^®: CRE Regulatory Action of the Week

EPA Announces National Meeting on Pesticide Aquatic Effects
On November 1, 2010, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency published Federal Register notice that EPA will conduct a national stakeholders meeting to solicit comment on methods to develop common characterizations of effects from pesticides on fish, other aquatic organisms, and aquatic plants in aquatic ecosystems. These methods are being developed by EPA's Office of Pesticide Programs and Office of Water, with support from EPA's Office of Research and Development.

The national meeting will be held in Washington, DC, December 1, 2010. EPA has developed a set of draft white papers that explore: (1) The use of various tools to estimate aquatic toxicity data; (2) approaches for deriving community level benchmarks; and (3) procedures for better integrating plant effects data into community level assessments. EPA is soliciting public comment on the tools and approaches presented in the draft white papers.

EPA must receive written requests to deliver verbal comments at the national meeting prior to the meeting on December 1, 2010. Written comments may be submitted to the docket anytime between November 1, 2010 and prior to the close of the docket on January 15, 2010.

EPA's Federal Register notice states that EPA seeks the following public comments on the following issues:

1. "The data, tools, and methods presented in the white papers;
   
   
2. Alternate tools or methods that EPA should consider for extrapolating or estimating aquatic toxicity data;
   
   
3. Alternate methods EPA should consider for developing community level benchmarks or aquatic life screening values when minimum data requirements for national recommended aquatic life criteria are not met;
   
   
4. The types of values that are used by states and/or regions for protecting aquatic life in the absence of ambient water quality criteria; and
   
   
5. Approaches to establishing plant-based criteria, or methods to better incorporate plant effects data in community level benchmarks."