Air-monitoring, pollution control technologies chosen for EPA verification program Advanced air-monitoring devices and air pollution control technologies are the latest areas selected for EPA's environmental technology verification program. The two-year-old program examines new technologies to determine whether they meet performance claims. Using third-party contractors to do the evaluating, EPA's program goal is to accelerate market entrance for innovative, high-performing new technologies. Verification of environmental technologies is the only part of EPA's Environmental Technology Initiative to survive the congressional appropriation process, and the third-party verification program has received most of a $10 million congressional allocation for 1996 and 1997 {ES&T, Nov. 1996, p. 480A). "What EPA's verification program says is that the technology performed the way we say it did in tests that were done on it," said Penelope Hansen, coordinator of the verification program. "We're not picking winners and losers, but we are reporting performance. We tell it like it is, and the marketplace makes its own decisions." The agency is now lining up third-party contractors—or partners, as it calls them—for the new air-monitoring and pollution control technology verification programs, Hansen said. EPA has issued solicitations and will award contracts by October, when the fiscal year ends. The two technologies are particularly important, Hansen said, because of their relationship to regulatory reinvention, a big push of the Clinton administration. "Most [regulatory] reinvention approaches offer a more creative way of controlling air pollution, but they need methods to ensure the public that it is being protected," she said. Following the emphasis on air monitors, Hansen added, will come water monitoring and possibly soils. These programs join a halfdozen others that include evaluating the technological claims of suppliers of small drinking water systems, which serve U.S. com-
munities of less than 3300. The market for these systems is enormous, Hansen said, estimating that there are 60,000 small U.S. communities and hundreds of thousands in the rest of the world. The agency's evaluator, NSF International in Ann Arbor, Mich., is developing tests for disinfection byproducts, microbial pollutants, and particulates. EPA has also joined a verification program in which California's EPA tests new technologies {ES&T, Feb. 1995, p. 70A). EPA's financial contribution is used for pollution prevention and waste treatment technologies, and EPA and California have picked 10 technologies to test. Hansen said that despite the interest, pollution prevention is a challenge for verification. Other verification programs
are looking at site characterization and monitoring technologies, indoor air emissions from home products, wet weather flow technologies, and ways to cut coating emissions. EPA also is supporting the "independent entity" program, an attempt at something new, Hansen said. "We gave the Civil Engineering Research Foundation some seed money, and they took the ball and ran with it." The foundation chose road de-icing as the first technology to examine. Road deicing compounds are often toxic and have led to contaminated runoff problems in areas widi long periods of snow and ice. This pilot, like the overall program, is an experiment, Hansen stressed. "We've got a hundred balls in the air," she said, noting that individual programs may come or go, depending on what the agency learns in the years ahead. —JEFF JOHNSON
European Union grapples with noncompliance The authority of the European Union (EU) to implement and enforce environmental laws is being undermined by the failure of member states to comply with more than 200 pieces of legislation, according to a new report by the European Commission. "The community is at a crucial point in its environmental policy," states the report, issued by Environment Commissioner Ritt Bjerregaard. If the commission does not become a more effective enforcer "the environment will either remain unprotected or the level of protection in different member states and regions will be uneven" The situation has gotten so bad that Bjerregaard's report, released in October, suggests ways of increasing compliance, including deterrents such as trade sanctions and allowing national courts to handle complaints. On Jan. 29, for the first time, the commission asked the European Court of Justice to impose financial penalties on Germany and Italy for failure to adopt EU directives. The credibility of the EU rests largely on its ability to implement its "directives," which emerge from lengthy, often contentious deliberations. The 15 member
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states are required to incorporate directives into national laws that reproduce the directive's words and amend or repeal any conflicting national legislation. The European Commission, the executive body of the EU, can bring legal action against states that fail to fully enact or comply with national laws. Although the European Commission does have cases pending against states for failure to enact directives into law by mandated deadlines, most cases are for noncompliance. In November, the commission started nonenactment proceedings against Belgium, Spain, Ireland, Luxembourg, and Portugal for failure to enact a directive on genetically modified microorganisms. According to the report, 265 cases of environmental law violations, primarily noncompliance, were brought by the commission in 1995 against member state governments. The commission acknowledges that it has only limited monitoring powers to detect noncompliance, and its enforcement powers are limited to legal action brought to the European Court of Justice. MARIA BURKE, London
