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Senior Assistant Director
Pretreatment & Industrial Wastewater Services Section
 For more than three decades, the Pretreatment and Industrial Wastewater Services Section has worked to protect the City's wastewater treatment plants (and thus the state waters) by regulating industrial wastes that are discharged to the City's sanitary sewer system.
The Pretreatment and Industrial Wastewater Service Section manages one of the largest pretreatment programs in the nation - 200 permits are maintained (55 of which are categorical) and approximately 5,500 samples per year are collected. It administers and enforces federal EPA regulations, as well as City of Houston Ordinance, Chapter 47, Article V., (Disposal of Industrial Wastes through City Sewer System).
Section Objectives
- Protect Houston's publicly owned treatment works (POTW) from pollutants which may cause interference with sewage treatment plant operations;
- Prevent introduction of pollutants into a POTW that could cause pass through of untreated pollutants to receiving waters;
- Manage pollutant discharges into a POTW to improve opportunities for reuse of POTW wastewater and residuals (sewage sludge); and,
- Prevent introducing pollutants into a POTW that could cause worker health or safety concerns, or pose a potential endangerment to the public or the environment.
Inspection and Sampling
 Houston's monitoring program is conducted to control discharges to the City's wastewater treatment plants. Routine facility inspections and sampling are conducted by inspectors to ensure compliance with the City's Ordinance, as well as each industrial user's individual permit requirements. Inspectors also conduct surveillance monitoring at sewer maintenance manholes, inspect targeted areas in the City to inventory industrial users that require permits, and respond to treatment plant upsets or interference which may require investigations of industrial users upstream from treatment plants.
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