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WaterNews for September 17, 1998WaterNews is a weekly on-line publication that announces publications, policies, and activities of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Water. Inside this week's WaterNews:
1) USDA-EPA Announce Draft Unified National Strategy for Animal Feeding OperationsEPA Administrator Carol M. Browner and Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman announced on September 16 a draft plan to improve water quality and reduce public health risks associated with animal feeding operations, as part of the President's Clean Water Action Plan. Animal feeding operations are livestock-raising operations, such as hog, cattle, dairy, and poultry farms, where animals are kept and raised in confined situations. When not properly managed, animal waste can run off into nearby water bodies. The draft Strategy addresses the resulting water quality problems of runoff polluted by excess nitrogen, phosphorus, pathogens, and other compounds. The draft Strategy proposes a variety of voluntary and regulatory approaches, including a national expectation that all animal feeding operations develop and implement comprehensive nutrient management plans by the year 2008. EPA and USDA will take public comment on the draft strategy over the next 120 days. Comments on the draft strategy should be addressed to Denise C. Coleman, Program Analyst, USDA, Natural Resources Conservation Service, P.O. Box 2890, Attn: AFO, Washington, DC 20013-2890. Copies of the strategy are available on the Internet at http://www.epa.gov/cleanwater/afo/. 2) National Academy of Sciences Issues Radon ReportEPA is developing a regulation to protect public health by limiting radon in drinking water, as required by the 1996 Safe Drinking Water Act. This week, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) published a new report on the public health risks of radon in drinking water. An NAS report issued earlier this year (BEIR VI) confirmed that radon is a serious public health threat. This new report goes on to refine the risks of radon in drinking water and confirms that there are drinking water related cancer deaths, primarily due to lung cancer. The report in general confirms earlier EPA scientific conclusions and analyses for drinking water, and presents no major changes to EPA's 1994 risk assessment. The NAS recommendations are expected to be valuable inputs into the process of
development of the regulatory limit (maximum contaminant level or MCL) for radon in drinking
water, in combination with consideration of a variety of other factors. For a copy of the report or
the NAS press release, visit http://www.nas.edu/morenews/ A more complete discussion of EPA's perspective on the National Academy of Sciences Radon Report is available on the Internet at http://www.epa.gov/safewater/radon/nas.html. 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:
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.
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