Water Online's EPA Weekly: October 3, 2007

Welcome to Water Online's weekly review of the latest U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations, resources, and activities related to the water, wastewater, and stormwater industries. EPA offices and programs covered in this installment are listed below. Click on an office or program name to go directly to that section of the article.

• Office of Water
  
  • Bathroom Sink Faucets To Bear WaterSense Label
    
  • Forest Service and EPA Increase Coordination to Improve Water Quality
    
  • EPA Strengthens Lead in Drinking Water Rule
    
  • New Tools for Reducing Nitrogen and Phosphorus Pollution
• Office of Research and Development
  
  • NCEA Publishes Final IRIS Assessment of 1,1,1-Trichloroethane
    
  • CADDIS 2007 Decision Support System Now Online
• Environmental Technology Verification (ETV) Program
  
  • Generic Verification Protocol Published
    
  • ETV Vendor Solicitations
    
  • ETV Verifications Update

Office of Water

Bathroom Sink Faucets To Bear WaterSense Label
Consumers will soon be able to identify high-performance, water-efficient sink faucets for their bathrooms now that EPA has released a product specification for faucets that use about 30% less water than conventional models.

In order to earn the WaterSense label, faucets must be independently tested and certified by a licensed certifying body to meet EPA's water-efficiency and performance criteria. To meet the criteria, faucets and accessories such as aerators cannot flow at a rate of more than 1.5 gallons per minute (gpm), or less than 0.8 gpm. Working with stakeholders, EPA chose a rate that ensures both water savings and that the faucet flow rate will continue to meet the needs of the user.

WaterSense-labeled faucets not only save water, but they have the added benefit of saving energy used to treat, pump, and heat water. In fact, letting a faucet run for 5 minutes uses about as much energy as letting a 60-watt light bulb run for 14 hours.

Consumers can already find the WaterSense label on more than 60 high-efficiency toilets. WaterSense-labeled toilets use 20% less water than standard models and are independently tested and certified to perform as well as or better than their market counterparts. Working with EPA, retailers are starting to feature WaterSense labeled toilets in their plumbing sections, and bathroom sink faucets should be close behind in 2008.

Bathrooms are, by far, the largest use of water in the home – responsible for about half of total indoor water use. By installing a WaterSense labeled high-efficiency toilet and faucet or aerator, American homes can save more than 11,000 gallons each year. WaterSense, an EPA partnership program launched in 2006, seeks to enhance the market for water-efficient products and services by building a national brand for water efficiency. For more information and a list of WaterSense labeled plumbing products, visit: www.epa.gov/watersense/specs/faucet_final.htm.

Forest Service and EPA Increase Coordination to Improve Water Quality
EPA and the U.S. Forest Service have agreed on new steps designed to improve water quality on National Forests and Grasslands. On Friday, September 28, Forest Service Chief Abigail Kimbell and EPA Assistant Administrator for Water Benjamin Grumbles signed today a Memorandum of Agreement that enables both agencies to increase coordinated efforts to manage, protect, and restore the health of the nation's water resources.

More than 60 million Americans get their water from sources on the National Forests in addition to municipal water supplies. Watersheds play an important role in supporting aquatic species and biodiversity and provide recreational opportunities to millions of visitors each year. Data shows that approximately 8% of all water quality impairments nationally are located on National Forest System lands. Leading causes of these impairments include elevated temperatures, excess sediment, and habitat modification.

This agreement identifies areas in which the Forest Service and EPA will increase coordination of activities and cooperation with states, territories, and tribes to address water quality impairments on National Forest System lands and accelerate attainment of water quality standards.

More information can be found at www.fs.fed.us/biology and www.epa.gov/owow/tmdl.

EPA Strengthens Lead in Drinking Water Rule
On Tuesday, September 25, EPA issued a final rule that will improve requirements in the areas of monitoring, customer awareness, and lead service line replacement. Specifically, the agency will require water suppliers to provide consumers with information to help them make decisions about how to limit their exposure to lead in drinking water.

The final rule is one outcome of EPA's March 2005 Drinking Water Lead Reduction Plan, which arose from EPA's analysis of the current regulation and state and local implementation. Since release of the plan, the agency has released guidance to help public water systems better understand the potential impacts of treatment changes on their ability to control lead and asked the National Drinking Water Advisory Council to provide recommendations on public education requirements. The agency has also provided new or updated guidance and tools to help schools and child care facilities to monitor for lead in drinking water.

A copy of the rule and more information on lead in drinking water may be found at: www.epa.gov/safewater/lcrmr/index.html.

