The national pretreatment program is a component of the NPDES program. It is a cooperative effort of federal, state, and local environmental regulatory agencies established to protect water quality. Similar to how EPA authorizes the NPDES permit program to state, tribal, and territorial governments to perform permitting, administrative, and enforcement tasks for discharges to surface waters (NPDES program), EPA and authorized NPDES state pretreatment programs approve local municipalities to perform permitting, administrative, and enforcement tasks for discharges into the municipalities’ publicly owned treatment works (POTWs).

The national pretreatment program is designed to:

• protect POTWs infrastructure, and
• reduce conventional and toxic pollutant levels discharged by industries and other nondomestic wastewater sources into municipal sewer systems and into the environment.

EPA’s criminal enforcement program pursues individual and corporate defendants who have committed serious environmental crimes by providing:

• Federal, state and local prosecutors with the evidence needed to prosecute environmental crimes
• Environmental forensic analyses and technical evaluations for both civil and criminal enforcement
• Computer evidence retrieval and evaluation
• Expert legal advice and counsel to EPA, U.S. Attorneys and the Department of Justice

EPA’s criminal enforcement program was established in 1982 and was granted full law enforcement authority by Congress in 1988, and today the program employs special agents and investigators, forensic scientists and technicians, lawyers, and support staff.

North Carolina

The Criminal Investigation Division (CID) uses a field structure comprised of Area and Resident Offices. CID Special Agents are stationed in over 40 locations, creating a nationwide federal presence and placing these agents where they need to be to do their jobs – close to suspected environmental crimes.

North Carolina – Resident Office
U.S. EPA CID
6324 Fairview Road, Suite 525
Charlotte, NC 28210
(704) 366-3098 phone
(704) 366-3157 fax