Dear Stakeholder,

President Obama recently issued Executive Order 13563, requiring each agency to develop a plan to periodically conduct a retrospective review of its significant regulations, and determine if they are ineffective, insufficient, or overly burdensome, and then revise or repeal as
warranted. In response, EPA is developing a review plan and a list of
candidate regulations for potential review, and we would like to solicit your input on both. In order to do so, the Office of Water is participating in two listening sessions to be held on March 14th, 2011, and March 17th, 2011.

EPA will hold an Agency-wide Public Meeting on Monday March 14, 2011 from 9:30 a.m. until 4:45 p.m to solicit feedback on the Agency’s draft
review plan and all EPA regulations. The Office of Water will be
hosting two water-specific listening sessions in the afternoon. This public meeting will be held at the Hilton Arlington, 950 N. Stafford Street, Arlington, VA 22203. Please review additional information
available at: http://www.epa.gov/improvingregulations/ Registration
information for the March 14th Public Meeting is available here:
http://improvingregulations.eventbrite.com/

The Office of Water will also solicit input from the public and hold a webinar listening session on water-specific significant regulations on
March 17th, from 2:00 - 3:30 p.m., EST. Additional information,
including information on registering for this Office of Water webinar, can be obtained by going to EPA’s website http://www.epa.gov/improvingregulations/, or you can contact Keith Bartlett at Bartlett.Keith@epa.gov.

Keith Bartlett
U.S. EPA
On Detail to the Water Policy Staff
EPA East 3226C
(202) 564-2385

I know… snooze city.  But there is some really useful information in these hearings. 

Did you know that TDEC’s total budget is $334.5 million dollars? Or that 23% comes from the general fund, 21% comes from the feds as pass through to programs that TDEC administers and the remaining 56% comes from fees for permits and parks concessions.  Me neither!

It looks like 6 swimming pools will be on the chopping block. But they will be replaced with splash pools. Not quite sure what a splash pool is.

Around $75 million go to local governments for drinking water and sewage water programs.

The first tier of reductions are those positions that deal with new sewage treatment plant permits.  Since development has taken a dive in recent years, those folks have little to do.

The second tier of cuts will be for abandoned mine reclamation, stream restoration and historic commission funding.  That’s too bad.  There are a number of abandoned mines and streams that need to be restored.

Parks are doing well. For every dollar invested the state makes $17.

Seems Commissioner Martineau understands that environmental programs need to be protected because there are federal monies and requirements attached to them.

Ok, maybe this is a snooze fest.

2011 is shaping up to be a year of firsts: first woman to lead the state House of Representatives as Speaker, first time the House, Senate and Governor are from the same political party.  What does this mean for environmental work in Tennessee. Good question!  I don’t know.  Sorry.

As we look at the committee structures, many pro-environment legislators are still working on the environmental committees.  That’s a good thing!  The TDOT and TDEC Commissioner appointments look satisfactory from here.  Rumor has it that long time TDEC employees may be looking towards retirement.  So we may see a number of new faces and changes taking place at the state level.

Commissioner Schroer of TDOT

Commissioner Martineau of TDEC

Budget constraints are worrisome.  Tennessee faces some difficult financial challenges ahead and often its the environmental departments that get the axe.  Caution should be exercised here as too deep cuts may jeopardize federal funding.

The Session has not started and so its too early to say what will or will not happen.  TCWN will be watching committees and reporting to you on Twitter, so follow us there.

RvH

Well, the legislature has selected its committees.  Some of our longtime supporters are still on them so that’s a good thing.

Senate Environment, Conservation and Tourism

House Environment and Conservation

Ehhhh… not really. The Environmental Working Group published a report on Chromium 6 found in various tap water samples in US cities.  Tennessee was a blank.  So does that mean no Chromium? Well, not exactly. Apparently, TDEC was asked several times by EWG to fill out a form asking about how they regulate chromium and TDEC never responded. That Tennessee is blank has more to do with TDEC staff than whether or not we have chromium in our drinking water.

So back to the original question.  Here’s the long policy explanation.  The rules that govern how much pollution gets put in Tennessee’s water has a list of criteria that must be followed.  For surface waters, Tennessee has a “domestic supply” criterion of 100 ppb (or 100ug/L - same thing) for total Chromium.  That’s the water in rivers that can be used to drink.

There is a criterion for “fish and aquatic life”. The criterion for Chromium 6 is 16 ppb maximum or 11 ppb on the average. This is for rivers that have fish species that you may want to eat and the aquatic bugs that those fish feed on.

Now for the criterion used for what the drinking water plants need to follow - 100 ppb of total Chromium.

Why are fish more protected than humans? My guess?  Fish are in a water environment and therefore are more susceptible to the effects of chromium.  That’s my guess.

We looked at a couple of sites in Tennessee to see what kinds of chromium we find there.  Smokey Mountain Smelters in Knoxville had about 0.001 ppb in testing we did in 2004. That’s very low.  We looked at effluent from a landfill. We found no chromium.  There was some chromium found from the Kingston disaster, but low levels. In short, some of the nastiest places we’ve looked at don’t seem to be a problem.

That doesn’t mean it won’t be a problem in the future, but for now I’m not worrying about it.

RvH