Thanks again to G. Tracy Mehan III, executive director for government affairs at the American Water Works Association, who sent me his 8-page letter to the EPA Office of Water about the SDWA. A while back he sent me a copy of AWWA's letter to President-Elect Joe Biden.
Download 2020 11 24 AWWA Letter on Benefit Cost Analysis for SDWA
Here goes...
November 24, 2020
Mr. Joel Corona and Mr. Michael Trombley
Office of Water
Environmental Protection Agency
Mail Code: 4101M
1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20460SENT VIA ELECTRONIC MAIL
RE: Increasing Consistency and Transparency in Considering Benefits and Costs in the Safe Drinking Water Rulemaking (RIN: 2040-AF99)
Dear Mr. Corona and Mr. Trombley,
The Spring 2020 Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions indicates the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will draft a regulation to increase consistency and transparency in considering benefits and costs under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA). The American Water Works Association (AWWA) has a continuing interest in EPA’s drinking water program and over the past twenty-four years has supported technical dialogues, submitted data, and prepared comments to inform EPA’s SDWA benefit-cost analysis (BCA) policy and execution.
AWWA supports the use of BCAs as a useful and intelligible way to evaluate EPA regulatory alternatives while recognizing inherent limitations in such national analyses. These comments are offered in the spirit of continuous improvement to further refine current practices for the betterment of public health and affordable delivery of an essential service—drinking water.
AWWA is very interested in this new rule. Building on our history of being regularly engaged on the implementation of SDWA authorities, AWWA has prepared this letter. The following provides a brief summary of existing statutory requirements for use of BCA under SDWA in developing drinking water standards, as well as a review of common elements from AWWA comments on EPA’s previous BCAs.
Skipping 6 pages to the end...
Applying BCAs Beyond Primary Drinking Water Standards
Since the 1996 Amendments, EPA has worked diligently to conduct BCAs to support primary drinking water standards. A BCA has not always been applied to other Agency actions under SDWA. For example, the Underground Injection Control program regulation of geologic sequestration of carbon dioxide was supported by a BCA that mirrored the standard of care applied to HRRCA preparation. This is not thecase for recommendations accompanying drinking water health advisories published by the Agency.EPA health advisories and associated recommendations can have impacts akin to primary drinking water standards and exceed thresholds set in Office of Management and Budget, as well as, Agency guidance for economically significant documents. Since AWWA’s 2015 correspondence on this issue EPA Office of Water and Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assistance have issued guidance to States and EPA Regions that encourage observed contaminant levels above health advisory concentrations to be treated as warranting immediate public notice, installation of treatment, distribution of alternative water supplies or other actions. Such health advisories consequently warrant a thorough BCA.
SDWA Processes
The SDWA regulatory process incorporates multiple steps, some of which have identifiable costs for the regulated community. It is more challenging to ascribe benefits to these interim process steps. Consequently, EPA has not been preparing a BCA in support of notices associated with the contaminant candidate list, regulatory determinations, unregulated contaminant monitoring, and six-year review SDWA provisions. Given the intermediate stage in the regulatory process each of these notices requires specific analyses to support decision-making. There is a needed emphasis on risk communication at each one of these process steps, and decision-making around the UCMR clearly includes a thorough cost analysis. It is however premature in the regulatory process to prepare a full BCA for this group of SDWA activities.Thank you for your consideration. If you have any questions regarding this correspondence or if we can be of assistance in some other way, please contact Chris Moody (202.326.6127, [email protected]).
Best regards,
G. Tracy Mehan, III
Executive Director – Government Affairs
American Water Works Associationcc: Jennifer McLain, EPA/OW/OGWDW
Al McGartland, EPA/OP/NCEE
Eric Burneson, EPA/OW/OGWDW
Enjoy!
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." – Eric Hoffer
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