 |
||
|
Water |  |
 |
||
|
|
|
|
|||||||||
|
|
WaterNews for May 17, 2005Benjamin Grumbles WaterNews is a weekly on-line publication that announces publications, policies, and activities of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Water. In This Week’s WaterNews:
Ninety Percent of Population Served by Community Water Systems Meet Drinking Water StandardsNinety percent of the 272 million people served by 53,000 community water systems across the country received water that met health-based drinking water standards in fiscal year 2004. Through effective treatment, source water protection, and state and federal cooperation, EPA is working to meet its goal of having 95 percent of the population by 2008 served by community water systems in compliance with health-based drinking water standards. Water systems meeting the standards do not exceed the maximum allowable levels for contaminants such as nitrate and meet treatment technique requirements that ensure protection against microbial pathogens such as Giardia and viruses. Each year EPA releases a Summary of Drinking Water and Ground Water Statistics. The statistics in the summary are based on data from the Safe Drinking Water Information System, which is EPA's official record of inventory, violation, and enforcement data for public water systems. The yearly Summaries of Drinking Water and Ground Water Statistics are available at http://www.epa.gov/safewater/data/getdata.html. Assistant Administrator Presents the 2005 Wetland AwardsBenjamin H. Grumbles, Assistant Administrator for Water, will be an awards presenter at the 2005 Wetland Awards Ceremony on May 18, 2005, in Washington, DC. The awards will honor individuals who have made an outstanding contribution to wetlands conservation, research or education projects at the Regional, State or local level. This year’s award ceremony is co-sponsored by Senator John McCain, Senator Mary Landrieu, Representative Sherwood Boehlert, Representative Anna Eshoo, and Leslie Carothers, President of the Environmental Law Institute. For more information on Wetlands visit http://www.epa.gov/owow/wetlands/awm/ Federal Advisory Committee on Detection and Quantitation of Wastewater ContaminantsEPA is establishing a Clean Water Act (CWA) Federal Advisory Committee to engage stakeholders in a consultative process to help improve procedures that calculate and use detection and quantitation limits in the Clean Water programs such as the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES). Committee members will be appointed for a two year term and consist of about twenty stakeholders representing the following five groups: laboratories; industry; publicly owned treatment works or POTWs; states and tribes; and environmental organizations. This committee will have technical experts available to analyze, evaluate, and develop scientific and statistical approaches to improve the detection and measurement of pollutants in water samples. Formal meetings of this committee will be open to the public, and will be announced in the Federal Register. Information and documents are available at: http://www.epa.gov/waterscience/methods/det/ National Water Program Guidance Now Available on the WebThe National Water Program Guidance for FY 2006 is now available on the Office of Water website at www.epa.gov/water/waterplan. The Guidance describes strategies for accomplishing the key environmental and public health goals in the EPA Strategic Plan. The Executive Summary of the Guidance describes top priorities for FY 2006. Included in the Guidance are measures of program activities that support each of ten key environmental goals (i.e. subobjectives that support the overall goals of clean and safe water). EPA Regional offices will be working with States and Tribes to develop "commitments" under these measures over the next several months using general "targets" in the Guidance. These final commitments are to be included in State/EPA grant agreements, performance partnership agreements, and other documents. The Guidance also includes information about the management system for assessing progress toward the environmental goals and the new Agency initiative to link program grants to support of these environmental goals. Printed copies of the Guidance are available from EPA Regional Offices and from Elana Goldstein in the Office of Water (202-564-1800). 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 your actual name- i.e. Subscribe WaterNews Robert Jones) A welcome message will appear in your email box once you are officially subscribed.
|
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
