sions into the agreements that allow the FWS to review individual permits and recommend changes to protect endangered species. Louisiana, Oklahoma, Florida, and South Dakota all agreed to accept these endangered species protections. The provisions allowed EPA and the FWS to "override the state permit" if the agencies and states could not agree on species-protection modifications, said Jon Craig, director of water quality for the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality. Immediately after EPA approved the agreements with Oklahoma and Louisiana, the American Forest & Paper Association sued EPA over whether the water act allows EPA to protect endangered species. In March, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the agreement EPA negotiated with Louisiana was unlawful. A separate appeals court decision on Oklahoma's water agreement with EPA is pending.
Annual TRI report to include in-depth industry profiles The public should get a clearer picture of 1996 pollution releases after reading this year's Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) report. For the first time the document, scheduled for release in late May, will include in-depth profiles showing production levels and economic trends for five industries, said Maria Doa, Chief of the Toxics Release Inventory Branch. The new analyses will put TRI information into context and allow database users to "compare apples with apples," Doa said. Manufacturing facilities are required to annually report the amount of pollution they release into the air and water, the quantity of waste injected into wells and applied to land, and the amount of waste recycled on site as energy recovery, or sent off site for treatment and storage. Reporting requirements apply to facilities that use or generate one or more of the 600 TRI-listed chemicals in quantities that exceed EPA thresholds. This year's report on 1996 releases will break down data from the chemical, petroleum, pulp and paper, primary metals, and electrical equipment industries into industry sectors, such as the inorganic chemical and speciality cleaning product sectors, to name two. Releases from individual facilities also will be listed.
Less detailed information on fertilizer and pesticide use, and aggregate data on volatile organic compounds emitted from vehicles, also will be in this report to show that EPA is not capturing all of the chemical releases in the TRI database. The production information will put TRI releases into context, said Susan Hazen, director of the Environmental Assistance Division. "The more in-depth view of a sector might prompt a different set of questions," Hazen said. For example, if a few plants have increased releases while the rest of the sector has a drop, "we might ask if some technology transfer might be useful," said Hazen. More changes can be anticipated in TRI annual reports, said Doa. A federal advisory panel expects to release in the fall a final report suggesting improvements to TRI reports. The TRI database can be found on the Web at http://www.epa.gov/opptintr/tri.
Soil screening guidance for eco-risk assessments A new tool for screening chemicals in soil being crafted by an interagency work group should make it easier for risk managers to conduct ecological risk assessments at Superfund sites. Now that many of the Superfund sites that posed the greatest human health risk have been or are being remediated, site cleanups related to ecological damage are becoming more common, especially at large, former mining sites in the western states, said Steve Ells, a senior scientist with the Office of Emergency and Remedial Response. But the tools needed to conduct an ecological risk assessment are still under development. To address this, a work group established in 1997 by EPA and the Chemical Manufacturers Assocation is creating a process for determining soil screening levels for ecologically relevant organisms Others involved include the Department of Defense the Department of Enthe states The lack of ecological soil screening levels for Superfund cleanups causes problems for all parties involved. One of the first steps in an ecological risk assessment is the screening of potential chemicals of concern, measured in the media of interest and compared to a predicted exposure that is believed to
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pose little or no ecological risk. For soils, there is no widely accepted method for calculating soil screening levels, and there are no widely accepted toxic reference values, so regulators and companies spend time and money debating how to proceed. EPA officials want to evaluate 26 common soil contaminants including DDT, PAHs, aluminum, and iron, which routinely raise concerns in ecological risk assessments. Dioxin and methylmercury have been purposely omitted from the list because they are too controversial, EPA scientists said. The screening levels are expected to be quite conservative so they can be applied to virtually all sites, said Ells. The lack of data availability is likely to constrain the work group's progress, agency scientists said. There are toxicity data available for organisms such as earthworms, birds that feed on earthworms, and some plants, according to Ralph Stahl at DuPont Specialty Chemicals. The work group members plan to produce a draft by the end of this year. The finished product, a guidance and technical support document, could be ready by the end of 1999.
New ecological assessments of mid-Atlantic watersheds Regional and local planners now have access to a regional ecological assessment of 125 watersheds located in the mid-Atlantic states. An Ecological Assessment of the United States Mid-Allantic Region, released in April, identifies in unique detail patterns of land cover and land use. Using data from satellite imagery and spatial databases on biophysical features, such as soils, elevation, and some GIS data, the report first compares nine landscape indicators on a watershed-by-watershed basis for the lower 48 states. Then using a finer-scale spatial resolution the report analyzes and interprets environmental conditions of the 125 watersheds EPA officials said The underlying data sets on the watersheds will be publicly released later this year The report is intended to provide ecological information to regional and local planners and community activists, rather than be used as a regulatory tool, said Bruce Jones, an ecologist with the National Exposures Research Lab. The report is available on the Web at www.epa.gov/emap.
