"I am pleased to announce that Tracy Mehan, the
Assistant Administrator for the Office of Water, has given OWM (Office of
Water Management, ed.) the go ahead and work on the SSO/CMOM NPRM. As
you know, Administrator Browner signed a draft SSO NPRM on January 4, 2001.
However, in accordance with the memorandum of January 20, 2001, from the
Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff, entitled A Regulatory Review
Plan,@ published in the Federal Register on January 24, 2001, 66 FR 7701,
EPA withdrew the SSO NPRM from the office of Federal Register to give the
Administrator an opportunity to review it.
Since January, EPA has received a number of
comments on the January, 2001 draft NPRM. Tracy Mehan has directed OWM to
develop an SSO/CMOM NPRM that:
- proposes regulations consistent with those
recommended by the SSO Federal Advisory Subcommittee on October, 1999;
- summarizes in the preamble the comments
received since January, 2001; and
- provides preamble discussion regarding those
comments.
I continue to strongly believe that broad-based
NPDES permit requirements for CMOM, reporting, record keeping and public
notice for SSOs as well as expanding NPDES program to municipal satellite
collection systems will ultimately have a dramatic impact on changing the
way the nation invests in its sewer infrastructure, which in turn will
improve the performance of these systems and lead to reduced health
risks.
We will keep you posted as we work through this
effort."
