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### Summary of Environmental Justice Considerations for the Fourth Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule (UCMR 4) Proposal November 23, 2015

Executive Order (EO) 12898 (59 FR 7629 (Feb. 16, 1994)) establishes federal executive policy on environmental justice. Its main provision directs federal agencies, to the greatest extent practicable and permitted by law, to make environmental justice part of their mission by identifying a nd addressing, as appropriate, disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects of their programs, policies, and activities on minority populations and low

- income populations in the United States.

In consultation with Office of En vironmental Justice, EPA determined that the UCMR 4 proposed rule will not have disproportionately high or adverse human health or environmental effects on minority or low

- income populations

. By seeking to identify unregulated contaminants that may pose health risks via drinking water from all PWSs, UCMR furthers the protection of public health for all citizens. UCMR uses a statistically

- derived set of systems for the nationally representative sample that is population

- weighted within each system size and source water category, so that any PWS within a category has an equivalent likelihood of selection.

EPA recognizes that unregulated contaminants in drinking water are of interest to all popula tions. Environmental justice principles were evaluated as part of the action development process for the proposed UCMR 4, and EPA has structured the rulemaking process and implementation of the proposed UCMR 4 rule to allow for meaningf ul involvement and
t ransparency . A workgroup
, which was comprised of members from EPA Regional offices, several states and multiple offices within EPA (e.g., Office of Research and Development, Office of Children’s Health Protection, Offic e of Science and Technology etc. ), wa s convened to support the development of the proposed UCMR 4. EPA also provided multiple opportunities for stakeholder input via public meetings and webinars , as described below

.

O n May 15, 2013 , p rior to developing a list of potential contaminants to be monitored under the proposed UCMR 4, EPA held a public meeting/webinar focused on drinking water method development for contaminant candidate list (CCL) contaminants (78 FR 22540). O n June 25, 2014 , EPA held a second public meeting/webinar to discuss the p otential revisions to UCMR (79 FR 30787). Th e 2014 public meeting/webinar presented preliminary information concerning analyte selection, analytical methods, sampling design and other potential revisions to be made to establish the proposed UCMR 4. EPA answered participant s’ questions and provided time for public comment. I n addition to being publis hed in the Federal Register, e ach public meeting/webinar was also announced on the UCMR webpage ( http://water.epa.gov/lawsregs/rulesregs/sdwa/ucmr/calendar.cfm ). EPA has scheduled an additional public webinar to be held on January 13 , 2016 , d uring the 60 day public comment period for the proposed UCMR 4

.Page 2 of 2 EPA consulted with tribal off icials early in the process of developing the proposed UCMR 4 to enable them to have meaningful and timely input into its development. This tribal consultation

sum mary can be found in the Docket ID No. EPA

- HQ

- OW

- 2015

- 0218 , at http://www.regulations.gov

.

For UCMR 4, EPA proposes to continue to collect U.S. Postal Service Zip Codes for each PWS's service area (an approach developed for UCMR 3 in consultation with EPA’s Office of Environme ntal Justice) to support an assessment of whether or not minority, low

- income and/or indigenous

- population communities are uniquely impacted by particular drinking water contaminants. Zip code(s) relating the populations served to each sampling point may a ssist with future occurrence and exposure assessments , and support prospective vulnerability assessments, if a UCMR 4 contaminant is identified as warranting regulatory action. The proposal also solicits comment on additional actions the Agency could take to further address environmental justice within the UCMR program. EPA welcomes, for example, comments regarding sampling and/or modeling approaches, and the feasibility and utility of applying these approaches to determine disproportionate impacts.

Furthermore
, the proposed UCMR 4 implementation process involves significant transparency. All public water system s would have access to their monitoring data directly from EPA ’s electronic data reporting system
, known as the Safe Drinking Water Accession and Review System (SDWARS). Additionally, EPA anticipates that UCMR data will be updated approximately quarterly in the publically available National Contaminant Occurrence Database (NCOD). Through this process, EPA uploads a compilation of the data and a data summary document to the UCMR website, http://www2.epa.gov/dwucmr

. T he public is then able to review a nd evaluate the monitoring data for samples collected. Lastly , all water systems participating in UCMR are required to include information about UC MR contaminant “detections” (i.e.,

measure ments above reporting limits ) on their annual Consumer Confidence Reports (CCR) ( http://cfpub.epa.gov/safewater/ ccr/ )

.