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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 and 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 Environmental 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 

populations. 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 meaningful involvement and 

transparency. 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, Office of Science and Technology etc.), was 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. 

On May 15, 2013, prior 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). On June 25, 

2014, EPA held a second public meeting/webinar to discuss the potential revisions to UCMR (79 

FR 30787). The 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 participants’ questions and provided time for 

public comment. In addition to being published in the Federal Register, each 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, during the 60 day public comment 

period for the proposed UCMR 4.
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EPA consulted with tribal officials 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

summary 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 

Environmental 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 assist 

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 systems 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. The public is then able to review and 

evaluate the monitoring data for samples collected. Lastly, all water systems participating in

UCMR are required to include information about UCMR contaminant “detections” (i.e., 

measurements above reporting limits) on their annual Consumer Confidence Reports (CCR) 

(http://cfpub.epa.gov/safewater/ccr/).