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planning and installation, and another 5 years for assessment of 

 effectiveness . 



4. Adequate Funding: Section 319 programs established by the 1987 

 Amendments to the Clean Water Act have been significantly 

 underfunded. Through 1993 only $186.3 million was appropriated for 

 this effort. Both HR 3948 and S 1114 recognize the importance of 

 Section 319' s site-specific approach to solving problems of 

 critical watersheds and threatened ecosystems. We endorse the 

 CWA's Section 319 as our national NPS policy and urge that the 

 necessary funds be made available to the EPA and the states to 

 strengthen and advance this valuable program. 



5. Coordination with Existing Programs: Agriculture today faces a 

 growing matrix of overlapping requirements dealing with water 

 quality and aquatic species protection: Farm Bill programs such as 

 Conservation Compliance, the Clean Water Act's wetlands provisions, 

 FIFRA's state pesticide management plans, the Safe Drinking Water 

 Act's groundwater protection programs, and the upcoming county- 

 specific requirements of the Endangered Species Act, the Coastal 

 Zone Management Act's enforceable management measures, and the 

 upcoming Phase II NPS requirements of the Great Lakes Critical 

 Program Act. In as much as several of these are the jurisdiction 

 of this Committee, we support efforts to ensure that the goals, 

 strategies and requirements, as well as timelines and funding, for 

 these various statutes are carefully coordinated. 



6. Improved Monitoring and Assessment : State 305(b) reports are 

 today the principal source of data driving legislative and 

 regulatory decision making on clean water. But they have been a 

 highly-varied, statistical sampling of the waters, assessing only 

 a small percentage of rivers, lakes, estuaries and other waters. 

 In addition, these data are further limited because there are no 

 set criteria under which states collect data. This hampers efforts 

 to accurately identify impaired waters and apply risk-based 

 prioritization of responses. We support a significantly increased 

 attention to quality monitoring and scientific assessment of 

 surface waters . 



Continued groundwater assessment is important too. It is estimated 

 that there are 10.5 million rural domestic wells and 95,000 

 community water system wells in America. In recent years, EPA has 

 conducted national surveys of these wells to determine the 

 frequency and extent of contamination by pesticides and other 

 pollutants. The recent EPA National Survey of 126 pesticides and 

 breakdown products in drinking water wells nationwide demonstrated 

 that 96% of our nation's rural wells are free of measurable traces 

 of any pesticide. From this survey, EPA estimated that more than 

 99% of all wells in the country contain no pesticides exceeding EPA 

 standards for lifetime, safe consumption in drinking water. With 

 this and other groundwater baseline in place, it is important that 

 continued assessment form the basis for risk assessment decisions. 



