[Federal Register Volume 67, Number 93 (Tuesday, May 14, 2002)]
[Notices]
[Pages 34448-34450]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 02-11827]
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ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
[FRL-7210-8]
Office of Environmental Information Draft Data Standard for
Reporting Water Quality Results for Chemical and Microbiological
Analytes and Draft Data Standard for Exchange of Tribal Identifier
Information
AGENCY: Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
ACTION: Notice of information availability and request for comments.
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SUMMARY: Notice of availability is hereby given for a 45-day public
comment period on two draft data standards: Draft Data Standard for
Reporting Water Quality Results for Chemical and Microbiological
Analytes and Draft Data Standard for Exchange of Tribal Identifier
Information. These draft standards each consist of a list of data
elements, definitions for these elements, notes,and explanatory
preamble language. The draft standards were developed by the
partnership efforts of States, Tribes, and U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency participating in the Environmental Data Standards
Council (EDSC). The EDSC convened Action Teams consisting of
representatives from EPA, States and Tribes to develop these core sets
of data
[[Page 34449]]
elements to facilitate the sharing of information regarding reporting
water quality results for chemical and microbiological analytes and the
exchange of tribal identifiers information. The EPA and the EDSC invite
comment on these standards from States, EPA, Tribes, database managers
in the public and private sectors, and the general public with interest
in development and use of data for reporting water quality results for
chemical and microbiological analytes or the exchange of Tribal
identifiers information.
DATES: Comments must be submitted on or before June 28, 2002.
ADDRESSES: The record for these standards has been established under
docket number W-02-02, and includes supporting documentation as well as
printed, paper versions of electronic comments. The record is available
for inspection from 9 to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday, excluding legal
holidays at the Water Docket, EB 57, USEPA Headquarters, 401 M St SW.,
Washington, DC 20460. For access to docket materials, please call (202)
260-3027 to schedule an appointment.
Electronic Access: You may view and download the draft data
standards and related explanatory material at the EDSC website at:
http://www.epa.gov/edsc/ in the area of the site marked ``Data
Standards.'' The draft data standards can also be viewed and downloaded
at the EPA Environmental Data Registry (EDR) at http://www.epa.gov/edr/
in the area of the site marked ``Data Standards''. Or for those with
password access, at the WISER portion of the State/EPA website at:
http://www.ecos.org/wiser.
Please send an original and 3 copies of your comments and
enclosures (including references) to the W-02-02. Comment Clerk, Water
Docket (MC4101), USEPA, 1200 Pennsylvania Ave., NW., Washington, DC
20460. Comments must be received or post-marked by midnight June 28,
2002. Hand deliveries should be delivered to: EPA's Water Docket at 401
M. St., SW., Room EB57, Washington, DC 20460.
Commenters who want EPA to acknowledge receipt of their comments
should enclose a self-addressed, stamped envelope. No facsimiles
(faxes) will be accepted. Comments may also be submitted electronically
to [email protected]. Electronic comments must be submitted as an
ASCII, WP5.1, WP6.1 or WP8 file avoiding the use of special characters
and form of encryption. Electronic comments must be identified by the
docket number W-02-02. Electronic comments on this notice may be filed
online at many Federal Depository Libraries.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Linda Spencer, Office of Environmental
Information, Office of Information Collection, MC-2822T, U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency, 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW.,
Washington DC 20460; Telephone (202) 566-1651.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
I. Environmental Data Standards Council (EDSC) Background
Data sharing has become an increasingly important aspect of sound
environmental management. States, Tribes, and EPA together face the
critical challenge of sharing information among themselves and with
their respective stakeholders and public. Fundamental to the seamless
exchange of data are data standards. Data standards help improve the
ability of partners (internal and external) to exchange data
efficiently and accurately, and also assist secondary users of data to
understand, interpret, and use data appropriately. Recognition of the
need for EPA, States and Tribes to develop and agree upon data
standards for environmental information sharing has lead to the
creation of the EDSC. Data standards are documented agreements on
formats and definitions of data elements. Standards are developed only
when there is an environmental management business reason.
