EPA WATCH States facing new controls for nonpoint sources States are under great pressure to require controls on nonpoint sources of water pollution, such as runoff from farms, under a policy released last month. The policy, which becomes effective in 1998, also encourages states to move more quickly on implementing a Clean Water Act program designed to protect watersheds. Last month, EPA released water quality policies to speed implementation of the total maximum daily load (TMDL) program. Considered by many to be the technical backbone of the watershed approach, the TMDL program requires states to identify impaired waters on the basis of use and severity of pollution and to apportion pollution limits among all dischargers in a watershed to meet water quality standards. However, states have been dragging their feet. Douglas P Haines, executive director of the Georgia Center for Law in the Public Interest, said states should have completed their first round of TMDLs by 1979. Georgia is one of more than 24 states in which conservation groups have sued EPA to require the state to carry out TMDL requirements [ES&T, April 1997, 178A). Prompted by the spate of lawsuits, EPA convened a federal advisory committee in November 1996 to reevaluate its TMDL policies and regulations. The committee's final report is due in mid-1998. Changes to the program will require new regulations and guidance, said Geoffrey Grubbs, director of assessment and watershed protection. Before the TMDL program is revised, Grubbs said it is necessary for EPA to "address two holes in the existing regulations where we are dead silent: the schedule for completing TMDLs and guidance on how to implement them." The new policy gives states 8-13 years to establish TMDLs and specifies that pollutant reductions must be set for nonpoint and point, or stationary, pollution
Confidential data controls may be tightened EPA is gearing up to tighten confidentiality requirements for chemical data submitted by businesses under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), according to Alan Abramson in the Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics. The changes would provide state regulators and researchers improved access to these data. Abramson said EPA is already working on a proposed rule from 1994 that would tighten confidential data requirements agency-wide. "I'm taking that proposal as a starting point and seeing whether there is anything else we would want to propose," said Abramson. The changes might be achieved without a formal rulemaking, he added. Associate General Council Ray Spears said the agency's proposed rule would authorize EPA program offices to make sunset provisions requiring companies to update requests to protect certain types of information, and it would require companies to explain why an entire TSCA submittal is confidential. Companies generally do not have to substantiate confidential business information (CBI) claims unless a request is made for public access to the data, said Spears. In a speech last December, EPA Assistant Administrator Lynn Goldman noted that in Fiscal Year 1995, more than 65% of the substantive information filings directed to the agency through TSCA were claimed as confidential. "There is cause for concern," Goldman said. "Many of these submissions are on research and development chemicals—and not on chemicals we would recognize as actually being in commerce. There is no vehicle for revisiting old CBI filings once the chemical gets into commerce," she said. Abramson said he hopes this fall to submit to Goldman some options for revising the CBI rules.
sources. If states don't comply with the updated criteria, the agency will withhold grant funds, a penalty considered a "pretty significant threat" by attorney Haines. EPA also plans to enhance its technical assistance and funding to the states. Meanwhile, an independent group of state environmental officials is drawing up a policy intended to reduce penalties for noncompliance with the TMDL requirements and lengthen the implementation schedule. Noting that "the states' interest in this should have been stimulated 20 years ago," Haines said he doubted the validity of the group's proposals. He added that the greatest influence on EPA policy would come from terms set out in the settlement of lawsuits.
Court supports PCB import ban despite EPA plea A federal court has rejected EPA's argument that importing polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) wastes from
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Mexico and Canada for incineration was environmentally safer than forcing those nations to ship the toxic residues elsewhere for disposal. In a July 7 ruling, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a March 18, 1996, EPA decision to lift a ban on the importation of PCBs for incineration in the United States. The importation ban had been in place since 1980 following widespread evidence that PCBs, commonly used as insulating fluid in capacitors and transformers, had degraded water quality, affected wildlife, and posed a health threat to humans. EPA's 1996 rule was challenged almost immediately by the Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund—formerly the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund —on the grounds that it violated a provision of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) that "provides for a categorical ban on the manufacture of PCBs." In its ruling, the court agreed, saying, "The ban on manufacturing PCBs includes an absolute ban on their import."
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