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Water Headlines for August 27, 2007Benjamin H. Grumbles Water Headlines is a weekly on-line publication that announces publications, policies, and activities of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Water. In This Week’s Water Headlines:
New Guidance on Watershed PermittingEPA has published a new technical guidance that will help integrate National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits into watershed management plans. "Watershed-Based NPDES Permitting Technical Guidance" is a follow up to the 2003 implementation guidance and leads permitting interested parties through the analysis of watershed data and developing a framework for implementing an NPDES program. "This guidance helps citizens and regulators accelerate watershed protection through more innovative and holistic permits and programs under the Clean Water Act," said Assistant Administrator for Water Benjamin H. Grumbles. "The detailed information and case studies provide a road map to cleaner and healthier watersheds." The guidance supports approaches to permitting that may help target the watershed's most pressing environmental needs. The approaches will help achieve water quality-based effluent limitations based on water quality standards while providing opportunities for cost reductions and improved efficiencies such as water quality trading. The guidance includes case studies describing how watershed approaches involving NPDES permitting have been implemented across the country. The agency is accepting comments on the guidance on a continuing basis. For an electronic copy of the guidance: http://www.epa.gov/npdes/watersheds 2006 DWSRF Annual ReportIn August, EPA released the 2006 annual report for the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund program (DWSRF). This report highlights the achievements of the drinking water infrastructure assistance program in 2006 and over the nine year history of the program. These successes include almost $13 billion in assistance made available to communities to finance important infrastructure needs and an additional $1.2 billion to support State and local drinking water programs through training, capacity development, and source water protection. The program has supported close to 5,000 projects needed to help public water systems achieve and maintain compliance with drinking water standards, including almost 500 projects for disadvantaged communities. Ensuring the long term sustainability of our nation's drinking water infrastructure is a key challenge facing the nation and the DWSRF offers multifaceted support for meeting this challenge. The report and additional information about the program is available at http://www.epa.gov/safewater/dwsrf.html EPA Releases Documents to Help States Implement Recent Drinking Water RegulationsEPA is releasing Implementation Guidance for the Long Term 2 (LT2) Enhanced Surface Water Treatment and Stage 2 (Stage 2) Disinfectants and Disinfection Byproducts Rules. These rules, which were issued in January 2006, will help protect public health by reducing exposure to microbial pathogens and contaminants that can result from the disinfection process. Along with a summary of the rules, the documents provide guidance for preparing state primary enforcement authority (primacy) revision applications, rule fact sheets, a quick reference guide, a rule crosswalk, and flowcharts illustrating rule requirements. Paper copies of the documents will be available by contacting the Water Resource Center at 202-566-1729 and identifying document number EPA 816-R-07-006 (LT2) or EPA 816-R-07-007 (Stage 2). You may also contact the National Service Center for Environmental Publication 1-800-490-9198 to obtain paper copies. Electronic versions of the documents and additional information about the LT2 and Stage 2 rules may be found on the EPA website at http://www.epa.gov/safewater/disinfection/lt2/compliance.html and http://www.epa.gov/safewater/disinfection/stage2/compliance.html , respectively. Subscribe to Water HeadlinesPlease forward this message to your friends and colleagues who share an interest in water-related issues and would like to hear from EPA’s Office of Water. To subscribe to the Water Headlines listserve: Send an email message, leave the subject line blank, and address it to: In the body of the message write: Subscribe Water Headlines first name last name (Please leave one blank space between each word, do not include any other message, and use your actual name- i.e. Subscribe Water Headlines Robert Jones)
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