Murky standards for groundwater
- Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Resources, Harrisburg (United States)
Federal groundwater policy has provided the states with incomplete guidance since it was first formed six years ago. When the EPA started to formulate its policy in the early 1980s, it realized that none of the nine major federal environmental laws gave the agency comprehensive authority over national groundwater resources. The EPA has now proposed that protecting uncontaminated groundwater requires a different approach than one for remediating polluted aquifers. The new policy is presented in two documents: EPA State of Groundwater Principles and State/Federal Relationships Options Paper, EPA Ground-Water Task Force. While the EPA is moving away from permitting degradation either to maximum contaminant levels (MCL) or maximum contaminant level goal levels, unfortunately its new policy retains former, less strict standard in making decisions on remediating already contaminated supplies. Once adopted under Superfund and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCTA), MCLs and other cleanup standards constitute not only the levels that will be deemed acceptable for cleanup, but also the limit of liability for cleanup for the persons who are responsible for creating the environmental problem. In actuality, EPA reconciles the inherent conflict between large remedy costs and cleanup standards by minimizing costs and setting standards in individual cases in a way that structures the responsible parties liability at a level that has already taken the cost to them into consideration. By trying to place protection on an equal footing with remediation, the two recent EPA documents present a shift in how the agency presents its groundwater policy, and seem to send a message to the states that groundwater protection efforts should not rely on MCLs as a degradation ceiling.
- OSTI ID:
- 5034945
- Journal Information:
- Environmental Forum; (United States), Journal Name: Environmental Forum; (United States) Vol. 7:3; ISSN ENVFE; ISSN 0731-5732
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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290300 -- Energy Planning & Policy-- Environment
Health
& Safety
54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
540320* -- Environment
Aquatic-- Chemicals Monitoring & Transport-- (1990-)
COST
DECISION MAKING
ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY
GOVERNMENT POLICIES
GROUND WATER
HYDROGEN COMPOUNDS
LAWS
NATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
OXYGEN COMPOUNDS
POLLUTION
POLLUTION LAWS
REMEDIAL ACTION
RESOURCE RECOVERY ACTS
STANDARDS
US EPA
US ORGANIZATIONS
US SUPERFUND
WATER
WATER POLLUTION
WATER QUALITY