[Federal Register Volume 67, Number 93 (Tuesday, May 14, 2002)]
[Notices]
[Pages 34448-34450]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 02-11827]


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ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY

[FRL-7210-8]


Office of Environmental Information Draft Data Standard for 
Reporting Water Quality Results for Chemical and Microbiological 
Analytes and Draft Data Standard for Exchange of Tribal Identifier 
Information

AGENCY: Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

ACTION: Notice of information availability and request for comments.

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SUMMARY: Notice of availability is hereby given for a 45-day public 
comment period on two draft data standards: Draft Data Standard for 
Reporting Water Quality Results for Chemical and Microbiological 
Analytes and Draft Data Standard for Exchange of Tribal Identifier 
Information. These draft standards each consist of a list of data 
elements, definitions for these elements, notes,and explanatory 
preamble language. The draft standards were developed by the 
partnership efforts of States, Tribes, and U.S. Environmental 
Protection Agency participating in the Environmental Data Standards 
Council (EDSC). The EDSC convened Action Teams consisting of 
representatives from EPA, States and Tribes to develop these core sets 
of data

[[Page 34449]]

elements to facilitate the sharing of information regarding reporting 
water quality results for chemical and microbiological analytes and the 
exchange of tribal identifiers information. The EPA and the EDSC invite 
comment on these standards from States, EPA, Tribes, database managers 
in the public and private sectors, and the general public with interest 
in development and use of data for reporting water quality results for 
chemical and microbiological analytes or the exchange of Tribal 
identifiers information.

DATES: Comments must be submitted on or before June 28, 2002.

ADDRESSES: The record for these standards has been established under 
docket number W-02-02, and includes supporting documentation as well as 
printed, paper versions of electronic comments. The record is available 
for inspection from 9 to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday, excluding legal 
holidays at the Water Docket, EB 57, USEPA Headquarters, 401 M St SW., 
Washington, DC 20460. For access to docket materials, please call (202) 
260-3027 to schedule an appointment.
    Electronic Access: You may view and download the draft data 
standards and related explanatory material at the EDSC website at: 
http://www.epa.gov/edsc/ in the area of the site marked ``Data 
Standards.'' The draft data standards can also be viewed and downloaded 
at the EPA Environmental Data Registry (EDR) at http://www.epa.gov/edr/ 
in the area of the site marked ``Data Standards''. Or for those with 
password access, at the WISER portion of the State/EPA website at: 
http://www.ecos.org/wiser.
    Please send an original and 3 copies of your comments and 
enclosures (including references) to the W-02-02. Comment Clerk, Water 
Docket (MC4101), USEPA, 1200 Pennsylvania Ave., NW., Washington, DC 
20460. Comments must be received or post-marked by midnight June 28, 
2002. Hand deliveries should be delivered to: EPA's Water Docket at 401 
M. St., SW., Room EB57, Washington, DC 20460.
    Commenters who want EPA to acknowledge receipt of their comments 
should enclose a self-addressed, stamped envelope. No facsimiles 
(faxes) will be accepted. Comments may also be submitted electronically 
to [email protected]. Electronic comments must be submitted as an 
ASCII, WP5.1, WP6.1 or WP8 file avoiding the use of special characters 
and form of encryption. Electronic comments must be identified by the 
docket number W-02-02. Electronic comments on this notice may be filed 
online at many Federal Depository Libraries.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Linda Spencer, Office of Environmental 
Information, Office of Information Collection, MC-2822T, U.S. 
Environmental Protection Agency, 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW., 
Washington DC 20460; Telephone (202) 566-1651.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:

