PREPROPOSAL STATEMENT OF INQUIRY
Subject of Possible Rule Making: Surface water quality standards, chapter 173-201A WAC.
Statutes Authorizing the Agency to Adopt Rules on this Subject: Chapters 90.48 and 90.54 RCW.
Reasons Why Rules on this Subject may be Needed and What They Might Accomplish: (1) The existing antidegradation policy in the surface water quality standards lacks sufficient plans to guide its implementation.
(2) We want to better tailor the criteria assigned to our waters to the characteristics uses that actually exist in those waters.
Other Federal and State Agencies that Regulate this Subject and the Process Coordinating the Rule with These Agencies: Some of the changes to the standards are being done to improve coordination with regulations of the Department of Health. Staff from the Department of Health are members of a technical work-group and are helping to ensure that the overlap is compatible and complementary. This work-group also contains representatives from the USFDA the USPHS.
Process for Developing New Rule: Use-based: Five technical work-groups and five public workshops.
Antidegradation: A discussion-draft was written from response to questionnaires mailed to a one-hundred person advisory panel. The draft was reviewed by a smaller technical advisory panel for written comments and presented to a policy advisory panel for comment.
For Both: Letters sent to four-thousand interested persons to develop interest and involvement.
Interested parties can participate in the decision to adopt the new rule and formulation of the proposed rule before publication. A written public comment period and public hearings will be held throughout the state beginning about September of 1999.
To receive a copy of the draft rule language and find out when and where public hearings will be held, contact Mary Getchell by mail at Department of Ecology, P.O. Box 47600, Olympia, WA 98504-7600, by phone at (360) 407-6157, through e-mail at mget461@ecy.wa.gov. The fax number is (360) 407-6426.
February 10, 1999
Megan White
Program Manager