Expedited Approval of Alternative Test Procedures for the Analysis of Contaminants Under the Safe Drinking Water Act; Analysis and Sampling Procedures

<RULE> ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY <CFR>40 CFR Part 141</CFR> <DEPDOC>[EPA-HQ-OW-2024-0603; FRL-12499-01-OW]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Expedited Approval of Alternative Test Procedures for the Analysis of Contaminants Under the Safe Drinking Water Act; Analysis and Sampling Procedures</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This action announces the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) approval of alternative testing methods for use in measuring the levels of contaminants in drinking water to determine compliance with national primary drinking water regulations. The Safe Drinking Water Act authorizes EPA to approve the use of alternative testing methods through publication in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . EPA is using this streamlined authority to make two additional methods available for analyzing drinking water samples. This expedited approach provides public water systems, laboratories, and primacy agencies with more timely access to new measurement techniques and greater flexibility in the selection of analytical methods, thereby reducing monitoring costs while maintaining public health protection. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This action is effective January 16, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> EPA has established a docket for this action under Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OW-2024-0603. All documents in the docket are listed on the <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> website. Although listed in the index, some information is not publicly available, <E T="03">e.g.,</E> confidential business information (CBI) or other information whose disclosure is restricted by statute. Certain other material, such as copyrighted material, is not placed on the internet and will be publicly available only in hard copy form. Publicly available docket materials are available electronically through <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Teresa Wells, Technical Support Branch, Standards and Risk Management Division, Office of Ground Water and Drinking Water (MS 140), Environmental Protection Agency, 26 West Martin Luther King Drive, Cincinnati, OH 45268; telephone number: (513) 569-7128; email address: <E T="03">wells.teresa@epa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. General Information</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Does this action apply to me?</HD> Public water systems are the regulated entities required to measure contaminants in drinking water samples. In addition, EPA Regions as well as States and Tribal governments with authority to administer the regulatory program for public water systems under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) may measure contaminants in water samples. When EPA sets a monitoring requirement in its national primary drinking water regulations for a given contaminant, the agency also establishes (in the regulations) standardized test procedures for analysis of the contaminant. This action makes alternative testing methods available for particular drinking water contaminants beyond the testing methods currently established in the regulations. EPA is providing public water systems, required to test water samples, with a choice of using either a test procedure already established in the existing regulations or an alternative testing method that has been approved in this action or in prior expedited approval actions. Categories and entities that may ultimately be affected by this action include: <GPOTABLE COLS="3" OPTS="L2,nj,tp0,i1" CDEF="s50,r100,8"> <TTITLE> </TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Category</CHED> <CHED H="1">Examples of potentially regulated entities</CHED> <ENT I="01">State, local, & Tribal governments</ENT> <ENT>State, local, and Tribal governments that analyze water samples on behalf of public water systems required to conduct such analysis; State, local, and Tribal governments that directly operate community and non-transient non-community water systems required to monitor</ENT> <ENT>924110</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Industry</ENT> <ENT>Private operators of community and non-transient non-community water systems required to monitoras</ENT> <ENT>221310</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Municipalities</ENT> <ENT>Municipal operators of community and non-transient non-community water systems required to monitor</ENT> <ENT>924110</ENT> </ROW> <TNOTE> <SU>1</SU>  North American Industry Classification System. </TNOTE> </GPOTABLE> This table is not intended to be exhaustive, but rather provides a guide for readers regarding entities likely to be interested in this action. Other types of entities not listed in the table could also have some interest. To determine whether your facility is affected by this action, you should carefully examine the applicability language in the <E T="03">Code of Federal Regulations</E> (CFR) at 40 CFR 141.2 (definition of a public water system). If you have questions regarding the applicability of this action to a particular entity, consult the person listed in the preceding <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> section. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Abbreviations and Acronyms Used in This Action</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">AMCD: Automated Micro Chlorine Detection</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1"> CFR: <E T="03">Code of Federal Regulations</E> </FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">EPA: United States Environmental Protection Agency</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">FRB: Field Reagent Blank</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">LC/MS/MS: Liquid Chromatography/Tandem Mass Spectrometry</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">NAICS: North American Industry Classification System</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">PFAS: Per- and Polyfluorinated Alkyl Substances</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-1">SDWA: The Safe Drinking Water Act</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Background</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. What is the purpose of this action?</HD> In this action, EPA is approving two analytical methods for determining contaminant concentrations in drinking water samples collected under SDWA. Regulated entities required to sample and monitor may use either the testing methods already established in existing regulations or the alternative testing methods being approved in this action or in prior expedited approval actions. The new methods are listed along with other methods similarly approved through previous expedited actions in 40 CFR part 141, appendix A to subpart C and on EPA's drinking water methods website at <E T="03">https://www.epa.gov/dwanalyticalmethods.</E> <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. What is the basis for this action?</HD> When EPA determines that an alternative analytical method is “equally effective” ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> as effective as a method that has already been promulgated in the regulations), SDWA allows EPA to approve the use of the alternative testing method through publication in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> (see section 1401(1) of SDWA). EPA is using this streamlined approval authority to make two additional methods available for determining contaminant concentrations in drinking water samples collected under SDWA. EPA has determined that, for each contaminant or group of contaminants listed in section III of this preamble, the additional testing methods being approved in this action are as effective as one or more of the testing methods already approved in the regulations for those contaminants. Section 1401(1) of SDWA states that the newly approved methods “shall be treated as an alternative for public water systems to the quality control and testing procedures listed in the regulation.” Accordingly, this action makes these additional two analytical methods legally available as options for meeting EPA's monitoring requirements. This action does not add regulatory language, but does, for informational purposes, update an appendix to the regulations at 40 CFR part 141 that lists all methods approved under section 1401(1) of SDWA. Accordingly, while this action is not a rule, it is updating CFR text and therefore is being published in the “Final Rules” section of the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Summary of Approvals</HD> EPA is approving two methods that are equally effective relative to methods previously promulgated in the regulations. By means of this action, these two methods are added to appendix A to subpart C of 40 CFR part 141. <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Methods Developed by EPA</HD> 1. EPA Method 537.1, Version 1.0. Determination of Selected Per- and Polyfluorinated Alkyl Substances (PFAS) in Drinking Water by Solid Phase Extraction and Liquid Chromatography/Tandem Mass Spectrometry (LC/MS/MS) (USEPA 2018). The EPA's April 26, 2024, <E T="04">Federal Register</E> publication for the PFAS National Primary Drinking Water Regulation (89 FR 32532) describes EPA Method 533 (“Determination of PFAS in Drinking Water by Isotope Dilution Anion Exchange Solid Phase Extraction and LC/MS/MS,” November 2019, 815-B-19-020) (USEPA 2019) and EPA Method 537.1, version 2.0 (“Determination of Selected PFAS in Drinking Water by Solid Phase Extraction and LC/MS/MS,” March 2020, EPA/600/R-20/006) (USEPA 2020) as acceptable methods for the analyses specified by the National Primary Drinking Water Regulation. The primary difference between Method 537.1, version 1.0 and Method 537.1, version 2.0 is the field reagent blank (FRB) preparation. Version 2.0 exposes the FRB to the preservative (Trizma) at the time of field sample collection, whereas version 1.0 combines the lab reagent water and the preservative together in the FRB prior to field sampling. Version 2.0 was created to more-closely mimic the FRB process used in Method 533. Additionally, version 2.0 specifies the use of solid phase extraction cartridge sorbent ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 28k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━