Rural Water - Quarter 1, 2009 - (Page 21)

Everyone wants to know what’s coming in the next regulation. States want to know. Water systems want to know. Predicting the new regulations is something like predicting the weather. A weatherman could just sit back and look outside when the weather actually happens. TV stations probably wouldn’t want to pay much for that. They expect the weatherman to know a little about the weather-making process and be able to predict what will happen next. For drinking water, thanks to some language in the 1996 Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) amendments, we can also look into the future to get some idea as to what may be coming next. And we have the added advantage over the weatherman in that we can actually inﬂuence what will be in the regulations. Prior to these legislative changes, EPA was mandated to regulate 25 contaminants every three years. As you might expect, that put pressure on EPA to regulate contaminants to meet artiﬁcial deadlines and not necessarily because there was a critical need for that contaminant to be regulated. States and utility organizations both supported the concept of regulations based on sound science and a demonstrated need for regulation to protect public health. These principles became part of the SDWA amendments and drive the regulatory process today, rather than mandatory schedules. EPA now has a formal process it follows to determine what contaminants should be regulated. This process is open to our review and comment so we can get some indication of the contaminants that may be coming and provide advice to EPA on the appropriateness of speciﬁc contaminants under consideration. This is all accomplished through the Contaminant Candidate List (CCL) process shown graphically in Figure 1. If you understand this process, you can feel like a Washington insider and make your own predictions about the future regulations. Those of us who work in DC don’t always have special inside tips, we just know what to look for, where to look, and have a little time to do the looking. I hope you will also ﬁ nd that a little investment of your time is worth it to help you prepare for new regulations. effects and occurrence in drinking water. These criteria are evaluated further to determine which contaminants should ﬁ nally be regulated during the Regulatory Determination part of the process. Generalized Flow of Regulatory Processes Draft CCL Final CCL Preliminary Regulatory Determinations Final Regulatory Determinarions No further action if make decision to not regulate (may develope health strategy) Public review and comment Draft UCMR Final UCMR UCNR Monitoring Results Proposed Rule (NPDWR) Final Rule (NPDWR) Six Year Review of Existing NPDWRs At each stage, need increased speciﬁcity and conﬁdence in the type of supporting data used (e.g. health and occurance). Figure 1: The overall federal regulatory process (Graphic courtesy of EPA) The regulatory process is cyclical, with new CCLs and regulatory determinations occurring every ﬁve years. The key component is the Contaminant Candidate List itself. EPA prepares this list of contaminants that might need to be regulated. Unless something unusual happens, the future regulated contaminants all start on this list. So, I’ve already told you where to ﬁ nd all the upcoming regulated contaminants – picking the right ones is the complex part! EPA ﬁ rst proposes a draft list in which they identify the contaminants to be considered. EPA draws from nearly 300 data sources to ﬁ nd the contaminants to place on the draft list, including familiar sources like regulated hazardous wastes, lists of regulated pesticides, the Toxic Release Inventory, as well as many more obscure sources from around the world. Contaminants from the draft list go to the ﬁ nal list based on information about their health The CCL is one of the places where utilities can have a tremendous inﬂuence on which contaminants eventually get regulated. One of the criteria is whether the contaminants are found in signiﬁcant quantities in drinking water. One way EPA gathers data on the occurrence of these contaminants in drinking water systems is to include them in the Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Regulation (UCMR), where large systems and a representative group of smaller systems collect samples. EPA also needs information on these contaminants from any state or water system that has collected samples for contaminants being considered. If you have detected some of these contaminants in your water system, that may be information that helps EPA decide whether it can make a serious case for regulating the contaminant. It’s just as valuable if you have done testing and not detected speciﬁc contaminants. That can help EPA decide that First Quarter 2009 • 21

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Rural Water - Quarter 1, 2009

Rural Water - Quarter 1, 2009 Contents From the President Question & Answer: Water Conservation in the Home Avoiding the Humpty Dumpty Approach to Data Backup From the CEO What the Future Holds Asset Management for Small Communities Understanding Your Surface Water Source: The Rivers Hydraulic Models Expeditionary Water Packaging System Graces Delta The Rural Water Rally in April Training in Hawaii Regulatory Update Rural Water Releases Report on Water Infrastructure Projects and Economic Stimulus Legislation Throwing My Loop Advertisers.com Index to Advertisers

Rural Water - Quarter 1, 2009

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