The Washington Department of Ecology (Ecology) will convene the next Water Quality Standards Policy Forum as an interactive public webinar on Feb. 8.
Ecology is convening a robust public process that will include discussions of a broad array of issues, including what chemicals to address, new chemical toxicity factors, regional information on fish consumption, levels of acceptable risk, and implementation.
Policy Forums provide an opportunity for interested parties and the public to become involved and learn about Ecology’s rule activities to update the state’s water quality standards for toxics.
The water quality standards for toxics, which are called “human health criteria surface water quality standards ,” are based on a number of factors, including how much fish Washingtonians eat.
The Ecology rule activities includes the development of new implementation and compliance tools to help current and future water-quality permitted dischargers comply with potential new water quality standards.
The Policy Forum will include a presentation about select toxic pollutants found in Washington waters; a discussion about risk levels and human health criteria calculation; and continued discussion of scenarios that Ecology developed to help people understand potential effects of adopting new human health criteria and updating implementation tools.
Ecology’s goal is to involve key parties, other interests and the public as the department addresses complex science and public policy issues around adopting new human health-based water quality standards and implementation tools.
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Press Release, January 31, 2013