Comparison of Aquatic Life Protective Values Developed for Pesticides Under the FIFRA and the CWA

<NOTICE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <DEPDOC>[EPA-HQ-OW-2023-0107; FRL 10680-01-OW]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Comparison of Aquatic Life Protective Values Developed for Pesticides Under the FIFRA and the CWA</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of availability. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is announcing the availability of draft analyses comparing aquatic life benchmarks developed by the EPA's Office of Pesticides Programs (OPP) in support of registration decisions for pesticides under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) to existing national recommended aquatic life Ambient Water Quality Criteria and criteria-related values developed under the Clean Water Act (CWA) for the protection of aquatic life from pesticides. The EPA's draft analyses show that the values developed under these statutes are similarly protective of aquatic life and that the most sensitive OPP aquatic life benchmarks, which are updated regularly to include the latest science, could also serve as CWA section 304(a)(1) recommended aquatic life criteria or 304(a)(2) informational benchmarks for pesticides. The EPA will accept public comments on the draft analyses and potential application of OPP aquatic life benchmarks for CWA 304(a) purposes for 30 days upon publication in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received on or before January 27, 2025. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may send comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OW-2023-0107, by any of the following methods: • <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal: https://www.regulations.gov/</E> (our preferred method). Follow the online instructions for submitting comments. • <E T="03">Agency website: https://www.epa.gov/wqc/common-effects-methodology-pesticides.</E> Follow the online instructions for submitting comments. • <E T="03">Mail:</E> U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA Docket Center, Office of Water Docket, Mail Code 28221T, 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20460. • <E T="03">Hand Delivery or Courier:</E> EPA Docket Center, WJC West Building, Room 3334, 1301 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20004. The Docket Center's hours of operations are 8:30 a.m.—4:30 p.m., Monday—Friday (except Federal Holidays). <E T="03">Instructions:</E> All submissions received must include the Docket ID No. for this Notice of Availability. Comments received may be posted without change to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov/,</E> including any personal information provided. For detailed instructions on sending comments and additional information on the public comment, see the “Public Participation” heading of the <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> section of this document. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Christine Bergeron, Health and Ecological Criteria Division, Office of Water (Mail Code 4304T), Environmental Protection Agency, 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20460; telephone number: (202) 566-0629; email: <E T="03">Bergeron.christine@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Public Participation</HD> Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OW-2023-0107, at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> (our preferred method)), or the other methods identified in the <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> section. Once submitted, comments cannot be edited or removed from the docket. The EPA may publish any comment received to its public docket. Do not submit to EPA's docket at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> any information you consider to be Confidential Business Information (CBI) or other information whose disclosure is restricted by statute. Multimedia submissions (audio, video, etc.) must be accompanied by a written comment. The written comment is considered the official comment and should include discussion of all points you wish to make. The EPA will generally not consider comments or comment contents located outside of the primary submission ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> on the web, cloud, or other file sharing system). Please visit <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/dockets/commenting-epa-dockets</E> for additional submission methods; the full EPA public comment policy; information about CBI or multimedia submissions; and general guidance on making effective comments. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Purpose and Background</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. What is the purpose of this action?</HD> The purpose of this action is to request comment on: (1) the EPA's draft analyses comparing aquatic life benchmarks developed by the EPA's Office of Pesticides Programs (OPP) in support of registration decisions for pesticides under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) to existing national recommended aquatic life Ambient Water Quality Criteria (AWQC) and criteria-related values ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> values developed using assessment or safety factors) developed under the Clean Water Act (CWA) for the protection of aquatic life from pesticides, and (2) the potential application of OPP aquatic life benchmarks for CWA 304(a) purposes, either as 304(a)(1) recommended criteria or 304(a)(2) informational benchmarks, and 3) whether the eight current pesticide criteria values that also have OPP benchmarks should be updated with the most sensitive OPP benchmark value and retained as CWA section 304(a)(1) aquatic life AWQC. The EPA prepared these draft analyses to support the agency's effort to harmonize aquatic life effects assessment methods for pesticides across statutes and to provide a common basis for achieving water quality protection under the FIFRA and the CWA by leveraging work across the agency. This collaborative effort promotes consistency and efficiency in the EPA's effects assessments for pesticides to protect aquatic life. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Background</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD3">1. CWA section 304(a)(1) National Recommended Ambient Water Quality Criteria for Aquatic Life</HD> National recommended AWQC for the protection of aquatic life are numeric concentrations of pollutants in surface waters that are expected to protect against unacceptable adverse ecological effects to aquatic life resulting from exposure to pollutants found in water with specific recommendations on the duration and frequency of those concentrations ( <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/wqc/national-recommended-water-quality-criteria-aquatic-life-criteria-table).</E> CWA section 304(a)(1) directs the EPA to develop and publish AWQC recommendations that reflect the latest scientific knowledge. Generally, the EPA develops 304(a)(1) aquatic life AWQC recommendations following the <E T="03">“Guidelines for Deriving Numerical Water Quality Criteria for the Protection of Aquatic Organisms and Their Uses”</E> (U.S. EPA 1985) (“Guidelines”), an approach that encourages collecting toxicity data for a broad range of aquatic organisms, specified by the recommended eight Minimum Data Requirements (MDRs), to ensure, with high confidence, that the AWQC will be protective of aquatic communities. AWQC are based solely on data and scientific judgments about the relationship between pollutant concentrations and the potential effects on aquatic organisms. The EPA's recommended AWQC are not regulatory, nor do they automatically become part of a State's water quality standards. States and authorized Tribes may adopt these criteria into their water quality standards (WQS) to protect the designated uses of water bodies. States and authorized Tribes may also modify these criteria to reflect site-specific conditions before adopting these into standards or use other scientifically defensible methods to develop criteria. <HD SOURCE="HD3">2. CWA Section 304(a)(2) Aquatic Life Benchmarks</HD> Aquatic life benchmarks, developed under CWA section 304(a)(2), are informational values that the EPA generates when there are limited high-quality data available to develop 304(a)(1) AWQC, because data gaps exist for several aquatic organism families. These data gaps can be addressed using new approach methods, such as mathematical extrapolation tools, read-across from other chemicals with similar structures, or other information. The EPA develops aquatic life benchmarks to provide information that States and Tribes may consider in their water quality protection programs including development of water quality criteria. Like AWQC, the EPA's CWA section 304(a)(2) aquatic life benchmark values are not regulatory, nor do they automatically become part of a State's or Tribe's water quality standards. <HD SOURCE="HD3">3. OPP Aquatic Life Benchmarks</HD> Aquatic life benchmarks developed by OPP are based on the EPA's analysis of available high-quality data on the potential effects of pesticides on the aquatic community and support registration decisions for pesticides under the FIFRA. These benchmarks are estimates of the concentrations below which pesticides are not expected to present a risk of concern for aquatic organisms ( <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/pesticide-science-and-assessing-pesticide-risks/aquatic-life-benchmarks-and-ecological-risk</E> ). EPA regularly updates the benchmarks to reflect the latest scientific information submitted under FIFRA. Federal, State, Tribal and local governments use these benchmarks in their interpretation of water monitoring data. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Overview of Harmonized Approach and Draft Comparative Analysis</HD> The EPA has been working since 2009 to harmonize OPP's benchmarks and CWA section 304(a) aquatic life effects assessments in response to States and other stakeholders questioning the differences between th ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 18k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━