EPA has requested that the Science Advisory Board (SAB) address a series of questions concerning the rule's provisions for assessing risks. According to Stephanie Sanzone, SAB staff member, the board is being asked to examine the baseline concentration that would be extrapolated from the de minimis level as an endpoint through fate-and-transport models. Assuming a 10~R cancer risk for an endpoint for carcinogenic constituents, the assessment methodology works backward to determine the concentration of a substance that through transport, degradation, and fate would fall below that risk level, Sanzone said. Levels would be adjusted for noncarcinogenic substances, according to Helms. The methodology does not consider multiple pathways, nor does it account for multiple constituents, according to Sanzone. The final rule is expected to be released in December 1996.
Site classification system pilot planned A citywide environmental classification system intended to speed the cleanup of contaminated urban property is being developed in Oakland, CA, by EPA Region IX and state and local agencies. The program may serve as a model for other inner city settings, according to Martin Rodriguez, EPA Region IX work assignment manager for the project. By late September EPA hopes to have a trial classification system in place that will break the city into environmental zones and provide risk-based "look-up tables" to determine the level of cleanup required based on the contamination at a particular site and the area's physical environment. The site classification plan will be based on the physical sensitivity of the location, Rodriguez said, for instance, its hydrology and geology. Ten sites throughout the city are being examined in detail to develop the classification plan by city zone. The zone data will be used by property owners and potential developers to estimate the cost of cleanup, based on the protection needed for a site's environmental classification, and the risk-based cleanup level, based on contamination present at the site and its intended use. Although a site-specific
assessment will be necessary for an actual cleanup, a "predetermined screening level" study for a class of sites should encourage development by eliminating initial uncertainties, according to EPA. The demonstration project grew out of a meeting two years ago between the EPA administrator and Oakland city officials. EPA has committed $135,000 to prepare the classification scheme, Rodriguez said. The program's goal is to clean up and reuse some 600 leaking underground storage tank sites that dot Oakland, according to EPA. Oakland officials hope the program will encourage property owners and developers to pay for cleanups by providing certainty and removing the many levels of bureaucracy that usually accompany approval of an environmental cleanup, even for non-Superfund projects such as these. Rodriguez noted that it has been very difficult to find developers willing to clean up and use these sites, which are mostly closed gasoline stations and auto repair shops. These uniform procedures must be approved by many agencies, including EPA and several state and local bodies. Oakland is also seeking approval of the program by community groups. Rodriguez estimates that actual site-specific investigations, geared to a use, will begin late this year or early in 1996.
Regulatory cost-benefit analysis to expand Better quantification of benefits from proposed environmental regulations is among changes expected in an internal EPA guidance that is nearing completion by the Office of Policy, Planning, and Evaluation. The guidance will help inform EPA decision makers of net cost and benefits for a proposed regulation. A draft is expected to be released to the EPA Science Advisory Board late this summer. The document is in compliance with Executive Order 12866, issued September 1993, which called for an overhaul of the federal rule-making process. It updates a Reagan-era directive that requested regulatory impact analyses for rules worth more than $100 million. The directive took a traditional economic approach to determining costs. The new guidance, however, will broaden that approach to include other features of
economic analyses, such as valuing benefits and presenting uncertainties in economic calculations. For instance, the guidance will address the cost of illnesses, inequities in the distribution of a rule's impact, a regulation's ecological effect, its impact on future generations, and environmental justice concerns, according to Brett Snyder, chief of the economics analysis and research branch in the policy office. Also considered in the guidance will be a rule's costs and benefits to states and local governments. Snyder emphasized that traditional cost calculations are also discussed in the rule, but in this area there are already substantial data and a history of methodology. On the other hand, emphasis on the murky area of valuing benefits has increased in recent years, and the Executive Order specifically calls for greater consideration of the value of less tangible costs and benefits when developing regulations. The guidance's influence, however, may be limited by congressional action, Snyder said, noting that the House has passed legislation calling for risk-benefit calculations and several bills are pending in the Senate.
ORD drafting strategic research plans The Office of Research and Development (ORD) has begun drafting a long-term strategic research plan that includes a mission statement for the office, research criteria, a series of research goals, and an inventory and assessment of science within ORD laboratories. Speaking to the Science Advisory Board's Research Strategies Advisory Committee in June, ORD head Robert Huggett said that his office would also contract with the National Academy of Sciences to detail a decade-long research strategy. According to Joseph Alexander, ORD's assistant administrator for science, the first draft of the strategic plan should be complete by October and finalized by February 1996. On that schedule the plan will not be incorporated into ORD's budget until fiscal year 1998. Huggett said ORD had received approval under the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) to conduct outside peer review of grants and fellowship applications.
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