Member Pipeline - Regulatory - Alert (RA 01-06)
To: Members & Affiliates
From: National Office
Date: March 13, 2001
Subject: CALL FOR COMMENTS ON DRAFT NATIONAL COSTAL CONDITION REPORT
Reference: RA 01-6
Action Please By:
March 26, 2001
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has released for comment, a draft document entitled Clean Water Action Plan: National Coastal Condition Report. The EPA report, written in conjunction with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Department of the Interior (DOI), and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), fulfills one of the coastal related action items from the Clinton Administration’s Clean Water Action Plan. This draft is the first attempt to offer a comprehensive picture of the health of the Nation’s coastal waters and is slated to be used as a benchmark for assessing the progress of coastal conditions as well as for further regulations. The EPA has asked for comments by March 26, 2001, although the Agency will accept comment though March 31, 2001
The draft report defines coastal areas as the waters that extend 200 miles offshore and the Great Lakes. The draft compiled data sets mainly from programs administered by EPA and NOAA. The data was used to evaluate overall coastal conditions with respect to seven primary indicators: water clarity, dissolved oxygen, coastal wetland loss, eutrophic condition, sediment contaminants, benthic condition and fish tissue contaminants. The conditions were selected based on consistent data sets for all parts of the country.
The draft report concludes that the overall condition of coastal waters is fair to poor with some regional variation. For the seven primary indicators, the overall condition was rated as the following:
- Water Clarity - Good
- Dissolved Oxygen - Good
- Coastal Wetland Loss - Poor, citing the loss of 50% of the existing wetlands over a 200 year period
- Eutrophic Condition - Poor, citing that 21% of the nation’s coastal waters exhibit high expression of eutrophic condition
- Sediment Contaminants - Poor, citing 40 - 75% of the nation’s coasts have sediment enriched with pollutants
- Benthic Condition - Poor, citing that 22% of communities are less diverse or abundant than expected
- Fish Tissue Contaminants - Fair, citing that 26% of the sampled fish populations showed elevated levels of contaminants.
Due to current data gaps, the report was not able to quantitatively characterize the condition of all of the nation’s coastal waters and was only able to use a small subset of the healthy coastline indicators. The report proposes the continued collaboration of federal agencies to continue data gathering through coastal monitoring and resulting in a national strategy for coastal programs.
EPA is specifically seeking comment on data completeness, choice of indicators, methodologies used to synthesize data, "bars" set for each indicated, and the draft’s overall completeness. Comments on the report are due to Barry Burgan, EPA (4504 - F), 1200 Pennsylvania Ave., NW Washington, DC 20460 by March 31, 2001. We encourage you to submit comments, and would like to have a copy for AMSA’s files. Please forward a copy of your comments to Greg Schaner at AMSA, 202/833-4657 FAX or gschaner@amsa-cleanwater.org as well. The draft report may be found on EPA’s website at http://www.epa.gov/owow/oceans/cwap/downloads.html.
Attachments:
- ATTACHMENT A (PDF ~109 KB )
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