WaterNews for December 29, 1999

Inside this week's WaterNews:

1. Vice President Gore Announces Increased Access to Local Drinking Water Information
2. Y2K and Water
3. EPA Updates Water Quality Criteria for Ammonia

1) Vice President Gore Announces Increased Access to Local Drinking Water Information

Vice President Al Gore today announced that for the first time, the public will have access to "real-time" information about the quality of their local drinking water. A new Internet site piloted by the Des Moines Water Works and EPA will allow the public to obtain up-to-the-minute information on the concentration of individual contaminants in Des Moines' drinking water. The new drinking water web site was developed by the Des Moines Water Works as part of the Administration's Environmental Monitoring for Public Access to Community Tracking -- or EMPACT-- program. To visit the site, go to http://www.dmww.com/empact on the Internet.

For information on annual drinking water quality, visit http://www.epa.gov/safewater/dwinfo.htm on the Internet.

2) Y2K and Water

For information about what EPA is doing about Y2K, visit http://www.epa.gov/year2000/ on the Internet. For more information about the President's council on Y2K, visit http://www.y2k.gov/ on the Internet.

3) EPA Updates Water Quality Criteria for Ammonia

EPA is publishing the 1999 Update of Water Quality Criteria for Ammonia, incorporating comments received from the 1998 Update. The 1999 Update contains EPA's most recent freshwater aquatic life criteria for ammonia and supersedes all previous freshwater aquatic life ammonia criteria. The new criteria reflect recent research and data since 1984, and are a revision of several elements in the 1984 Criteria, including the pH and temperature relationship of the acute and chronic criteria and the averaging period of the chronic criterion. As a result of these revisions, the acute criterion for ammonia is now dependent on pH and fish species, and the chronic criterion is dependent on pH and temperature. At lower temperatures, the dependency of chronic criterion is also dependent on the presence or absence of early life stages of fish. For additional information, visit http://www.epa.gov/waterscience/standards/ammonia/ on the Internet.

**Happy New Year from WaterNews.**

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