Premium
Are We Looking Under the Right Lamp Post?
Author(s) -
Roberson J. Alan
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
journal ‐ american water works association
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.466
H-Index - 74
eISSN - 1551-8833
pISSN - 0003-150X
DOI - 10.1002/j.1551-8833.2011.tb11521.x
Subject(s) - safe drinking water act , agency (philosophy) , regulatory agency , process (computing) , environmental planning , column (typography) , political science , business , computer science , risk analysis (engineering) , process management , computer security , public administration , engineering ethics , environmental science , engineering , telecommunications , sociology , water quality , biology , operating system , ecology , social science , frame (networking)
This article builds on the previous column in the July issue (“”When Will Enough Be Enough?“”) that discusses the challenges in identifying the appropriate new contaminants to regulate (Roberson, 2011). The Contaminant Candidate List (CCL) and the Regulatory Determination (RD) have turned out to be more challenging than may have been envisioned in the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) Amendments of 1996 (PL 104‐ 208). The article discusses three questions that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) administrator must consider for potentially regulating a contaminant, and the regulatory issues these questions raise from three different perspectives. The article points out that a more collaborative and transparent process is needed to identify likely prospects for regulation and what the numerical standard and/or treatment technique should be, which would be a departure from the current USEPA‐centric regulatory development process.