WaterNews for April 23, 1998

WaterNews is a weekly on-line publication that announces publications, policies, and activities of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Water.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is seeking comments to proposed revisions to the regulations providing for variances and exemptions from drinking water requirements for drinking water systems. These proposed revisions were published in the April 20 Federal Register (63 FR 19438), available on the Internet at http://www.epa.gov/safewater/smallsys/frvar.html.

This proposed rule package is in response to the 1996 Amendments to the Safe Drinking Water Act (PL 104-182) and is part of an overall effort to recognize the challenges small systems may face in complying with national drinking water standards.

The primary goal of this proposed rule on variances and exemptions is to ensure affordable public health protection and encourage progress by public water systems toward compliance with national primary drinking water standards, particularly where poor source water quality or economic constraints make compliance difficult.

Under certain conditions, where no unreasonable risk to health is posed, states or EPA may grant variances to allow public water systems to use specified, less costly technology, particularly when the system cannot afford technology that results in full compliance with existing maximum contaminant levels (MCL) or treatment technique requirements. Under the proposed rule, states and EPA may also grant exemptions to allow public water systems with compelling circumstances more time to comply with a new regulation and when public health is not at risk. The proposed revisions include a description of the conditions and procedures under which a primacy state or EPA Regional Administrator may issue variances to public water systems serving less than 10,000 persons. A primacy state has primary enforcement responsibility under the Safe Drinking Water Act.

A brief summary of the operation of and context for the variance and exemptions provisions can be found online at http://www.epa.gov/safewater/SDWAthem.html. A summary of the contents of the actual variance and exemption provisions themselves can be found at http://www.epa.gov/safewater/SDWAsumm.html. In both summaries, the relevant text is listed under "Small system technologies, variances, and exemptions".

For more information and instructions on how to submit comments, visit http://www.epa.gov/safewater/smallsys/var.html on the Internet or contact Andrew Hudock, Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, Office of Regulatory Enforcement, (202) 564-6032 or email: hudock.andrew@epamail.epa.gov .

Please 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 WaterNews listserve:

• Send an email message, leave the subject line blank, and address it to:
  waternews-join@lists.epa.gov
  
  
• In the body of the message write:
  Subscribe waternews firstname lastname
  (Please leave one blank space between each word, do not include any other message, and use your actual name- i.e. Subscribe waternews Robert Jones)

A welcome message will appear in your email box once you are officially subscribed. WaterNews will be sent to you at the end of each week. If you encounter difficulties subscribing to this list server or if you would like to be taken off the WaterNews list server at any time, please send your E-mail address to Gloria Posey at Posey.Gloria@epa.gov.

Reference Information | Web Satisfaction Survey

EPA Home | Privacy and Security Notice | Contact Us