The National Drinking Water Advisory Committee (NDWAC) held its fall meeting on December 14 and 15 in Arlington, VA. Overall, the meeting discussions revolved around high-level status reviews of several EPA programs and related initiatives. EPA’s updates on regulatory development activities basically consisted of a schedule overview, as there was not much new public information to share related to ongoing analyses outside of the normal public engagement processes. (Recent public stakeholder interactions on the Long Term 2 Enhanced Surface Water Treatment Rule (LT2) and Lead and Copper Rule (LCR) revisions are discussed in separate items below.) The outlook for most rulemaking schedules has not changed from previously available information as summarized in the Regulatory Update At-A-Glance at the end of this update.
The one rulemaking schedule that is slipping a bit is for LCR revisions, which had been projected for proposal in May 2012. According to EPA’s presentation to the NDWAC, proposal is now projected for December 2012, with even that deadline being questionable. When mentioning the December 2012 target, EPA provided a caveat, saying “we’ll see” and mentioning that they had a lot on their plate in the coming year. Significant comments from the NDWAC on potential LCR revisions (see item below) and prioritization of projects in an environment of decreased funding both seem to be contributing to the delay.
Besides the potential effects on LCR revisions, dealing with budgetary issues and resulting prioritization was a common theme throughout EPA’s presentations to the NDWAC. Budget cuts are going to limit how much EPA will be able to tackle in the coming year across all of its program offices, but it is not yet clear which activities will ultimately take priority. It is anticipated that legal/statutory requirements will take precedence over actions that have less well-defined completion timelines or which are to some degree “voluntary” in nature.
Other topics that generated significant discussion at the meeting were potential updates to EPA data collection and analysis systems, including the Safe Drinking Water Information System (SDWIS); capacity development for small systems facing growing regulatory burdens; source water protection; and what seems to be on everybody’s list of hot issues, hydraulic fracturing. Although the NDWAC did not put together official statements on these issues (discussion mostly surrounded getting up to speed on latest developments), they will be carried forward on future NDWAC agendas for further consideration.