New Tools for Reducing Nitrogen and Phosphorus Pollution
The EPA Office of Water is rolling out several new tools to help fight "nutrient pollution" (high loadings of nitrogen and phosphorus) into U.S. waters. The redesigned Water Quality Criteria for Nitrogen and Phosphorus Pollution Web site (www.epa.gov/waterscience/nutrients) now houses scientific literature reviews, monitoring data, guidance manuals, and webcasts to help states establish numeric water quality criteria for nitrogen and phosphorus. The new Web site also offers answers to states' questions about how to use the criteria, as well as a clearinghouse of water treatment technologies and land-use practices. The public can also visit the Web site to learn more about this environmental problem and find out what they can do about it.

For more information on the EPA Office of Water, visit www.epa.gov/ow.

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Office of Research and Development

NCEA Publishes Final IRIS Assessment of 1,1,1-Trichloroethane
EPA's National Center for Environmental Assessment (NCEA) has released the final Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) human health assessment for 1,1,1-trichloroethane (CASRN 71-55-6). The assessment is part of EPA's continuing efforts to provide quality human health risk information that has been subjected to an open and rigorous independent peer review process. The document will provide science-based human health assessment information to support EPA regulatory activities. In addition, other government and private entities use this information to help characterize public health risks of chemical substances in a site-specific situation and thereby support risk management decisions designed to protect public health. For more information or to view the assessment, visit: www.epa.gov/iris/subst/0197.htm.

CADDIS 2007 Decision Support System Now Online
EPA announced the release of the Causal Analysis/Diagnosis Decision Information System (CADDIS) 2007, which increases access to relevant information useful for causal analysis and provides methods and tools that practitioners can use to analyze their own data.

The new Candidate Cause section provides overviews of commonly encountered causes of impairments to aquatic systems: metals, sediments, nutrients, flow alteration, temperature, ionic strength, and low dissolved oxygen. CADDIS includes new Conceptual Models that illustrate the relationships from sources to stressors to biological effects. An Interactive Conceptual Model for phosphorus links the diagram with supporting literature citations. The new Analyzing Data section helps practitioners analyze their data sets and interpret and use those results as evidence within the EPA causal assessment process. Downloadable tools include a graphical user interface statistical package (CADStat), and programs for use with the freeware R statistical package, and a Microsoft Excel template. These tools can be used to quantify associations between causes and biological impairments using innovative methods such as species-sensitivity distributions, biological inferences, conditional probability analysis, and quantile regression analysis. And new Databases have been added that provide stressor-response associations based on laboratory toxicity tests of metals and field observational data.

For more information on CADDIS 2007, and to access the application online, visit: cfpub.epa.gov/ncea/cfm/recordisplay.cfm?deid=57027.

For more information on the EPA Office of Research and Development, visit www.epa.gov/ord.

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Environmental Technology Verification (ETV) Program

Generic Verification Protocol Published
The ETV program's Advanced Monitoring Systems (AMS) Center has published the Generic Verification Protocol for Rapid Beach Water Quality Screening Technologies. This protocol may be used to verify the performance of screening technologies that provide quantitative or qualitative measurements of indicator bacteria, such as Enterococci and E. coli, in fresh, brackish, and/or marine/coastal water samples. The protocol is available for download at www.epa.gov/etv/pdfs/vrvs/600etv07036/600etv07036.pdf. For more information about the protocol, opportunities for collaboration, and technology vendors interested in being verified, please contact Ann Louise Sumner of Battelle at (614) 424 3973 or sumnera@battelle.org.

For a complete list of ETV generic verification protocols, visit www.epa.gov/etv/verifications/protocols-index.html.

ETV Vendor Solicitations
ETV Centers have issued solicitations for vendors and/or collaborators interested in verification of the following technology categories. For more detailed information on these solicitations, please contact the appropriate center or visit the ETV Web site at www.epa.gov/etv/vendors/vendannounce.html.

ETV Water Quality Protection Center Solicits Technology Vendors
The WQP Center, operated by NSF International, invites vendors to participate in verification tests of grouting and coating materials for infrastructure rehabilitation applications. Interested vendors should contact Tom Stevens, NSF, at (734) 769-5347 or stevenst@nsf.org.

ETV Verifications Update
ETV has completed verification testing and reports for 389 innovative environmental technologies. For a full list of ETV verifications, visit www.epa.gov/etv/verifications/verification-index.html.

For more information on the ETV, visit www.epa.gov/etv.

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SOURCE: EPA