The Environmental Protection agency has delayed implementation of the Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) rule to allow for time to review and revise the rule.
EPA filed a motion in the District of Columbia Circuit Court asking the court to hold action on lawsuits over the rule for an 18-month period to allow time for the review. The agency took this action because of the ongoing controversy surrounding the rule and in light of the study completed in June by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), according to EPA Administrator Christie Whitman.
The TMDL rule was published July 13, 2000. Because of the controversy surrounding the rule, Congress prohibited EPA from putting the rule into effect by denying funds for that purpose. Some two dozen parties challenged the rule in court in August 2000.
"We have an existing TMDL program and this review will not stop ongoing implementation of that program, development of water quality standards, issuance of permits to control discharges, or enforcement against violators. EPA and states will continue to cooperate to identify impaired waters and set protective standards for those waters," Whitman said.
The Clean Water Act requires states to identify waters not meeting water quality standards and to develop plans for cleaning them up.
"We need an effective national program that involves the active participation and support of all levels of government and local communities," Whitman said. "Unfortunately, many have said the rule designed to implement the TMDL program falls short of achieving the goals."
Over the next several months the agency will conduct a stakeholder process and intends to propose necessary changes by Spring 2002 and hopes to adopt such changes within the 18-month time frame.
More than 20,000 bodies of water across America have been identified as polluted. These waters include more than 300,000 river and shoreline miles and five million acres of lakes. EPA estimates that more than 40,000 TMDLs must be established.
Implementing the Total Maximum Daily Load program as it stands now could cost between $900 million and $4.3 billion dollars annually, based on a draft cost study released by the EPA in July.
The study complements a report issued on June 19 by the National Academy of Sciences recommending changes to the TMDL program. One key finding of the NAS report was that many states lack sufficient data to develop TMDLs for all of their impaired waters. The EPA cost study estimates the costs to states of additional data gathering to support the TMDL program at $17 million per year. Once states have collected good data, they will need to spend up to $69 million annually over the next 15 years to develop plans to clean up some 20,000 impaired waters currently on state lists, according to the cost study.
State costs to develop a cleanup plan for each of these 20,000 waters are projected to average about $52,000 per plan.
Finally, the study projects implementation costs (i.e., costs of installing measures to reduce pollution) of $900 million up to $4.3 billion (an unlikely worst-case scenario) per year. These costs, which would be borne primarily by dischargers, include about 90 percent of the waters currently on state lists. For the remaining waters (such as waters impaired by mining or air deposition), EPA does not have sufficient data to estimate cleanup costs at this time.
The report was requested in Congressional appropriations language last fall. EPA is taking public comment through October on the draft report. A copy of the report and additional information is available at: http://www.epa. gov/owow/tmdl
