[Federal Register Volume 74, Number 226 (Wednesday, November 25, 2009)]
[Notices]
[Pages 61679-61681]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: E9-28059]
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ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
[EPA-HQ-OPP-2009-0773; FRL-8800-5]
Clean Water Act and Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and
Rodenticide Act Common Effects Aquatic Life Assessment for Pesticides
Using Available Data: Regional Stakeholder Meetings
AGENCY: Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
ACTION: Notice of Public Meetings.
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SUMMARY: EPA will conduct six public meetings to solicit input on
methods being evaluated by the Office of Pesticide Programs (OPP) and
the Office of Water (OW), with the support of the Office of Research
and Development (ORD) to characterize effects from pesticides on fish,
other aquatic organisms, and aquatic plants in aquatic ecosystems.
These public meetings will be held in Chicago, IL (Region 5), Edison,
NJ (Region 2), Kansas City, KS (Region 7), Atlanta, GA (Region 4), San
Francisco, CA (Region 9), and Seattle, WA (Region 10), starting in
January 2010. At the public meetings, EPA will provide presentations
that detail its initial thinking on how to ensure that pesticide
effects are characterized consistently by both OPP and OW.
DATES: The public meetings will be held on the following dates: January
11, 2010; January 12, 2010; January 14, 2010; January 19, 2010; January
21, 2010; and January 22, 2010.
ADDRESSES: The meetings will be held at the following locations and
times:
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Date Time Location
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January 11, 2010 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. EPA Region 2
2890 Woodbridge
Ave.
Building 205 Main
Conference Room
Edison, NJ 08837
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January 12, 2010 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. EPA Region 4
Sam Nunn Atlanta
Federal Center
Augusta Conference
Room
61 Forsyth St., SW
Atlanta, GA 30303
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January 14, 2010 9 a.m. to 1 p.m EPA Region 5
Ralph Metcalfe
Federal Building
Valdas V. Adamkus
Resource Center -
12th Floor
Lake Michigan Room
77 W. Jackson
Boulevard
Chicago, IL 60604
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January 19, 2010 9 a.m. to 1 p.m EPA Region 7
901 North 5th St.
Room 2240 A
Kansas City, KS
66101
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January 21, 2010 9 a.m. to 1 p.m EPA Region 10
1200 Sixth Ave.,
Suite 900
Seattle, WA 98101
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January 22, 2010 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. EPA Region 9
Ronald V. Dellums
Federal Building
Edward R. Roybal
Auditorium and
Conference Center
1301 Clay St.
Oakland, CA 94612
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Additional information concerning these meetings will be available on
December 1, 2009 at the following web site: www.epa.gov/oppefed1/cwa_fifra_effects_methodology/index.html.
To request accommodation of a disability, please contact the person
listed under FOR FURTHER INFORMATON CONTACT, preferably at least 10
days prior to the meeting, to give EPA as much time as possible to
process your request.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Jane Hopkins, Field and External
Affairs Division (7506P), Office of Pesticide Programs, Environmental
Protection Agency, 1200 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Washington, D.C. 20460;
telephone number: (703) 305-7195; e-mail address: [email protected].
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
[[Page 61680]]
I. General Information
A. Does this Action Apply to Me?
This action is directed to the public in general, and may be of
interest to a wide range of stakeholders, including environmental,
water resources professionals, and agricultural advocates, the chemical
industry, pesticide users, and members of the public interested in the
sale, distribution, or use of pesticides. Since others also may be
interested, the Agency has not attempted to describe all the specific
entities that may be affected by this action. If you have any questions
regarding the applicability of this action to a particular entity,
consult the person listed under FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT.
B. How Can I Get Copies of this Document and Other Related Information?
EPA has established a docket for this action under docket ID number
EPA-HQ-OPP-2009-0773. Publicly available docket materials are available
either in the electronic docket at http://www.regulations.gov, or, if
only available in hard copy, at the Office of Pesticide Programs (OPP)
Regulatory Public Docket in Rm. S-4400, One Potomac Yard (South Bldg.),
2777 S. Crystal Dr., Arlington, VA. The hours of operation of this
Docket Facility are from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday,
excluding legal holidays. The Docket Facility telephone number is (703)
305-5805.
