US Textile Mill Effluent Guidelines — 40 CFR Part 410
- Citation
- 40 CFR Part 410
- Jurisdiction
- US
- Made by
- Environmental Protection Agency
- Instrument
- Regulation
- Status
- In force
What it requires (3 obligations)
This Part applies to any textile mill or textile processing facility which discharges or may discharge process wastewater pollutants to the waters of the United States, or which introduces or may introduce process wastewater pollutants into a publicly owned treatment works.
No date set Confirmed In force, dates fixed in published law
- Who it falls on
- Manufacturers
- Products
- Textiles, home textiles, carpets
- Markets
- US
Discharging to a municipal treatment works does NOT put a mill outside this Part — the applicability clause names that case expressly. What changes is which standards apply, not whether any do. "May discharge" also brings a facility in before any discharge has occurred.
Quoted from 40 CFR § 410.00, "Applicability", eCFR snapshot 2026-08-01.
The Part divides textile mills into nine subcategories, each with its own subpart and its own limitations: wool scouring; wool finishing; low water use processing; woven fabric finishing; knit fabric finishing; carpet finishing; stock and yarn finishing; nonwoven manufacturing; and felted fabric processing. Each subpart states the types of mill to which it applies — for example the wool scouring subpart covers process wastewater discharges from wool scouring, topmaking and general cleaning of raw wool.
No date set Confirmed In force, dates fixed in published law
- Who it falls on
- Manufacturers
- Products
- Textiles, home textiles, carpets
- Markets
- US
There is no single "textile mill effluent limit". A mill running more than one process may sit in more than one subcategory, and the applicability clauses are written around PROCESSES rather than around finished products, so the classification follows what the plant does rather than what it makes.
Quoted from the subpart headings of 40 CFR part 410 and from § 410.10, the wool scouring applicability clause, as the worked example.
Within each subcategory the Part sets five distinct standards: effluent limitations attainable by the best practicable control technology currently available (BPT) and by the best available technology economically achievable (BAT) for existing direct dischargers; new source performance standards (NSPS); and pretreatment standards for existing sources (PSES) and for new sources (PSNS) where wastewater is introduced to a publicly owned treatment works.
No date set Confirmed In force, dates fixed in published law
- Who it falls on
- Manufacturers
- Products
- Textiles, home textiles, carpets
- Markets
- US
New and existing sources are held to different standards, so an expansion or a rebuild can move a mill from one column to another. Which numbers apply is a two-axis lookup: the subcategory the operation falls into, crossed with whether the mill is an existing or new source and whether it discharges directly or to a POTW. The limits themselves are per-subcategory tables in kg per 1,000 kg of production and are not reproduced here.
Quoted from the section headings within each subpart — for the wool scouring subcategory, §§ 410.12 (BPT), 410.13 (BAT), 410.14 (PSES), 410.15 (NSPS) and 410.16 (PSNS).
This is a register, not advice. It records what an instrument says and when it applies. Whether it applies to a particular company, product or shipment is a question for somebody who knows that business, and the answer is frequently not what the summary above would suggest.
Report incorrect information on this page
Tell us what is wrong and we will check it against the source. Reports are private, are never published, and go to an editor rather than into a comment thread.