I. Environmental Data Standards Council (EDSC) Background

    Data sharing has become an increasingly important aspect of sound 
environmental management. States, Tribes, and EPA together face the 
critical challenge of sharing information among themselves and with 
their respective stakeholders and public. Fundamental to the seamless 
exchange of data are data standards. Data standards help improve the 
ability of partners (internal and external) to exchange data 
efficiently and accurately, and also assist secondary users of data to 
understand, interpret, and use data appropriately. Recognition of the 
need for EPA, States and Tribes to develop and agree upon data 
standards for environmental information sharing has lead to the 
creation of the EDSC. Data standards are documented agreements on 
formats and definitions of data elements. Standards are developed only 
when there is an environmental management business reason.
    The EDSC's mission is to promote the efficient sharing of 
environmental information between EPA, States, Tribes, and other 
parties through the development of data standards. The EDSC identified 
reporting water quality results of chemical and microbiological 
analytes and exchange of tribal identifiers information as information 
areas for which having standards will create value to all interested 
parties. An Action Team deliberation process bringing together State, 
EPA, and Tribal parties began in August 2001 for the Draft Data 
Standard for Reporting Water Quality Results for Chemical and 
Microbiological Analytes and June 2000 for the Draft Data Standard for 
Exchange of Tribal Identifiers Information. Both draft standards were 
delivered to the EDSC for consideration in March 2002 and approved for 
initiation of this 45-day public comment period.
    After the comment period announced in this Notice, the EDSC and its 
Action Teams will review comments received and make appropriate 
modifications. The EDSC will then consider approval of these data 
standards as appropriate. EDSC approval does not bind an individual 
agency to using a standard. It will be up to the individual or programs 
to determine if, when, and how it might use a standard developed under 
the auspices of the EDSC. It will be the intent of EPA to adopt and 
implement the consistent use of EDSC-approved standards in its 
information systems and programs.

II. Draft Data Standard for Reporting Water Quality Results for 
Chemical and Microbiological Analytes

Background

    The EDSC is proposing to adopt the core set of data elements 
prepared by the National Water Quality Monitoring Council and adopted 
in May 2001 by the Advisory Committee on Water Information (ACWI), a 
Federal advisory committee to the Cooperative Water Program of the 
Department of Interior's U.S. Geological Survey. The data elements were 
adopted to facilitate the sharing of chemical and microbiological water 
quality data and promote efficiency in the monitoring of water resource 
quality programs. Water quality monitoring is an increasingly important 
element of water quality management activities. It provides information 
for an accurate understanding of the conditions of waters and the 
trends in observed water quality. Water quality must be understood in 
order that valid and effective restoration and protection programs can 
be designed for water bodies that vary significantly in their 
vulnerability and pollution stress. Because of the cost of its 
collection, water quality data must be viewed as a resource worthy of 
careful management both to preserve it for future analyses by the 
agency that collects it and to share it among local, State, and Federal 
agencies; and the private sector involved in resource management 
activities.
    The Advisory Committee on Water Information's ``core set'' of data 
elements were intended to allow sharing and interpretation of sample 
test results among future secondary data users, regardless of data 
source, database management system, or the data's original intended 
use. The list ACWI adopted was not intended to suggest that additional 
data elements would not need to be retained in a data originator's 
database, or in other databases where it might be considered essential 
to the use of these data. The proposed standard is intended to adapt 
the ACWI data elements and serve as the initial basis for data exchange 
with EPA's Storage and Retrieval database (STORET) and, with approval 
of the EDSC, EPA has

[[Page 34450]]