II. Background
Section 304(a)(1) of the Clean Water Act (CWA) requires EPA to
develop, publish, and from time to time, revise criteria for water
quality accurately reflecting the latest scientific knowledge. Water
quality criteria are scientifically derived numeric values that measure
the level beyond which pollutants in ambient water will have
deleterious effects on aquatic life or human health. Water quality
criteria developed under Section 304(a) are based solely on data and
scientific judgments on the relationship between pollutant
concentrations and environmental and human health effects. Section
304(a) criteria do not reflect consideration of economic impacts or the
technological feasibility of meeting the chemical concentrations in
ambient water.
Section 304(a) criteria provide guidance to states and authorized
tribes in adopting water quality standards that ultimately provide the
basis for controlling discharges or releases of pollutants. The
criteria also provide guidance to EPA when promulgating Federal
regulations under Section 303(c) when such action is necessary. Under
the CWA and its implementing regulations, states and authorized tribes
adopt water quality criteria to measure attainment of designated uses
(e.g., public water supply, recreational use, industrial use). EPA's
recommended criteria do not impose legally binding requirements. States
and authorized tribes have the discretion to adopt, where appropriate,
other scientifically defensible water quality criteria that differ from
EPA's recommended criteria.
FIFRA requires that all pesticides used in the United States be
registered by EPA for use and, thus, ensures Federal control of
distribution, sale, and use of pesticides. Registration assures that
pesticides will be properly labeled and that, if used in accordance
with labeled specifications, will not cause unreasonable adverse
effects on human health and the environment. FIFRA ecological risk
assessments quantitatively evaluate reduced survival of aquatic animals
from direct acute exposures and survival, growth, and reproductive
impairment for aquatic animals from direct chronic exposures.
Assessments for aquatic plants focus on growth rates and biomass
(reproduction) measurements. Risk management decisions for pesticide
registration under FIFRA take into consideration benefits in addition
to risks of pesticides used; however, benefits are not considered in
characterizing ecological effects under FIFRA or in deriving ambient
water quality criteria (AWQC) values under CWA.
For FIFRA ecological effects assessments, EPA peer reviews toxicity
data provided by the registrant as required by regulation, as well as
data from public sources obtained from EPA's ECOTOX database. Current
testing requirements for aquatic organisms include toxicity studies
containing information on survival, reproduction, and growth endpoints
for freshwater and estuarine/marine animals and biomass and growth
endpoints for aquatic plants. These test requirements are defined for
each chemical class by use category in title 40 of the Code of Federal
Regulations, part 158. Studies are performed on laboratory test
organisms in the following broad taxonomic groupings: freshwater fish
and invertebrates, estuarine/marine fish and invertebrates, and aquatic
plants. For screening-level assessments, OPP's effects assessments are
based on the lowest acute and chronic toxicity values from the most
sensitive species tested in acceptable studies. More refined
assessments may use the full species sensitivity distribution for a
given taxa or other toxicity endpoints, as for the variability and
uncertainty of the data (probabilistic approaches). The ``OPP Aquatic
Benchmarks'' is a web site developed by OPP that contains the aquatic
toxicity endpoints used in EPA pesticide risk assessments. (http://www.epa.gov/oppefed1/ecorisk_ders/aquatic_life_benchmarks.htm).
Although both OPP's and OW's approaches afford a high degree of
protection for aquatic life, stakeholders have identified a need for
consistent and timely Federal input that will allow EPA, states,
tribes, and the public to gauge whether pesticides represent a concern
for aquatic life, for example, based on water monitoring results. To
address these concerns, the Agency has begun a process to explore how
to build on the high quality science in both OW and OPP to develop
additional tools and approaches to support a consistent and common set
of effects characterization methods using best available information. A
Scoping Document has been developed that describes this effort in more
detail. A letter signed by the Office Directors of OPP and OW, and
reinforced by the Scoping Document, has invited public participation in
our collective efforts. Following through on this invitation, regional
public meetings are being planned for January 2010 to solicit input on
the Agency's initial thinking regarding methods, tools, and approaches
that are being developed and evaluated by OPP and OW, with the support
of ORD, to assure that pesticide ecological effects are characterized
consistently. The areas for consideration under this effort include:
Development and evaluation of predictive tools for use in
development of community level benchmarks
Development of aquatic life community level benchmarks
with datasets that do not conform to the ``1985 Guidelines''
Derivation of aquatic life screening values for aquatic
plants
The tools and approaches developed by EPA will:
Continue to be based upon sound science and utilize the
available data,
Be legally defensible under our statutory mandates,
Be based upon methodologies that are as consistent and
practical as possible,
Be implementable at the Federal and State level.
