63(6) 1535-1643), and should become final in October. Eric Livingston, stormwater administrator for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, said that many states already have BMPs to control construction runoff. But states should take steps that go beyond EPA's proposal, by encouraging partnerships between state and local agencies. George Utting, stormwater team leader in EPA's Office of Wastewater Management, disagreed that the agency's proposals will dumb down existing programs. The 1992 regulation of stormwater from large cities has not had a negative impact on Massachusetts comprehensive program, Utting said. The most successful stormwater programs rely on enforceable permits, which are at the heart of EPA's proposed rules, said George Aponte Clarke, NRDC's stormwater project coordinator. Utting said he is confident that EPA and the states can work out any issues raised by the rulemaking.
Politics influence Super fund decisions, study finds Political clout, including active voters, environmental organizations, and political representatives with strong environmental voting records, influences cleanup decisions made by federal and state regulators at Superfund sites, according to a study released by the American Enterprise Institute-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies. But the results are based on faulty data, according to an EPA spokesperson. Made public in April, "Are Risk Regulators Rational? Evidence from Hazardous Waste Cleanup Decisions," by authors W Kip Viscusi, professor of law in economics at Harvard University, and Duke University public policy professor James T. Hamilton bases its conclusions on reports from 130 hazardous waste sites where cleanup decisions were made in 1991 or 1992. The $1 million, EPA-funded study, which took more than five years to complete, will appear as a chapter in the authors' forthcoming book, Calculating Risks? The Spatial and Political Dimensions of Hazardous Waste Policy, which is expected to be published in September by MIT Press. In 1993, EPA instituted administrative reforms that significantly changed how the Superfund pro-
gram operates. Administrative reforms, including tying future land use to the level of cleanup, speak to many of the authors' concerns by allowing proposed remedial actions to be re-evaluated. Viscusi and Hamilton enter the "how clean is clean" debate with a cost-benefit approach that they say provides more equity to communities with less political clout. Their research reports that "communities with higher voter turnouts are more likely to have lower risks . . . remaining after final site cleanup." The authors urge EPA to calculate risk assessments based on averages, rather than conservative, worst-case scenario data. Officials in the Office of Policy, Planning and Evaluation (OPPE) are still reviewing the research, which is based upon a prior study by the same authors that the agency criticized heavily. "EPA raised fundamental concerns about the assumptions and methodology used in that study," according to EPA spokesperson Lauren Milone Mical. "Those concerns were never addressed by the researchers. Since that original badly flawed study is the foundation for this new paper, the new work is equally flawed," she said.
Dioxins added to TMDL list for San Francisco Bay EPA Region DC added 7 dioxins, 10 furans, and 12 "dioxin-like" polychlorinated biphenyls, as well as the "legacy" pesticides DDT, dieldrin, and chlordane, to the list of high-priority contaminants that must be controlled or cleaned up in San Francisco Bay. For determining the human health risk that went into the listing decision, EPA used a worst-case, rather than an average-exposure scenario, related to fish consumption. "These compounds are most responsible for increases in human cancer risk due to consumption of contaminated fish from the Bay," said Alexis Strauss, acting director of Region IX's Water Division. San Francisco Bay and the newly listed contaminants are among more than 470 waterways and 1400 contaminants on California's biennial target list for the establishment of Total Maximum Daily Loads {TMDLs). The TMDL program, a complicated Clean Water Act requirement that most states are hav-
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ing trouble implementing, calls on states to develop long-term pollution control and cleanup plans for the listed contaminants and waterways. California's list was finalized in early May, with EPA overriding the objections of state regulators who did not believe there was sufficient evidence to warrant including dioxin and similar compounds on the TMDL list. They argued that the levels in fish from San Francisco Bay are no greater than national background levels. Dioxin is included on TMDLs elsewhere, including waterways near pulp mills in the Southeast and the Columbia River in the Northwest. Dioxin is a byproduct of industrial processes involving chlorinated chemicals; it has been linked to cancer, reproductive disorders, and other human health problems at extremely low levels. An EPA risk assessment determined that 40% of the increased cancer risk to Bay anglers was associated with dioxin, said David Smith, TMDL team leader for Region DC High-end consumers—those eating a quarter pound of fish daily—were facing between a 1 in 1000 and 1 in 10,000 cancer risk, Smith said. EPA typically relies on average consumption data when listing TMDL contaminants, but for San Francisco Bay the regulators used the worst-case scenario—the amount of dioxin consumed by subsistence anglers, said Smith. The result was compelling enough to allow a decision to list dioxin "based on the unique characteristics of the risk in San Francisco Bay," said Smith. And in keeping with EPA policy to protect sensitive subpopulations and President Clinton's executive order on environmental justice, "we viewed the risk from dioxin exposure as significant," he added. The updated TMDL list was encouraged by a citizen petition filed May 12, 1998, by Communities for a Better Environment and the Bay Area's Zero Dioxin Exposure Alliance, a coalition of about 48 environmental and community-based groups. While these groups are pushing for a TMDL of zero for dioxin and similar compounds, Smith said the state and EPA "will need additional monitoring to fully characterize the problem." The high cost of a dioxin test, $3000 for one fish-tissue sample, contributes to that challenge. EPA plans to propose rules for the TMDL program later this summer.
