ii | . ,	Office of Water
United States
EPA 821-F-19-001
vvEPA Environmental Protection
Agency	June 2019
Proposed Clean Water Act Methods
Update Rule for the Analysis of Effluent
Summary
EPA proposes specific changes to analytical test
procedures that are used by industries and
municipalities to analyze the chemical, physical, and
biological components of wastewater and other
environmental samples that are required by
regulations under the Clean Water Act. The
proposed changes include:
¦	revised EPA methods;
¦	new or revised methods published by voluntary
consensus standard bodies, such as ASTM
International and the Standard Methods
Committee;
¦	new or updated methods developed by the U.S.
Geological Survey;
¦	methods reviewed under the Alternate Test
Procedures (ATP) program; and
¦	minor changes to quality assurance and quality
control within individual methods.
Background
EPA approves analytical methods for measuring
regulated pollutants in wastewater, as contained in
the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), Title 40, Part
136. The regulated community and laboratories use
these approved methods for determining
compliance with National Pollutant Discharge
Elimination System (NPDES) permits or other
monitoring requirements. Often, these entities have
a choice in deciding which approved method they
will use to measure a pollutant because more than
one approved method is available.
To promote method innovation, the EPA also
maintains a program whereby method developers
may apply for an EPA review and potentially for
approval of ATPs. This ATP program is described for
Clean Water Act applications at 40 CFR 136.4 and
136.5.
Periodically, EPA updates the approved test
procedures in 40 CFR Part 136.
What would EPA's updates change?
If promulgated, the proposed changes would provide
increased flexibility to the regulated community,
improve data quality, and update Clean Water Act
methods to keep current with technology advances.
Also, in an effort to approve methods more quickly,
this rule is limited to either minor procedural or
editorial changes that are not expected to affect the
quality of the methods.
Where can I find more information?
You can view the Federal Register notice for this
proposed rule online at www.regulations.gov under
Docket ID: EPA-HQ-OW-2018-0826. EPA will also
provide a link to the Federal Register notice on our
Clean Water Act Methods website.
You may also contact Meghan Hessenauer by phone
at 202-566-1040 or by email at
hessenauer.meghan@epa.gov.

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