Watershed Management
EPA Releases Final Framework for Unified Watershed Assessments, Restoration Priorities...
Background: In response to a vice-presidential directive, the Clean Water Action Plan, released in February 1998, presents a broad vision of watershed protection in which protections for coastal, estuarine, wetlands, freshwater, and America's natural resources are integrated with traditional water quality and human health objectives. A key element of the Action Plan is a new, cooperative approach to restoring and protecting water quality through a unified watershed assessment process. State, federal, tribal, and local governments are asked to work with stakeholders and other interested citizens to: identify, by October 1998, watersheds needing restoration (i.e., those not meeting clean water and other natural resource goals); identify the highest priority watersheds requiring restoration to be addressed beginning in the 1999-2000 period; and develop a preliminary schedule for the long-term efforts needed to restore the watersheds not meeting clean water and other natural resource goals. Most of the most new resources requested in the President's FY 1999 Clean Water and Watershed Restoration Budget Initiative are targeted to watersheds in most need of restoration.
Status: Although the Action Plan provides a general overview of the watershed assessment process, it does not describe the process in detail. A key issue is what kind of framework is needed to help ensure that the task of creating these unified watershed assessments is well understood, and that the roles of the states, interstate commissions, tribes, federal agencies, local governments, conservation districts, and the public are adequately defined. On June 9, 1998, EPA released a final "Framework for Unified Watershed Assessments, Restoration Priorities, and Restoration Action Strategies," which proposes flexible approaches for the development of unified watershed assessments, watershed restoration priorities, and watershed restoration action strategies.
The Framework calls for States and tribes to assess their watersheds into four categories: 1) Category I - Watersheds in Need of Restoration; 2) Category II - Watersheds Meeting Goals, Including Those Needing Preventative Action to Sustain Water Quality; 3) Category III- Watersheds with Pristine or Sensitive Aquatic System Conditions on Lands Administered by Federal, State, And Tribal Governments, and; 4) Category IV - Watershed with Insufficient Data to Make an Assessment. Category I watersheds include any 8-digit watershed in which do not now meet, or face imminent threat of not meeting clean water or other natural resource goals.
Based upon the assessments, specific watershed restoration action strategies focus on the appropriate portions of the priority watersheds, in order to achieve the identified watershed goals. Most of the new federal resources proposed for FY 1999 are targeted to watersheds in most need of restoration (Category I watersheds). States and tribes are asked to provide draft unified watershed assessments and watershed restoration priorities for federal and broad public review by August 1, 1998. Final unified watershed assessments and watershed restoration priorities are expected to be completed by October 1, 1998. A copy of the final strategy is available http://www.epa.gov/cleanwater/. CONTACT: John Meagher, EPA 202/260-1917 or Mark Hoeke, AMSA 202/833-9106.
EPA TMDL Advisory Committee Recommendations
Background: Due to lawsuits filed in over 30 states by environmental groups against EPA concerning TMDL program oversight requirements under CWA Section 303, EPA continues to develop a broad strategy to reinvent the TMDL process. Under CWA Section 303(d), states are required to identify waters in which technology-based effluent limitations are not sufficient to meet water quality-based standards, and requires states to develop TMDLs for these waters which will ensure that applicable water quality standards are met. Under Section 303, EPA must develop TMDLs when states fail to do so. EPA formed a federal advisory committee of stakeholder interests to develop recommendations concerning needed changes to the agency’s TMDL program implementation strategy, as well as TMDL-related policies, guidance, regulations and priorities. EPA plans to propose revisions to its TMDL program regulations and accompanying guidance in November 1998 and will finalize these revisions in October 1999.
Status: EPA has received signatures from all members of its TMDL advisory committee and is poised to finalize the recommendations in the Advisory Committee report to EPA. AMSA still has serious concerns with the final report language concerning the TMDL allocation process and its references to "enforceability" of controls. The TMDL Advisory Committees parent committee, the National Advisory Council for Environmental Policy and Technology (NACEPT) is currently reviewing the document and once approved by the Council members, it will be forwarded to Carol Browner. AMSA plans to relay its ongoing concerns with the TMDL report recommendations through its representative on NACEPT. AMSA also plans to send a separate letter to EPA highlighting this issue, once the report is published . CONTACT: Mark Hoeke, AMSA 202/833-9106 or Don Brady, EPA 202/260-5368.