EPA's Office of Water requested SAB consultative advice on a strategy for revising the methodology used to develop Aquatic Life Criteria, national guidance used by states to develop Water Quality Standards. Existing ambient water quality criteria for aquatic life are derived according to the Guidelines for Derivation of Ambient Water Quality Criteria for the Protection of Aquatic Life and Their Uses (the Guidelines), published in 1985. To ensure that ambient water quality criteria are derived from the best available science, theOffice of Water has assessed the need to update the Guidelines, identified issues that should be addressed in the revisions, and formed an interagency workgroup to review the state-of-the-science and recommend new or improved approaches for deriving ambient water quality criteria.
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