^®: CRE Regulatory Action of the Week

EPA Proposes New Data Quality Act Guidelines for Third-Party Submissions and Announces a September 20 Public Meeting on the Proposal
Much of the "information" disseminated by EPA is generated by third parties outside of the Agency: e.g., public comment in rulemakings and outside research. In the September 9th Federal Register notice, EPA proposed Data Quality Act guidelines for third-party information submissions. The notice provides EPA's proposed standards for determining whether third-party submissions are of sufficient quality to be used by the Agency. It includes appendices identifying the risk assessment methods, models, and guidance documents EPA will use to determine whether third-party submissions comply with the Data Quality Act Standards. Yet many of these methods, models and guidance documents themselves may violate the Data Quality Act Standards. EPA's website states that written comments must be postmarked by September 30.