EPA Proposes Water Quality Standards To Protect Fish-Eating Tribes in Maine

摘要

The Environmental Protection Agency has stepped in and proposed water quality standards for Maine because the state has failed to issue standards of its own that are stringent enough, agency officials said April 20. The EPA proposed nine new standards, with eight of them designed to better protect the health of the four Indian tribes that fish on the Penobscot River and depend on their catch for sustenance, the agency said in an April 20 notice in the Federal Register (81 Fed. Reg. 23239). Limits for 96 pollutants that are commonly found in the Penobscot River and other rivers near Indian lands in Maine would be established in the rulemaking. They include cyanide, toluene and vinyl chloride.