The EDSC's mission is to promote the efficient sharing of
environmental information between EPA, States, Tribes, and other
parties through the development of data standards. The EDSC identified
reporting water quality results of chemical and microbiological
analytes and exchange of tribal identifiers information as information
areas for which having standards will create value to all interested
parties. An Action Team deliberation process bringing together State,
EPA, and Tribal parties began in August 2001 for the Draft Data
Standard for Reporting Water Quality Results for Chemical and
Microbiological Analytes and June 2000 for the Draft Data Standard for
Exchange of Tribal Identifiers Information. Both draft standards were
delivered to the EDSC for consideration in March 2002 and approved for
initiation of this 45-day public comment period.
After the comment period announced in this Notice, the EDSC and its
Action Teams will review comments received and make appropriate
modifications. The EDSC will then consider approval of these data
standards as appropriate. EDSC approval does not bind an individual
agency to using a standard. It will be up to the individual or programs
to determine if, when, and how it might use a standard developed under
the auspices of the EDSC. It will be the intent of EPA to adopt and
implement the consistent use of EDSC-approved standards in its
information systems and programs.
II. Draft Data Standard for Reporting Water Quality Results for
Chemical and Microbiological Analytes
Background
The EDSC is proposing to adopt the core set of data elements
prepared by the National Water Quality Monitoring Council and adopted
in May 2001 by the Advisory Committee on Water Information (ACWI), a
Federal advisory committee to the Cooperative Water Program of the
Department of Interior's U.S. Geological Survey. The data elements were
adopted to facilitate the sharing of chemical and microbiological water
quality data and promote efficiency in the monitoring of water resource
quality programs. Water quality monitoring is an increasingly important
element of water quality management activities. It provides information
for an accurate understanding of the conditions of waters and the
trends in observed water quality. Water quality must be understood in
order that valid and effective restoration and protection programs can
be designed for water bodies that vary significantly in their
vulnerability and pollution stress. Because of the cost of its
collection, water quality data must be viewed as a resource worthy of
careful management both to preserve it for future analyses by the
agency that collects it and to share it among local, State, and Federal
agencies; and the private sector involved in resource management
activities.
The Advisory Committee on Water Information's ``core set'' of data
elements were intended to allow sharing and interpretation of sample
test results among future secondary data users, regardless of data
source, database management system, or the data's original intended
use. The list ACWI adopted was not intended to suggest that additional
data elements would not need to be retained in a data originator's
database, or in other databases where it might be considered essential
to the use of these data. The proposed standard is intended to adapt
the ACWI data elements and serve as the initial basis for data exchange
with EPA's Storage and Retrieval database (STORET) and, with approval
of the EDSC, EPA has
[[Page 34450]]
added data formats and field lengths for this purpose.
Both the EDSC and the ACWI are considering elements to record data
of higher levels of biological and habitat data. This data reflects a
growing appreciation that water quality in streams, lakes, and
estuaries can be described by the life they support. When the list of
data elements is complete, the EDSC intends to consider adding these
elements to the groups subject to today's notice.
The proposed data standards emphasize metadata that describe common
terminology and definitions for documenting key water quality data
measurements from water quality monitoring. The EDSC believes that by
adopting this core set of data elements, agencies collecting water
quality data will be spared the task of creating their own systems for
organizing metadata and associated metadata element definitions. When
implemented, a standard set of data elements will enable data users to
reconcile diverse metadata systems as they draw on multiple data sets
to carry out their studies or analyses. The EDSC believes that the use
of standard data elements holds the prospect of reducing costly
duplicate monitoring efforts. These data elements are proposed as
guidelines to define a measure of good practice within the water
quality monitoring community. They will encourage greater data
consistency, allow the quality of data to be determined by future
users, and simplify the process for entering these metadata elements.
It is not required that all the proposed data elements be used.
