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Ground Water & Drinking Water |  |
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NDWAC Working Group Meeting on Contaminant Candidate List Regulatory Determinations and the 6-Year Review of Existing RegulationsOn September 25th, 2000, the National Drinking Water Advisory Council (NDWAC) Working Group on Contaminant Candidate List (CCL) Regulatory Determinations and 6-Year Review of Existing Regulations met at the offices of RESOLVE, located at 1255 23rd Street, NW Washington, D.C. This meeting was to finalize recommendations to present to the full NDWAC later this year. This meeting was the final in a series of three scheduled meetings to discuss and develop a protocol for the 6-Year Review of Existing Regulations. Initially it was scheduled as a two-day meeting but the members were able to complete the work in one day. The purpose and overall mission of this Working Group is to make recommendations to the full NDWAC regarding specific provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) 1996 Amendments. At a June 5-6, 2000, meeting, the Working Group began deliberations to recommend a protocol for selecting existing NPDWRs for possible revision. Under SDWA, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) must periodically review existing National Primary Drinking Water Regulations (NPDWRs) and, if appropriate, revise them. This requirement is contained in Section 1412(b)(9) of SDWA, as amended in 1996, which reads: The Administrator shall, not less often than every 6 years, review and revise, as appropriate, each national primary drinking water regulation promulgated under this title. Any revision of a national primary drinking water regulation shall be promulgated in accordance with this section, except that each revision shall maintain, or provide for greater, protection of the health of persons. A conference call meeting on July 10th, 2000, took place to further develop recommendations after members reviewed the revised draft protocol of existing regulation and highlighted specific areas of concern. Working Group members discussed these comments and other unresolved issues during the conference call. Key areas included the role of non-regulatory options, identification of research needs, microbial NPDWRs, and the extent of the review for each NPDWR. Prior to the September 25th meeting a conference call meeting was scheduled for August 2000. This was rescheduled to a face-to-face meeting on September 25th to give members more time to review the revised draft document, which incorporated their modifications as agreed during the July 10th conference call. The five main topics which were discussed are the following: 1) Language and Scope; 2) Key Issues Raised in August 30th, 2000 Draft Protocol; 3) Other Items Needing Working Group Discussion/Clarification; 4) Organizational Issues; and 5) Suggested Editorial Changes. On the topic of "Nature of Language," members agreed that this protocol is a recommendation to the NDWAC and as such should be reviewed more carefully in preparation of the final draft. When discussing the topic of "Key Issues Raised in the August 30th, 2000 Revised Draft Protocol," members agreed that the discussion on research needs at the end of each key element needed to be incorporated into an appendix. The Work Group decided that while a "position paper" would not be necessary, more consideration of individual research needs was appropriate. On the topic about "Other Items Needing Working Group Discussion/Clarification," members discussed the rewrite of the protocol section on "Occurrence and Exposure" which addressed past concerns and suggestions. When working through the topic of "Organizational Issues" members decided to incorporate two diagrams in the appendices, which describe the process flow of the protocol into one diagram to be moved into the main document. A subgroup was created to work on improving these process flow or "decision tree" diagrams. Most members agreed to the "Suggested Editorial Changes" topic with few suggested added improvements. The next step in this process is that a final draft on this protocol will be produced and presented to the NDWAC in November, 2000. Contact Please note that Mark Buehler has replaced Buddy Morgan as a member of this group. Attendees
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