Notice of Availability of Draft Recreational Water Quality Criteria and Request for Scientific Views

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Pursuant to section 304(a) of the Clean Water Act (CWA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is announcing the availability of the draft document Recreational Water Quality Criteria (RWQC). The document contains the EPA's draft ambient water quality criteria recommendations for protecting human health in ambient waters that are designated for primary contact recreation. CWA Section 304(c) water quality criteria recommendations are intended as guidance to States and authorized Tribes in developing water quality standards. The draft RWQC document describes the relevant scientific findings, explains how these findings were used to derive criteria, and lists the water quality methods associated with the criteria. The draft RWQC differs from the current 1986 RWQC in the following ways: the EPA introduces a new term, Statistical Threshold Value (STV), as a clarification and replacement for the term single sample maximum (SSM); there are no longer recommendations for different criteria values for beaches used with more or less frequency; the EPA introduces a rapid analytical technique for the detection of enterococci in recreational water; the EPA provides information on tools for a