Impact on Discharge Monitoring of Recent EPA Initiatives in Water Quality Measurement

Human health and aquatic life requirements can result in the establishment of effluent limitations on power plant aqueous discharges that are below the quantitation and even the detection capability of many of the current sampling and analytical procedures. To meet this situation for compliance monitoring, EPA has developed analytical methods that reportedly lower detection and quantitation levels by one to two orders of magnitude. Procedures to develop appropriate statistically-based detection and quantitation estimates for these methods are being developed by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) and other industry and regulatory groups. EPA is also in the process of developing guidelines for performance based methods, which they believe will encourage innovation and speed the process of bringing new methods into use. This paper will discuss the impact of these proposed changes on the end user.