EPA awards the Water Quality Standards Forum Cooperative Agreement

WASHINGTON, DC, June 23, 2008 -- EPA has awarded a cooperative agreement to Water Environment Federation (WEF) to conduct the Water Quality Standards (WQS) Forum. The WQS Forum is a four-year, $400,000 cooperative agreement aimed at providing information sharing and technical solution transfer between the states and EPA on WQS issues. The key elements of the cooperative agreement are:
• Development of a state-only WQS Forum (including at least ten states, one from each EPA region) that involves monthly conference calls and at least one face-to-face meeting per year;
• Development of a state-EPA workgroup (including Forum members and select EPA participants) that meets face-to-face at least once per year and holds bimonthly conference calls; and
• Development of a training and information dissemination strategy to enhance knowledge of WQS topics identified by the Forum.

Office of Science and Technology staff and the WEF project team kicked off work on the cooperative agreement on June 17. In the next month, WEF plans to compile a list of possible Forum members and issue a request for a professional facilitator who will facilitate calls and meetings for the term of the cooperative agreement. For more information, contact Janita Aguirre at 202-566-1149.

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