One way to avoid such complaints, EPA notes in the guidance, is to encourage local community involvement in the permitting decision. The updated program can help facilitate that, Maas said. Various GIS software databases allow a user to circle a specific neighborhood, generate a demographic profile, including income, race, education, and housing costs, and combine this with EPA databases such as the Toxics Release Inventory, and ambient air quality data. A county map with the overlaid database information can be downloaded from the Internet for no charge. More complex analyses require the purchase of one or all of the 11 LandView III compact discs, which can be purchased from the Census Bureau. The LandView III has generated a lot of interest among consultants working with local governments to develop emergency response plans under EPA's Risk Management Plan rule, added Vanden Bosch. Counties with one of the 66,000 large chemical facilities that fall under the rule within their boundaries must develop and report to EPA emergency response plans. —CATHERINE M. COONEY
Advisory panel completes work on TMDL watershed guidelines EPA's effort to control nonpoint source pollution reached a milestone this month with the release of an advisory committee's recommendations for resuscitating a 26-year-old Clean Water Act amendment: the total maximum daily load (TMDL) program. The recommendations are the first step toward getting states to comply with a program they have largely ignored. These recommendations are the product of a two-year effort by a federal advisory committee established to aid in implementing and enforcing the TMDL program, which was designed to protect watersheds from the runoff blamed for polluting water quality in nearly half of the nation's 2000 watersheds. The committee included representatives from business, environmental organizations, and government. In 1979, the TMDL provisions of the Clean Water Act mandated that states begin compiling lists of impaired water bodies, as well as determining the amounts of pollut-
RIGHT - TO - KNOW UN "public access" treaty to be signed in June Legally binding rights of public access to information and involvement in environmental decision making moved a step closer to reality in March with the completion of a draft United Nations treaty negotiated by 36 countries, including all countries of the European Union. The treaty would grant universal rights of access to citizens or nongovernmental organizations in signatory countries. Once brought into force, it will give them the right to apply for information, take part in local or national decision-making procedures, and seek legal redress in the courts of any participating country. The United States and Canada have not taken part in the talks on the grounds that they could not implement the treaty given their federal structures. The types of information include environmental monitoring data, human health data, and economic analyses used by governments in decision making. The regional treaty is due to be formally adopted in June by environmental ministers at the Environment for Europe Conference in Arhus, Denmark. Environmental organizations involved in the negotiations criticized a lastminute softening of the treaty's enforcement provisions following Russian objections to binding procedures. They also accused governments of stalling on the issue of withholding commercially confidential environmental information. —Reprinted with permission from ENDS Environment Daily, Environmental Data Services, Ltd., London (http://www.ends.co.uk,
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ants they could receive each day— the total daily load from both point and nonpoint sources—and still meet water quality standards {ES&T, April 1997, p. 178A). But a recent National Wildlife Federation report compiled using EPA data claims that 70% of the states and territories have failed to use TMDLs to protect their watersheds. This lack of action prompted environmental organizations to file lawsuits in more than 30 states, demanding that EPA require states to comply with Clean Water Act regulations. In response to the lawsuits, EPA created the federal advisory committee. The committee broke new ground in the proposals it developed, according to Geoffrey Grubbs, EPA director of assessment and watershed protection. For example, one proposal addressed how states can protect waters during the period allotted to develop a TMDL. States have up to 13 years after their waters are declared to be impaired to come up with a plan. The committe's approach includes provisions to ensure that degraded waters get no worse, together with financial and administrative incentives to solve the pollution problem. Whether the TMDLs will address airborne sources of water pollution is still an open question. "EPA needs to do a much better job addressing pollution from atmospheric deposition," said Cameron Davis, attorney with the National Wildlife Federation. The TMDL process is a good way to address reduction of toxics such as mercury and PCBs, which enter watersheds largely from the air, he said. However, he says, "there is an internal battle in EPA between staffers who say that TMDLs are for water only, and others who want an integrated approach between air and water." EPA will consider the advisory committee's recommendations when it releases draft revisions of regulations and guidance for public comment this November. —JANET PELLEY
