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EPA Releases Two New Reassessment Documents And Announces Detailed Schedule of Remaining Work for the Hudson River; PCBs Reassessment December 2000 Date Firm for Proposed Plan

Release Date: 06/22/1999
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(#99104) New York, N.Y. -- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today released two new documents in its continuing work on the Hudson River PCBs Reassessment.

! The Responsiveness Summary for the Phase 2 Feasibility Study Scope of Work, which contains EPA's responses to significant public comments received on this document.

! The Peer Review Report on two EPA studies released in February 1997 and July 1998 respectively: the Data Evaluation and Interpretation Report and Low Resolution Sediment Coring Report. This report contains the comments and results of the scientific peer review of this segment of EPA's Reassessment work. Both of these documents are available for public review at the information repositories listed on our web site at https://www.epa.gov/hudson.

In addition, the Agency also released a more detailed schedule for the Hudson River PCBs Reassessment project, which includes the time frames for the upcoming release of EPA's responsiveness summaries and for peer review. There are two remaining peer reviews: one which will address EPA's recently released Baseline Modeling Report, and another for the upcoming Human Health Risk Assessment and Ecological Risk Assessment. The agency still plans to release the Proposed Plan for cleaning up PCBs in the Hudson in December 2000.

The amplified schedule illustrates, in chronological sequence, the work that is yet to be completed. The realignment of the peer review sessions, which now follow the respective responsiveness summaries, gives the peer reviewers more complete information on the Agency's science under review by providing the reviewers with both the original Agency approach to the subject under review, and any modifications to that approach based on public comments. This modified process allows the peer reviewers to review the Agency's final technical product, as opposed to one which could be modified later based on public comments. In addition, the reviewers are exposed to the views of the public, and they can see how EPA modified its approach to address those public comments. The last peer review panel confirmed the effectiveness of this modified approach, as they believed that the responsiveness summaries, in tandem with the original reports, facilitated their understanding of the science under review and enabled them to see how EPA responded to technical comments on its original approach. They also recommended that responsiveness summaries be provided to future peer review panels.

To date, EPA has held two peer reviews, the last of which took place in March 1999, at which the reviewers gave their recommendations on the science contained in EPA's Phase 2 Data Evaluation and Interpretation Report and Low Resolution Sediment Coring Report. The peer review panel unanimously agreed that EPA's conclusions presented in both those reports are supported by the data.

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