Risk Management Research Plan For Wet Weather Flows

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This plan was prepared by the National Risk Management Research Laboratory (NRMRL) of EPA’s Office of Research and Development (ORD) to guide wet weather flow (WWF) research for the next five years. It supports the priority research questions and needs of the Office of Water (OW) and has been peer-reviewed by two professional organizations engaged in WWF research. The group responsible for the Agency's WWF research is the Urban Watershed Management Branch (UWMB) of NRMRL's Water Supply and Water Resources Division (WSWRD). The plan will be updated jointly between OW and ORD annually.

In 1995, ORD initiated a reorganization to better manage its research programs. As part of this effort, a strategic approach was established for all ORD programs, founded on a risk assessment/risk management paradigm. A greater emphasis was also placed on WWF research issues to support better watershed management and improve control of nonpoint source (NPS) pollution. The focus of this plan is on the risk management aspects of WWF research. It addresses effects, exposure and risk assessment questions, and presents information on what is known in these areas, but emphasizes developing better riskmanagement decision support tools and WWF control technologies (both end-of-pipe and upstream pollutionprevention/nonstructural approaches).

ORD is also preparing strategic research plans in other areas; two that are closely related to WWF are the "Risk Management Research Plan for Ecosystem Restoration in Watersheds" (EPA, 1996a) and the "Contaminated Sediments Research Plan" (EPA, 1996b). Links with these plans will be established in the future. Further, as this research plan is implemented, NRMRL will continue to coordinate with its sister ORD organizations, including the National Center for Environmental Research and Quality Assurance (NCERQA), the National Exposure Research Laboratory (NERL), the National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory (NHEERL), and the National Center for Environmental Assessment (NCEA). The organizational charts for ORD and NRMRL are shown in Appendix A.

This research plan has two parts: strategic research directions and specific projects. The first part has five research areas: characterization and problem assessment, watershed management, toxic substance impacts and control, control technologies and infrastructure improvement. The second part identifies active and proposed projects supporting each research area and a sixth section, research assistance, that covers all other activities. Funding levels are shown in Part II and in Appendix B.

1996