EPA Backs Kentucky's Novel Selenium Water Standard, Angering Advocates

摘要

EPA has approved Kentucky's novel fish-tissue based water quality standards (WQS) for regulating selenium, setting a precedent that other states and coal mining industry groups are likely to welcome but which is already drawing threats of a legal challenge from environmentalists, who charge the approach will be difficult to implement. "EPA failed in [its] commitment to protect our natural spaces and clean water. They've allowed Kentucky to change the rules of the game and stack the deck against communities across" Appalachia, Sierra Club's Bruce Nilles said in a Nov. 15 statement. EPA Region Ⅳ in a Nov. 15 letter approved the state's fish-issued based chronic standards, paving the way for other states to use the approach as a potential model, given that revisions to the agency's decades-old national criteria for selenium have long been stalled. While the agency approved the chronic standards, it rejected the acute portion of the standards over concerns that it relies on an inappropriate endpoint as its basis.