[Federal Register Volume 63, Number 136 (Thursday, July 16, 1998)]
[Notices]
[Pages 38400-38401]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 98-18992]
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ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
[FRL-6125-2]
Announcement of a Joint Application Design Meeting on the
Development of Public Access Component of the National Contaminant
Occurrence Database
AGENCY: Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
ACTION: Announcement of a Joint Application Design (JAD) meeting on the
development of public access component of the National Contaminant
Occurrence Database (NCOD).
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SUMMARY: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has scheduled a
two-day public meeting on EPA's development of public access component
of the NCOD. The focus of this meeting will be to capture the design
and user interface requirements of NCOD users in the public arena. The
meeting will be open to any interested parties. EPA encourages the full
participation of stakeholders throughout this process. Of particular
interest for this meeting are potential NCOD users from educational
institutions, state and local governments, the general public, and
anyone that does not have access to the EPA Local Area Network (LAN).
Providing the information within the NCOD to the public in a readily
accessible format is required by the 1996 amendments to the Safe
Drinking Water Act (SDWA).
DATES: The stakeholder meeting on the Joint Application Design of the
public access component of the NCOD will be held on August 17-18, 1998,
from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. EST.
ADDRESSES: U.S. EPA Washington Information Center (WIC), 400 M Street
SW, Washington, DC 20460, Conference Room WIC 4 South.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: For general information about the
meeting, please contact Ms. Valerie Love-Smith, U.S. EPA Office of
Ground Water and Drinking Water, Mail Code 4606, 400 M Street SW,
Washington, DC 2046, (202) 260-5596.
For other information on National Contaminant Occurrence Database,
[[Page 38401]]
please contact Charles Job, at the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency, Phone: 202-260-7084, Fax: 202-260-3762.
Members of the public wishing to attend the meeting may register by
phone by contacting the Safe Drinking Water Hotline by August 10, 1998
at 1-800-426-4791. Those registered for the meeting will receive
background materials prior to the meeting.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
A. Background on the National Contaminant Occurrence Database
The Safe Drinking Water Act Amendments of 1996 (SDWA Amendments,
section 126, appendix A) require establishing a NCOD to: (1) Include
both regulated and unregulated contaminants; (2) identify contaminants
that may be placed on the Contaminant Candidate List; (3) support the
Administrator's determinations to regulate contaminants in the future;
(4) support the review of existing regulations every six years and of
monitoring requirements; (5) make the data base available to the public
in readily accessible form; and (6) be assembled by August 1999, and
maintained thereafter.
The NCOD is planned to be a collection of data of documented
quality on unregulated and regulated chemical, radiological, microbial,
and physical contaminants, and other such contaminants likely to occur,
in finished, raw and source waters of public water systems (PWS) of the
United States and its territories.
B. Request for Stakeholder Involvement
The upcoming meeting deals specifically with EPA's efforts to
develop the user interface tools to provide information within the NCOD
to the general public. The EPA Office of Ground Water and Drinking
Water (OGWDW) sees the involvement of interested parties, representing
a variety of perspectives and expertise, as critical to meeting the
requirement established in the 1996 SDWA amendments. Specifically, the
amendments stipulate the information within the NCOD will be provided
to the public in a readily accessible format. This JAD meeting will
provide an important opportunity for such involvement. Some anticipated
issues for discussion include the following questions:
1. Should the NCOD provide data currently available in other EPA
water data systems (e.g., SDWIS, STORET)? Should the NCOD provide
products to the public, in addition to the products and queries used to
satisfy the internal primary drinking water program goals of the NCOD
(e.g., establish and maintain Contaminant Candidate List (CCL);
determination to regulate or not regulate future contaminants; review
existing regulations; etc.)?
2. What is a ``readily accessible format'? Is INTERNET access
enough? What type of non-electronic format is needed?
3. What capabilities are needed by the public: download query
results, graphs, charts, tabular results?
4. What, if any, restrictions should be placed on the amount of
data a user could electronically download? Should someone be able to
download one hundred megabytes of data on a 14400 modem?
5. If electronic access time is restricted, as indicated above, how
could data be provided (file type and media) for public use?
EPA has convened this public meeting to hear the views of
stakeholders on the development of the public access component of the
NCOD. The public is invited to provide comments on the issues listed
above or other related issues during the August 17-18, 1998 meeting.
Dated: July 10, 1998.
Elizabeth Fellows,
Acting Director, Office of Ground Water and Drinking Water.
[FR Doc. 98-18992 Filed 7-15-98; 8:45 am]
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