WaterNews for October 28, 2005

Benjamin Grumbles
Assistant Administrator
Office of Water

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:

• Water Environment Federation Technical Exhibition and Conference
• EPA Releases Results from Gulf Water Sampling
• 2006 Water Quality Trading Conference
• Subscribe to WaterNews

Water Environment Federation Technical Exhibition and Conference

Administrator Stephen L. Johnson, the Assistant Administrator for Water, and other senior officials will be participating in the Water Environment Federation Technical Exhibition and Conference (WEFTEC) on Oct. 31 through Nov. 2, in Washington, DC. The Administrator will make the keynote address, and other officials will participate in panel discussions on various water topics.

EPA Releases Results from Gulf Water Sampling

On Oct. 21, EPA announced test results from water samples collected by the Ocean Survey Vessel Bold in the Gulf as part of its Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts.
"The water sampling results are an important part of the large-scale, collaborative effort to monitor the hurricane's impact on water in the Gulf," said Benjamin H. Grumbles, assistant administrator for the Office of Water. "Our ship, the OSV Bold, is a floating laboratory that has been used in this cooperative response, providing a vehicle for shared testing and analysis."
EPA announced the first pathogen indicator data collected by the EPA vessel. This data was collected from Sept. 27 through Oct. 2, 2005 at monitoring stations in the river channels and nearshore waters surrounding the Mississippi Delta. The agency monitored 20 areas to determine whether fecal pollution from flooded communities had spread into these waters. All 20 monitoring stations tested showed that at the time the water was appropriate for primary contact recreation--including swimming. While this is encouraging for recreational uses, this data should not be used to assess the safety of consuming raw or undercooked molluscan shellfish--such as oysters-- because accidental ingestion of water presents different risks than eating raw or undercooked shellfish.
The analyses performed aboard the OSV Bold tested for Enterococcus and Clostridium perfringens. The results are from Enterococcus only at this time as the Clostridium analysis requires additional time. At four stations, Enterococcus was detected from 10 to 53.1 per 100 ml --- which is below the marine water standard of 500 per 100 ml and the freshwater standard of 151 per 100 ml. EPA's initial assessment is now complete and sample analysis is currently proceeding as planned. Additional results of water, sediment and fish tissue analysis will be released as the data become available.

The OSV Bold is a scientific survey vessel 224 feet long and 43 feet wide that collects oceanographic data in waters of the Atlantic, Pacific, Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. The Bold initiated monitoring and assessment surveys for EPA in August 2005 and will serve as the principal platform for this multi-agency effort to assess the near-shore environmental and human health impacts of Hurricane Katrina. The data is available at: http://www.epa.gov/katrina/testresults/water/index.html#surface and information about EPA's survey vessel the Bold is available at: http://www.epa.gov/bold .

2006 Water Quality Trading Conference

The Second National Water Quality Trading Conference will be held May 23-25, 2006, in Pittsburgh, PA. The conference is hosted by EPA and USDA and sponsored by a number of organizations, agencies, and companies. A one-day pre-conference workshop on Trading Basics, taught by EPA, will be held on May 22, 2006.

For more information, including a call for abstracts, go to:
http://cfpub2.epa.gov/npdes/courseinfo.cfm?program_id=0&outreach_id=267&schedule_id=851

For more information please contact Virginia Kibler at 202-564-0596 or kibler.virginia@epa.gov or Carl Lucero at 301-504-2222 or lucero.carl@epa.gov

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