Be developed as quickly and efficiently as possible, and
Reflect stakeholder input and comments.
[[Page 61681]]
During these meetings, EPA will also solicit input from Regional
stakeholders regarding the following:
1. Additional sources of pesticide data and relevant reports.
2. The white paper topics.
3. The availability of data, tools, approaches, and data sets on
aquatic toxicity that may be useful for this effort.
4. The types of values that are used by states and/or regions for
protecting aquatic life in the absence of ambient water quality
criteria.
5. Examples of situations in which differences between OW and OPP
assessment approaches were an issue.
Following these meetings, the Agency plans to develop a set of
white papers, describing potential new tools and analytical approaches
that may be used by the Agency, state pesticide and water quality
agencies, and other stakeholders.
For more information about water quality criteria and Water Quality
Standards, refer to the following:
Water Quality Standards Handbook (EPA 823-B94-005a);
Advanced Notice of Proposed Rule Making (ANPRM), (63 FR
36742);
Water Quality Criteria and Standards Plan - Priorities
for the Future (EPA 822-R-98-003);
Guidelines and Methodologies Used in the Preparation of
Health Effects Assessment Chapters of the Consent Decree Water
Criteria Documents (45 FR 79347);
Methodology for Deriving Ambient Water Quality Criteria
for the Protection of Human Health (2000), EPA-822-B-00-004);
Guidelines for Deriving Numerical National Water
Quality Criteria for the Protection of Aquatic Organisms and Their
Uses (EPA 822/R-85-100);
National Strategy for the Development of Regional
Nutrient Criteria (EPA 822-R-98-002); and
EPA Review and Approval of State and Tribal Water
Quality Standards (65 FR 24641).
You can find these publications through EPA's National Service
Center for Environmental Publications (NSCEP, previously NCEPI) or on
the Office of Science and Technology's home page (http://www.epa.gov/waterscience).
For more information about the OPP Ecological Exposure Assessment
Process under FIFRA, refer to the following: ``Overview of the
Ecological Risk Assessment Process in the Office of Pesticide
Programs,'' which describes how pesticide data are used in ecological
risk assessments (http://www.epa.gov/oppfead1/endanger/consultation/ecorisk-overview.pdf). The data requirements for aquatic non-target
plants and animals for pesticides are described in title 40 of the Code
of Federal Regulations, revised July 1, 2008 (Sec. 158.660 Non-target
Plant Protection Data Requirements). The required procedures for
conducting the studies are described in OPPTS Harmonized Test
Guidelines Series 850 ``Ecological Effects Test Guidelines - Public
Drafts'' (http://www.epa.gov/opptsfrs/publications/OPPTS_Harmonized/850_Ecological_Effects_Test_Guidelines/Drafts/). Information on
procedures used to evaluate these studies are described in: Standard
Evaluation Protocols, the guidance document entitled ``the Rejection
Rate Analysis: Ecological Effects'' (EPA 738-R-94-035), and in the OPP
Overview Document. Public literature is accessed by OPP through EPA's
ECOTOX database (http://cfpub.epa.gov.ecotox/). The ``OPP Aquatic
Benchmarks,'' a web site developed by OPP, contains the aquatic
toxicity endpoints used in pesticide assessments (Http://www.epa.gov/oppefed1ecorisk_ders/aquatic_life_benchmarks.htm).
III. How Can I Request to Participate in this Meeting?
This meeting is open to the public; registration is not required
for attending or for participating in this meeting. Seats will be
available on a first come, first served basis.
List of Subjects
Environmental protection, Ambient water quality criteria, Aquatic
benchmarks, Aquatic community, Aquatic life, Ecological risk
assessment, Pesticides and pest.
Dated: November 13, 2009.
Debra Edwards,
Director, Office of Pesticide Programs.
[FR Doc. E9-28059 Filed 11-24-09; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 6560-50-S