Editorial. The US monitoring gap - ACS Publications - American

Managing Editor: Stanton S. Miller. Assistant Editor: ... Requirements for ambient air and water monitoring have ... state water monitoring networks I...
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EDITORIAL

The U.S. monitoring gap Editor: James J. Morgan WASHINGTON EDITORIAL STAFF Managing Editor: Stanton S. Miller Assistant Editor: H . Martin Malin, Jr. Assistant Editor: Carol Knapp Lewicke Assistant Editor: William S. Forester MANUSCRIPT REV I EW I NG Manager: Katherine I . Biggs M ANUSCRI PT ED IT1NG Associate Production Manager: Charlotte C. Sayre ART AND PfiODUCTlON Head: Bacil Guiley Associate Production Manager: Leroy L. Corcoran Art Director: Norman Favin Layout and Production: Dawn Leland Advisory Board: P. L. Brezonik, R . F. Christman, G. F. Hidy, David Jenkins, P. L. McCarty, Charles R . O'Melia, John H. Seinfeld, John W. Winchester Published by the AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY 1155 16th Street. N W Washington D C 20036 Executive Director Robert W Cairns PUBLIC AFFAIRS AND COMMUNICATION DIVISION Director Richard L Kenyon ADVERTISING MANAGEMENT Centcorn. Ltd. For offices and advertisers. see page 1076. Please send research manuscripts to Manuscript Reviewing, feature manuscripts to Managing Editor. For author's guide and editorial policy, see June issue, page 517, or write Katherine I . Biggs, Manuscript Reviewing Office, ES&T In each paper with more than one author. the name of the author to whom inquiries should be addressed carries a numbered footnote reference

In the game plan to clean up the air and water, monitoring is a basic tool. Without it, there are no data; with it, there is a record on which to measure progress. Requirements for ambient air and water monitoring have existed in the past: they are being strengthened, and new requirements on industrial water effluents and air emissions all point to an increase in monitoring. Last year, states, as a composite group, spent more than 1000 man-years in surveillance and told the feds that there were 6000 in-stream sampling stations. States now are faced with submitting a water quality inventory report to the EPA by Janlrary 1975. So, a basic strengthening of state water monitoring networks is under way. Monitoring of industrial effluents is required as a condition for a permit. Each industry that discharges into a navigable waterway of the U S . will have to monitor something. The industry will also have to report both the volume to and nature of the monitored discharge. Then later, compliance monitoring-the degree of monitoring necessary to ensure that conditions of the permit are met -will be done by the states, if they elect to do it, or by the feds. Ambient air monitoring stations are required under state implementation plans. By the end of 1971 there were approximately 4000 monitors nationwide. About twice that number will be required by 1975, according to the EPA document, "National Air Monitoring Program: Air Quality and Emission Trends Annual Report," August 1973. Industrial sources, at least the new plants, need monitors too. In-stack monitors are required under new national source performance standards (NSPS). Of the five sources in the Group I NSPS, opacity, SO2, and NOx monitors are required by utilities; SO2 monitors by sulfur acid manufacturing plants; and NOx monitors by nitric acid manufacturing plants. Of the Group I I industries, it is anticipated that only two-petroleum refinery and basic oxygen furnace-of seven that are proposed would require in-stack monitoring; opacity monitors for BOF furnaces; and opacity, H2S, and CO monitors for petroleum refineries. Although such monitors are not required on existing industrial sources, someday they may well be.

Volume 7, Number 11. November 1973

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