Draft of Revised Regulation Offered
On June 17, 2010, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued the draft Revised Total Coliform Rule (RTCR). This new rule has several significant differences to the current Total Coliform Rule (TCR) which applies to all public water systems. The proposed changes are summarized below: • The standard for a maximum contaminant level (MCL) will now be based on E.coli rather than Total Coliform. This is because E. coli is a more specific indicator and Total Coliform can represent microorganisms that have no effect on human health. • The monitoring requirements on small systems and seasonal systems have increased to at least monthly in most instances. • The systems that have consistently good results will have reduced monitoring requirements; however, higher risk system will have increased monitoring requirements, which means more labor and more lab costs • If a positive routine sample is observed, the number of repeat samples required in the RTCR has been...
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