Stakeholder Meeting on Development of Recreational Water Quality Criteria
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) held a stakeholder meeting on September 20, 2011 on the development of new or revised Recreational Water Quality Criteria.
The EPA Water Quality Criteria recommendations are intended to be used by states as guidance in adopting water quality standards to protect the designated use of swimming and similar water contact activities. Current recommendations are from 1986, and are based on protecting swimmers from exposure to water that contains organisms that indicated the presence of fecal contamination. State water quality standards are used to derive National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit limits, make listing decisions, develop Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDLs) and for beach monitoring and notification programs.
The following is an overview of current EPA thoughts for recommendation in the criteria development:
- Recommend 304(a) criteria that apply to all waters.
- Derive criteria based on research at POTW‐impacted sites.
- Aim to carry forward into new criteria level of water quality protection afforded by current criteria recommendations.
- Recommend culture methods for Enterococcus and E.coli in freshwaters, and Enteroccocus in marine waters.
- Recommend Enteroccocus qPCR method in freshwater and marine waters.
- Use the general population epidemiological curve (the central tendency of the data).
- Use new definition of gastrointestinal illness that does not require fever.
- Clarify the expression of criteria construct.
- Provide tools for site‐specific criteria derivation (QMRA with sanitary survey) and other flexibilities.
- Use EPA and non‐EPA research studies.
The tentative timeline for the development of the criteria is as follows:
- February-March 2012—propose criteria for public comment
- October 2012—publish final criteria
- December 2012—provide draft implementation guidance
- December 2013—provide final implementation guidance
For more information: http://water.epa.gov/scitech/swguidance/standards/criteria/health/recreation/index.cfm