Our bacteria rule ensures human health protection for coastal
and Great Lakes recreation waters . This is an important step
in fulfilling the Administrations commitment to further
protect water quality at our nations beaches.
Background
We publish criteria
To make coastal waters safe for swimming and other recreation,
the Clean Water Act requires us to publish "criteria,"
or scientifically justified limits for various pollutants. For
example, a criterion for a pollutant says that there can be no
more than a certain concentration of that pollutant (e.g 10 parts
per million) in the water or else that water fails to protect
human health.
States adopt criteria
States, under the Clean Water Act, have the responsibility for
writing "standards," or legal limits on pollutants that
protect coastal recreation
waters for swimming use. The states must adopt protective
criteria into their standards. They can do this three ways:
- adopt the our recommended criteria
- modify the our recommended criteria to reflect site-specific
conditions; or
- adopt criteria that is "as protective as" our recommendation
based on scientifically-defensible methods.
The BEACH Act ensures protection
Although states are required to write the standards, we have
to approve them. As of 2000, many states hadn't adopted our recommended
bacteria criteria or an "as protective" alternative
into their standards for coastal
recreation waters.
In response, Congress passed the BEACH
Act giving states until April 2004 to adopt protective bacteria
criteria into their state standards. For states that didn't meet
this deadline, the BEACH
Act required us to issue federal standards to ensure national
protection. With this new rule, we are putting federal standards
into place for those states without criteria that are as
protective of health as our criteria for coastal
recreation waters.
For more information, including a list of states and their current
status, see the final rule
fact sheet.
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Final rule
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Proposed rule
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Letters to states and territories
35 Letters written to States and Territories notifying them of
their bacteria water quality standard status.
Please contact healy.richard@epa.gov
for section 508 accessible letters.
Alabama (PDF,
124KB) |
Louisiana
(PDF, 129KB) |
Ohio (PDF, 78KB) |
Alaska (PDF,
128KB) |
Maine (PDF,
78KB) |
Oregon (PDF,
126KB) |
American
Samoa (PDF, 78KB) |
Maryland
(PDF, 127KB) |
Pennsylvania
(PDF, 130KB) |
California
(PDF, 137KB) |
Massachusetts
(PDF, 127KB) |
Puerto Rico
(PDF, 133KB) |
Connecticut
(PDF, 78KB) |
Michigan
(PDF, 78KB) |
Rhode Island
(PDF, 123KB) |
Delaware
(PDF, 78KB) |
Minnesota
(PDF, 126KB) |
South Carolina
(PDF, 126KB) |
Florida (PDF,
128KB) |
Mississippi
(PDF, 125KB) |
Texas (PDF,
78KB) |
Georgia (PDF,
125KB) |
New Hampshire
(PDF, 78KB) |
Virginia
(PDF, 78KB) |
Guam (PDF, 78KB) |
New Jersey
(PDF, 135KB) |
Virgin
Islands (PDF, 127KB) |
Hawaii (PDF,
144KB) |
New York
(PDF, 123KB) |
Washington
(PDF, 123KB) |
Illinois
(PDF, 129KB) |
North
Mariana Islands (PDF, 130KB) |
Wisconsin
(PDF, 123KB) |
Indiana (PDF,
78KB) |
North Carolina
(PDF, 130KB) |
For more information
Other web resources:
Agency contact:
Lars Wilcut
wilcut.lars@epa.gov
202-5660447
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