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WaterNews for April 22, 2003G. Tracy Mehan, III 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
Earth Day 2003: A Celebration of 30 Years of Improvements in Nation’s Water QualityUsing historical records and water quality data archived over the past 60 years, a retrospective study evaluates the impact of the 1972 Clean Water Act on long-term water quality trends in the nation’s rivers and estuaries. Previously elusive answers to critical questions about the effectiveness of the regulatory requirements of the 1972 Clean Water Act are now available in Progress in Water Quality: An Evaluation of the National Investment in Municipal Wastewater Treatment published by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2000(www.epa.gov/owm/wquality/benefits.htm) and Municipal Wastewater Treatment: Evaluating Improvements in National Water Quality published in 2002 by John Wiley & Sons (www.wiley.com G. Tracy Mehan, III, EPA’s Assistant Administrator for Water, remarked that “under the Clean Water Act, the federal government invested well over $60 billion through the Construction Grants Program and the Clean Water State Revolving Fund to support the nation’s municipal wastewater infrastructure.” Federal, state and local government and private industry investments in water pollution control have achieved significant improvements in water quality. Water quality improvements, in turn, have brought about the restoration of fisheries and other vital environmental resources, the creation of water-based recreational opportunities and the economic revitalization of once abandoned waterfront property. Mehan commended the study for being “the first national-scale study to provide a rigorous evaluation of the effectiveness of the effluent regulation policies in achieving the “fishable and swimmable” goals of the Clean Water Act.” The study supports the hypothesis that the 1972 Clean Water Act’s technology-based regulation of wastewater treatment facilities has achieved significant nation-wide environmental successes. While celebrating the successes of the Clean Water Act, the authors warn that if water pollution control infrastructure investments fail to keep pace with future population growth, the environmental benefits realized over the past 30 years may be lost to the next generation. This important study has clearly confirmed a ‘before and after’ cause-effect relationship between the effluent limit regulations of the Clean Water Act and improvements in water quality in the nation’s rivers. The quantity of oxygen-demanding pollutants dumped into the nation’s rivers by municipal wastewater plants decreased by 23% even while the nation’s population grew by 35% in the 30 years since passage of the 1972 Act. The effect of the dramatic decline in wastewater loading on water quality, particularly under comparable critical low-flow conditions was confirmed by statistically significant national-scale improvements in worst-case dissolved oxygen levels in more than two-thirds of the nation’s river reaches. Mehan commended the findings of the report and its nine case studies “as unequivocally showing how local water pollution control investments directly improved water quality, restored fisheries and other environmental resources, created recreational opportunities and revitalized once abandoned waterfront property.” The case studies include the Connecticut River, the Hudson-Raritan estuary, the Delaware estuary, the Potomac estuary, the James estuary, the Chattahoochee River, the Ohio River, the Upper Mississippi River and the Willamette River. Office of Water Featured in the Washington Post“The Mini Page,” a nationwide publication for children and their families, inserted in newspapers across the United States, featured the Office of Water in its Sunday, April 20 issue. Locally “The Mini Page” runs in the “Washington Post.” Visit the Washington Post at www.washingtonpost.com Assistant Administrator gives keynote address at Schwab Capital Markets’ Global Water ConferenceAssistant Administrator G. Tracy Mehan, III, gave the keynote address to the Schwab Capital Markets’ Conference on April 15 in Washington, D.C. To read the speech visit http://www.epa.gov/water/speeches/041503tm.html. First Annual National Estuary Habitat Restoration ConferenceMore than 800 participants representing all coastal States of the U.S., Canada and England attended the Restore America's Estuaries (RAE) inaugural national conference on coastal and estuarine habitat restoration held April 13-16 in Baltimore, MD. Supported in part by EPA's Coastal Management Branch, the conference included 52 workshop sessions focusing on science and technology, monitoring and evaluation, national and regional policy issues, and funding opportunities. Selected Federal and private industry leaders engaged in a visionary discourse about the major issues affecting the restoration of coastal ecosystems and how to create a thriving future for our coastal heritage. Attendees included field practitioners, community