added data formats and field lengths for this purpose.
    Both the EDSC and the ACWI are considering elements to record data 
of higher levels of biological and habitat data. This data reflects a 
growing appreciation that water quality in streams, lakes, and 
estuaries can be described by the life they support. When the list of 
data elements is complete, the EDSC intends to consider adding these 
elements to the groups subject to today's notice.
    The proposed data standards emphasize metadata that describe common 
terminology and definitions for documenting key water quality data 
measurements from water quality monitoring. The EDSC believes that by 
adopting this core set of data elements, agencies collecting water 
quality data will be spared the task of creating their own systems for 
organizing metadata and associated metadata element definitions. When 
implemented, a standard set of data elements will enable data users to 
reconcile diverse metadata systems as they draw on multiple data sets 
to carry out their studies or analyses. The EDSC believes that the use 
of standard data elements holds the prospect of reducing costly 
duplicate monitoring efforts. These data elements are proposed as 
guidelines to define a measure of good practice within the water 
quality monitoring community. They will encourage greater data 
consistency, allow the quality of data to be determined by future 
users, and simplify the process for entering these metadata elements. 
It is not required that all the proposed data elements be used. 
Metadata selected must fit the data they describe. Ground water 
sampling data, for instance, is described by several metadata elements 
that are unrelated to surface water sampling data. Therefore, the EDSC 
is not requiring inclusion of all proposed elements in order for data 
to be entered in a federally maintained database. The EDSC's advocacy 
of these data elements is not intended to discourage the use of 
existing water quality data solely because it does not meet these 
guidelines.
    The core set of data elements for reporting water quality results 
of chemical and microbiological analytes addresses wells, surface water 
stations, and precipitation measurements. This list is intended to 
standardize the preservation of data and to facilitate its sharing by 
standardizing definitions and by defining the list of data, metadata 
and their descriptive definitions. A data element is the name of a set 
of information with the same attribute. A data element may be a data 
field in a database such as a laboratory name, analyte, or the latitude 
of the sampling station. Examples of metadata elements include such 
things as sampling/laboratory procedures and quality controls.
    The list of data elements is not specific to any particular 
database, but is intended to be used voluntarily by agencies, 
organizations and individuals to guide their reporting, storage, and 
sharing of water quality data. This list is intended primarily to guide 
the collection of ambient water quality data, but many of the allowable 
sample location and sample type descriptions are versatile enough to be 
useful in collecting these data in other settings.
    The list of data and metadata elements is divided into categories 
that describe who collected and analyzed the sample, what was analyzed, 
why the sample was undertaken, when the sample was collected and 
analyzed, where the sampling occurred, and how the analysis was done. 
The list is intended to describe the breadth of information needed to 
ensure the continuing utility of the information both within an 
organization and between organizations as information is stored and 
shared, but without being an exhaustive list of every possible data 
element that could or should be reported. The EDSC has included the 
core set of data elements on the essential data needed across programs, 
recognizing that if more extensive data from a particular monitoring 
program were collected, it could be made available as well.

III. Draft Data Standard for Exchange of Tribal Identifier 
Information

    The EDSC chartered the Tribal Identifier Action Team to identify 
and define the major areas of tribal identification information and to 
develop a data standard that could be used for the exchange of tribal 
identification data among environmental agencies and other entities. 
The purpose of the standard is to provide a common vocabulary or 
lexicon and to encourage tribal entity identification uniformity across 
information systems, so that information about functionally similar 
activities and/or instruments can be shared. The Standard is an 
adoption of The Bureau of Indian Affairs criteria for tribal entity 
identification (federally recognized tribes). The ``Draft Data Standard 
for Exchange of Tribal Identifier Information'' is not intended to 
constrain what information an agency chooses to collect, nor does it 
constitute a reporting requirement. The Standard defines a uniform way 
to organize and exchange key information if agencies choose to exchange 
that information.
    The ``Draft Data Standard for Exchange of Tribal Identifier 
Information'' consists of two data elements--tribal names and tribal 
codes. Permissible values for tribal names are based on federally 
recognized tribes from the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) ``Long Names 
List''. Permissible values for tribal codes are based on those used in 
BIA's Trust Asset and Accounting Management System (TAAMS), which are 
used to represent tribal names. Efforts to identify a single 
authoritative source for state recognized tribes were unsuccessful, and 
investigations regarding such tribes found that the recognition 
criteria that states use vary significantly. Therefore the Tribal 
Action Group chose not to include state recognized tribes as part of 
this standard at this time.

IV. Future Revisions

    EDSC standards will be periodically reviewed and revised as 
recommended by the EDSC or the stewards of the respective data 
standards: (1) ACWI for the Draft Data Standard for Reporting Water 
Quality Results for Chemical and Microbiological Analytes and (2) BIA 
for Draft Data Standard for Exchange of Tribal Identifier Information. 
The most current standards will be posted at www.edsc.org and 
www.epa.gov/edr.

V. Review of Draft Standards To Date

    These draft standards have received significant input through the 
representatives from EPA program, States, and Tribal organizations 
serving on the development Action Teams. In addition, the preliminary 
versions of the draft standards have been reviewed by State and EPA 
programs managers during the first quarter of 2002. EDSC members have 
also reviewed and recommended these draft standards for this public 
comment process.

    Dated: April 24, 2002.
Mark Luttner,
Director, Office of Information Collection, Office of Environmental 
Information.
[FR Doc. 02-11827 Filed 5-13-02; 8:45 am]
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