Full Description

The 1998 Clean Water Action Plan includes a requirement that the Environmental Protection Agency establish a performance based measurement system (PBMS) by 2000. To facilitate this action item, the Methods and Data Comparability Board, a FACA organization with representatives from a variety of diverse viewpoints and compsed of federal, state, and private entities, was charged with developing a position paper on PBMS that would address both ambient and compliance monitoring issues. A consenses building process, with multiple iterations of a position paper, was used which ensured that all viewpoints could be heard and a final product developed by early 1999. Initially, viewpoints ranged widely from strongly favoring the continuation of prescriptive methods to a complete abandonment of any standardized methods with a focus on performance criteria only. The key areas of agreement which the Board workgroup was able to build on were: the need for well defined measurement quality objectives (MQOs) for any program; the need for an adequate supply of reference materials to validate a given methodological approach; the need for validated methods shown to meet specific MQOs, so that MQOs were not developed in a vacuum; and, the need for adequate training of both chemists and regulators in development of MQOs and validation of methods. With this framework, the group felt that not only could a PBMS approach be developed, but it could ultimately be expanded to include many biological methods, typically considered as method defined parameters. Includes 17 references, table, figure.

Product Details

Edition: Vol. - No. Published: 01/01/1999File Size: 1 file , 410 KB