WaterNews for November 19, 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.

Inside this week's WaterNews:
1) New Federal Collaboration to Protect Drinking Water
2) EPA Releases Draft Strategy for Persistent, Bioaccumulative, and Toxic Pollutants and a Draft Mercury Action Plan

1) New Federal Collaboration to Protect Drinking Water

On November 13, EPA and eight other federal agencies signed the Federal Multi-Agency Source Water Agreement for assessing and protecting drinking water sources. The agreement, a key action item of the President's Clean Water Action Plan, will make valuable data and expertise more accessible to drinking water quality managers at the state, tribal and local government levels and to the public. It will also help states, tribes, and localities delineate source water protection areas, identify and map sources of contamination that threaten drinking water supplies, and inform the public about these threats. This agreement ensures full federal cooperation with states as they fulfill the 1996 Safe Drinking Water Act mandate to assess the potential threats to each public drinking water system.

Regional forums will be held in each of EPA's 10 regions in 1999 to facilitate partnerships and ensure implementation of the federal assistance. For more information contact Denise Coutlakis at coutlakis.denise@epa.gov or Roy Simon at simon.roy@epa.gov.

2) EPA Releases Draft Strategy for Persistent, Bioaccumulative, and Toxic Pollutants and a Draft Mercury Action Plan

On Monday, November 16, EPA released a Draft Strategy to reduce priority persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic pollutants (PBTs). The goal of this strategy is to further reduce risks to human health and the environment from existing and future exposure to PBTs. These pollutants pose risks because they are toxic, persist in ecosystems, and accumulate in organisms in increasing amounts higher in the food chain. The draft strategy stresses a multi-media approach across air, water, and land to address the problems of PBTs.

As a part of the draft PBT Strategy, EPA released a draft Action Plan for Mercury. This is the first action plan for the 12 pollutants targeted in the "Binational Toxics Reduction Strategy" signed last year by US and Canada. The draft Mercury Action Plan contains a list of actions across EPA to address this potent neurotoxin. The Office of Water has two regulatory initiatives under development for mercury; promulgation of a new analytical technique for measuring mercury in wastewater discharges and publication of a new human health water quality criterion for mercury.

For additional information please visit EPA's website at http://www.epa.gov/pbt/pbtstrat.htm

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