Results of a
Meeting Held on April 30 - May 2, 1997
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Results of a Meeting Held by
The National Drinking Water Advisory Council
April 30 - May 2, 1997 Washington, D.C.
Background
The Council provides practical and independent advice to the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) on matters and policies related to drinking water
quality and hygiene, and maintains an awareness of developing issues and
problems in the drinking water area and advises the Agency on emerging
issues. It reviews and advises the Administrator on regulations and guidance
that are required by the Safe Drinking Water Act; makes recommendations
concerning necessary special studies and research; recommends policies
with respect to the promulgation of drinking water standards; assists
in identifying emerging environmental or health problems related to potentially
hazardous constituents in drinking water; and proposes actions to encourage
cooperation and communication between the Agency and other governmental
agencies interested groups, the general public, and technical associations
and organizations on drinking water quality.
A meeting was held at the Washington Plaza Hotel on April 30 through
May 2, 1997, to provide advice to EPA and to receive briefings from EPA
on emerging issues. The following recommendations and one commendation
are a result of this meeting:
Recommendation 1 - Unregulated Contaminants
EPA should identify the resources necessary, and where practicable, to
retrieve and make accessible the data from the unregulated contaminants
monitoring to assist with the contaminant list.
Recommendation 2 - Small System Technology Affordability Issue
The Council recommends that EPA evaluate alternative definitions of affordability
under the law for small system technology including the following two-step
process:
- Development of general cost information for various technologies
(and various system sizes) as a "yardstick" which allows comparison
and bench marking of each technology against the other, without prematurely
eliminating technologies; and
- Development of income-based affordability criteria (i.e. %
of median household income) that can be applied to individual systems
in various size categories.
This information can be used by systems and states in selecting appropriate
technology for consideration.
Recommendation 3 - Ambient Water Quality
The Council recommends that:
EPA in its ambient water quality planning and standard setting process
place protection of drinking water sources on a par with pollution reduction
and ecosystem restoration. The integration of pollution reduction and
watershed planning under the Clean Water Act with the source water assessment
and protection integral to safe drinking water is a priority for successful
implementation of the Safe Drinking Water Act.
Examples of actions which can implement this recommendation are:
- Ensure that when salinity standards are set for drinking water estuaries,
that discharge of salinity constituents from NPDES permit holders becomes
a regulated pollutant.
- When ecosystem restoration in watershed planning proceeds, drinking
water source protection is not degraded but balanced with the needs
of the environment.
- As EPA reviews and approves state prepared basin plans, the standards
set for ambient water quality reflect the problems and vulnerabilities
identified by drinking water uses in source water assessments and sanitary
surveys.
- EPA assess its reliance on drinking water treatment as an alternative
to establishing ambient water quality standards for protection of source
water.
- Integrate to the extent allowable under the SDWA, source water protection
activities for both public and private water supplies.
Commendation
The Council strongly commends EPA for initiating appropriate working
groups and providing the leadership, time and resources in order to make
the working group process operate smoothly and effectively and in doing
so, increasing the focus and impact of Council deliberations and recommendations.
Working Group Recommendation
As a result of deliberations on the issues brought before the Council
at this meeting, the Council requested the following recommendation be
forwarded to the Occurrence and Contaminant Selection Working Group:
The Summary of Results statement should be modified to read:
The Candidate List can not be extensive and must be of manageable size.
A preliminary assessment of technical expertise and available data indicates
that 30-50 contaminants can be addressed during the five-year cycle between
lists.
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