 |
||
|
Water |  |
 |
||
|
|
|
|
|||||||||
|
|
WaterNews for April 20, 2000WaterNews 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) Vice President Gore Announces Drinking Water Protections for Ground Water Sources Vice President Al Gore announced an Administration proposal to improve drinking water quality for 109 million Americans by protecting groundwater supplies from disease-causing viruses and bacteria, such as E. coli. The proposed rule--the first to extend such protections to underground sources of drinking water--is expected to prevent over 115,000 illnesses a year. Under the proposal, states would be required to survey all drinking water systems, and ground water systems at risk of contamination would be required to monitor their sources and take corrective action such as disinfection to address any contamination found. Drinking water suppliers using ground water also would be required to fix defects in their systems that could lead to contamination. The proposed rule would not affect private wells serving individual homes. For more information, visit http://www.epa.gov/safewater/gwr.html on the Internet. 2) EPA Withdraws Federal Water Quality Criteria in Several States EPA has published a final rule withdrawing certain federal human health and aquatic life water quality criteria applicable in Vermont, Rhode Island, Kansas, the District of Columbia and Idaho. In 1992, EPA promulgated a final rule (known as the National Toxics Rule) establishing water quality criteria for toxic pollutants for fourteen states and jurisdictions, including these five. These states have now adopted, and EPA has approved, human health and aquatic life water quality criteria. By this action, EPA is amending the regulations to withdraw certain human health and aquatic life water quality criteria applicable to these states. A copy of the final rule and are available at http://www.epa.gov/waterscience/standards/withdraw.html on the Internet. 3) Sustainable Challenge Grants Announced EPA announced the final selections for the 1999 Sustainable Development Challenge Grants. Four million dollars will be made available to 27 projects selected from approximately 1,000 proposals. The program challenges communities, businesses, and governments to work cooperatively to develop flexible, locally-oriented approaches that link efforts to enhance environmental quality with sustainable development and revitalization. For more information on the selected projects visit http://www.epa.gov/ecocommunity/sdcg/ on the Internet. 4) EPA Proposes to Amend the Definition of Fill Material
On April 20, 2000, EPA and Army proposed a rule to revise the Clean Water Act regulations
defining the term Afill material.@ The Army and EPA definitions of "fill material" currently differ
from each other, so the proposal would amend both the Army regulations and the EPA
regulations to provide a single consistent definition. The proposal also would make conforming
changes to the related definition of "discharge of fill material." For more information, visit the
proposed rule
*************************************************************** 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.
|
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
