewer overflows and stormwater across a watershed; testing cost‑effective, new ways to treat, capture, or reuse stormwater (like infiltration or onsite reuse); forming partnerships with property owners to cut runoff pollution; making integrated plans that coordinate surface water, groundwater, and stormwater; creating city‑wide plans to place stormwater controls where they help most; and finding ways to make public treatment systems more resilient to disasters, extreme weather, and sea‑level rise. For cities in these pilots, the Administrator must allow testing of new approaches, including letting separate wet‑weather controls be combined under a single permit. By October 1, 2015, the Administrator must send Congress a report on what the pilots showed and whether the approaches could work nationwide.

Full Legal Text

Title 33, §1274

Navigation and Navigable Waters, Source: USLM XML via OLRC

(a)In general
The Administrator, in coordination with the States, may provide technical assistance and grants to a municipality or municipal entity to carry out pilot projects relating to the following areas:
(1)Watershed management of wet weather discharges
The management of municipal combined sewer overflows, sanitary sewer overflows, and stormwater discharges, on an integrated watershed or subwatershed basis for the purpose of demonstrating the effectiveness of a unified wet weather approach.
(2)Stormwater best management practices
The control of pollutants from municipal separate storm sewer systems for the purpose of demonstrating and determining controls that are cost-effective and that use innovative technologies to manage, reduce, treat, recapture, or reuse municipal stormwater, including techniques that utilize infiltration, evapotranspiration, and reuse of stormwater onsite.
(3)Watershed partnerships
Efforts of municipalities and property owners to demonstrate cooperative ways to address nonpoint sources of pollution to reduce adverse impacts on water quality.
(4)Integrated water resource plan
The development of an integrated water resource plan for the coordinated management and protection of surface water, ground water, and stormwater resources on a watershed or subwatershed basis to meet the objectives, goals, and policies of this chapter.
(5)Municipality-wide stormwater management planning
The development of a municipality-wide plan that identifies the most effective placement of stormwater technologies and management approaches, to reduce water quality impairments from stormwater on a municipality-wide basis.
(6)Increased resilience of treatment works
Efforts to assess future risks and vulnerabilities of publicly owned treatment works to manmade or natural disasters, including extreme weather events and sea-level rise, and to carry out measures, on a systemwide or area-wide basis, to increase the resiliency of publicly owned treatment works.
(b)Administration
The Administrator, in coordination with the States, shall provide municipalities participating in a pilot project under this section the ability to engage in innovative practices, including the ability to unify separate wet weather control efforts under a single permit.
(c)Report to Congress
Not later than October 1, 2015, the Administrator shall transmit to Congress a report on the results of the pilot projects conducted under this section and their possible application nationwide.

Legislative History

Notes & Related Subsidiaries

Editorial Notes

Amendments

2014—Pub. L. 113–121, § 5011(1), struck out “Wet weather” before “Watershed” in section catchline. Subsec. (a). Pub. L. 113–121, § 5011(2)(A), in introductory provisions, substituted “to a municipality or municipal entity” for “for treatment works” and struck out “of wet weather discharge control” after “the following areas”. Subsec. (a)(2). Pub. L. 113–121, § 5011(2)(B), substituted “to manage, reduce, treat, recapture, or reuse municipal stormwater, including techniques that utilize infiltration, evapotranspiration, and reuse of stormwater onsite” for “in reducing such pollutants from stormwater discharges”. Subsec. (a)(3) to (6). Pub. L. 113–121, § 5011(2)(C), added pars. (3) to (6). Subsecs. (c), (d). Pub. L. 113–121, § 5011(3)–(5), redesignated subsec. (d) as (c), substituted “
October 1, 2015,” for “5 years after
December 21, 2000,”, and struck out former subsec. (c) which authorized appropriations to carry out this section.

Reference

Citations & Metadata

Citation

33 U.S.C. § 1274

Title 33, Navigation and Navigable Waters

Last Updated

Sep 22, 2026

Release point: 119-110