leaders, consultants, scientists, regulators, program managers, educators, volunteers and others, who engage in all aspects of habitat restoration. Industry representatives exhibited the latest technologies and tools in the field of habitat restoration. For more information visit the Restore America’s Estuaries website at www.estuaries.org Improved Consumer Confidence Reports Web-based ProgramThe Office of Water (OW) is releasing an improved and very user-friendly version of CCRiWriter, a web-based tool developed to assist water systems in creating their annual Consumer Confidence Reports (CCRs). The program was originally developed in response to State concerns that preparation of CCRs would be a burden on small water systems. The CCRiWriter program uses a "step by step" interview process to fill in the report, which allows you to enter data and generate a CCR for their customers that is both informative to the consumer and in compliance with current Federal regulations. The user only needs the system's monitoring results to complete a CCR. To access the program, go to http://www.epa.gov/safewater/ccr/ccrwriter.html. For more information, please contact Lisa Christ at 202-564-8354. Drinking Water Academy Demonstrates New Training Technique – Web ConferencingThe Office of Water Drinking Water Academy is testing a new training technology that will provide easy access to classroom type training via the internet. The first training will be held May 8th, 2003, and the title of the training is “Security Considerations When Performing a Sanitary Survey of a Small Drinking Water System.” This web conference training will allow both the students and the instructor to remain at their work location, reducing travel related costs to attend this training. The training medium will support real-time interactive communication. For more information, please call Murlene Lash at 202-564-3818. EPA to Expand and Strengthen Sewage Sludge Research and ProgramsThe U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a preliminary strategy for expanding and strengthening sewage sludge (biosolids) research and programs on April 9, 2003. Under the strategy, which responds to recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences' National Research Council, EPA will undertake the following activities:
EPA is also announcing preliminary results of its review of existing sewage sludge regulations as required by the Clean Water Act, which is required every two years. The public is invited to provide comments until July 8, 2003. Following this public comment period, the agency will publish, in early 2004, its final strategies for expanding and strengthening biosolids research and programs and specific pollutants for possible regulation. For more information and a copy of the notice go to: http://www.epa.gov/waterscience/biosolids/. STORET Version 2.0 ReleasedEPA’s Office of Water (OW) announced the release of STORET Version 2.0 on April 15, 2003. This new version of EPA's main repository for water monitoring data will better enable our State, local, Tribal and Federal partners to document their ambient water quality and biological monitoring activities and manage their environmental data. STORET is a cornerstone of the water monitoring program because of its uniform approach to the storage of quality assurance metadata, its adherence to EPA data standards, and its ability to store disparate kinds of data. The newly released Version 2.0 is fully compatible with current Windows platforms for personal computers; improves the batch upload capability for water data; allows users to store data describing probability-based monitoring designs; can store documents, graphics, and digital pictures; and allows users to store information on over 320,000 different biological species. OW will host a one-week STORET Version 2.0 Train-the-Trainers workshop for Regional STORET coordinators in June, and will be posting a training schedule for Version 2.0 at http://www.epa.gov/STORET/. If you have questions about STORET, please call the STORET User Assistance at 1-800-424-9067 or sent and email to STORET@epa.gov. Summary of Water Infrastructure ForumSummary of Water Infrastructure Forum The summary from the closing the "GAP: Innovative Solutions for America's Water Infrastructure" Forum is now available on the website at http://www.epa.gov/water/infrastructure/GapForum.htm. Great Lakes National Program Office's Significant Activities ReportThe latest issue of the U.S. EPA Great Lakes National Program Office's Significant Activities Report is now available on line at http://www.epa.gov/glnpo/active/index.html. Subscribe to WaterNewsPlease 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: 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 A welcome message will appear in your email box once you are officially subscribed. Following your welcome message, you will begin to receive WaterNews once a 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. We welcome any comments that you may have.
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