EPA Requesting Comments on the Data Collection for the Next Six Year Review

In today’s Federal Register, EPA is requesting comments on the Information Collection Request for Contaminant Occurrence Data in Support of the EPA’s Fourth Six-Year Review of National Primary Drinking Water Regulations.  Whenever EPA requests data from all the states, as they do to prepare for each Six Year Review (SYR), they must have an approved Information Collection Request (ICR).  These ICRs are open for comment, and the public may provide input to EPA now as the draft is prepared and again when the final ICR is submitted to the Office of Management and Budget for approval.  Comments can be provided between now and December 4, 2018 to EPA on this draft ICR.  The primary information contained in the ICR that states may be interested in is the estimate of the burden for the data request.  EPA estimates that the total burden for states and other primacy agencies to submit data is 765 hours, or an average of 13.7 hours per state.

EPA requests data for each SYR cycle, with the last request covering data from 2006-2011.  The next request will probably come in 2019 and cover data from 2012 to 2018.  Typically EPA provides data extraction scripts for SDWIS/State to facilitate reporting the monitoring results used for the Six Year Review.  So, the time involved can be minimal for the primacy agencies using SDWIS/State.  Comments on the ICR are unlikely to stop this data collection effort as the SYR is something mandated by the Safe Drinking Water Act and serves an important purpose in the regulatory cycle, but comments can at least make the burden estimate more accurate.

See the Federal Register for more background and details.  Submit your comments, referencing Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OW-2018-0421, online using www.regulations.gov (the preferred method), by email to ow-docket@epa.gov, or by mail to: EPA Docket Center, Environmental Protection Agency, Mail Code 28221T, 1200 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20460.