Metadata selected must fit the data they describe. Ground water
sampling data, for instance, is described by several metadata elements
that are unrelated to surface water sampling data. Therefore, the EDSC
is not requiring inclusion of all proposed elements in order for data
to be entered in a federally maintained database. The EDSC's advocacy
of these data elements is not intended to discourage the use of
existing water quality data solely because it does not meet these
guidelines.
The core set of data elements for reporting water quality results
of chemical and microbiological analytes addresses wells, surface water
stations, and precipitation measurements. This list is intended to
standardize the preservation of data and to facilitate its sharing by
standardizing definitions and by defining the list of data, metadata
and their descriptive definitions. A data element is the name of a set
of information with the same attribute. A data element may be a data
field in a database such as a laboratory name, analyte, or the latitude
of the sampling station. Examples of metadata elements include such
things as sampling/laboratory procedures and quality controls.
The list of data elements is not specific to any particular
database, but is intended to be used voluntarily by agencies,
organizations and individuals to guide their reporting, storage, and
sharing of water quality data. This list is intended primarily to guide
the collection of ambient water quality data, but many of the allowable
sample location and sample type descriptions are versatile enough to be
useful in collecting these data in other settings.
The list of data and metadata elements is divided into categories
that describe who collected and analyzed the sample, what was analyzed,
why the sample was undertaken, when the sample was collected and
analyzed, where the sampling occurred, and how the analysis was done.
The list is intended to describe the breadth of information needed to
ensure the continuing utility of the information both within an
organization and between organizations as information is stored and
shared, but without being an exhaustive list of every possible data
element that could or should be reported. The EDSC has included the
core set of data elements on the essential data needed across programs,
recognizing that if more extensive data from a particular monitoring
program were collected, it could be made available as well.
III. Draft Data Standard for Exchange of Tribal Identifier
Information
The EDSC chartered the Tribal Identifier Action Team to identify
and define the major areas of tribal identification information and to
develop a data standard that could be used for the exchange of tribal
identification data among environmental agencies and other entities.
The purpose of the standard is to provide a common vocabulary or
lexicon and to encourage tribal entity identification uniformity across
information systems, so that information about functionally similar
activities and/or instruments can be shared. The Standard is an
adoption of The Bureau of Indian Affairs criteria for tribal entity
identification (federally recognized tribes). The ``Draft Data Standard
for Exchange of Tribal Identifier Information'' is not intended to
constrain what information an agency chooses to collect, nor does it
constitute a reporting requirement. The Standard defines a uniform way
to organize and exchange key information if agencies choose to exchange
that information.
The ``Draft Data Standard for Exchange of Tribal Identifier
Information'' consists of two data elements--tribal names and tribal
codes. Permissible values for tribal names are based on federally
recognized tribes from the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) ``Long Names
List''. Permissible values for tribal codes are based on those used in
BIA's Trust Asset and Accounting Management System (TAAMS), which are
used to represent tribal names. Efforts to identify a single
authoritative source for state recognized tribes were unsuccessful, and
investigations regarding such tribes found that the recognition
criteria that states use vary significantly. Therefore the Tribal
Action Group chose not to include state recognized tribes as part of
this standard at this time.
IV. Future Revisions
EDSC standards will be periodically reviewed and revised as
recommended by the EDSC or the stewards of the respective data
standards: (1) ACWI for the Draft Data Standard for Reporting Water
Quality Results for Chemical and Microbiological Analytes and (2) BIA
for Draft Data Standard for Exchange of Tribal Identifier Information.
The most current standards will be posted at www.edsc.org and
www.epa.gov/edr.
V. Review of Draft Standards To Date
These draft standards have received significant input through the
representatives from EPA program, States, and Tribal organizations
serving on the development Action Teams. In addition, the preliminary
versions of the draft standards have been reviewed by State and EPA
programs managers during the first quarter of 2002. EDSC members have
also reviewed and recommended these draft standards for this public
comment process.
Dated: April 24, 2002.
Mark Luttner,
Director, Office of Information Collection, Office of Environmental
Information.
[FR Doc. 02-11827 Filed 5-13-02; 8:45 am]
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