EPA's National Fish Program (Renewal)

The Clean Water Act (CWA) section 101(a)(2) interim goal provides for the protection and propagation of fish, shellfish, and wildlife and for recreation in and on the water. The EPA includes the safe consumption of fish and shellfish as part of this fundamental CWA goal. There is a continuing need to maintain the overall quality and availability of public information concerning fish advisories, which includes, but is not limited to, water quality standards, monitoring and assessment activities, and the issuance of advisories and bans related to fish and shellfish consumption. Primary responsibility for these activities lies with state and tribes. However, within a state there are often several agencies that share responsibility for the water quality and advisory activities, which has led to inconsistent reporting of advisories. The nationwide collection of fish advisory information by EPA began in 1994 with a survey of the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories (Guam, American Samoa, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands) and the Great Lakes Indian Fish & Wildlife Commission, a total of 56 potential respondents. In 2000, 36 tribal organizations were added to the survey. There are currently 44 tribes with tribal-adopted water quality standards in effect under the Clean Water Act. Over the 3-year period of this ICR (2019-2022), the EPA will collect data/information from potentially 44 tribal organizations, as well as the original 56 respondents. Previous fish program surveys were voluntary surveys used to obtain both qualitative and quantitative advisory information on new advisories and fish tissue data. For this ICR, EPA is proposing only to request annually the fish tissue data that served as the basis for fish advisories issued by each state, territory, and tribal organization in recent years. The EPA is no longer requesting fish advisory information because this information is publicly available on state and tribal websites. For a list of state, territorial and tribal websites go to https://fishadvisoryonline.epa.gov/Contacts.aspx. In early 2000s, the EPA began entering fish tissue data provided by the states into EPA’s National Listing of Fish Advisories (NLFA) database and currently has data for 48 states and the District of Columbia. These data, which serve as the basis for fish consumption advisories, are not currently provided by states on their websites. These data are useful for states, universities and others who are interested in which states are monitoring for various pollutants and the levels they are finding. These data are also useful for the EPA to plan more effective research and policies to reduce risks to consumers of locally caught, chemically contaminated fish. To reduce operations and maintenance costs, the EPA is transitioning from the NLFA database by migrating the state/tribal fish tissue contaminant data in the NLFA to the Water Quality Exchange (WQX). During the transition, the EPA will work collaboratively with states, territories and tribes to ensure that data migrated are accurate, complete, standardized and consistent with how these jurisdictions report their data. The EPA’s focus moving forward will be to use the WQX as a place where states, territories, and tribes can voluntarily submit fish tissue data so that the data collected by the EPA and the states, territories and tribes can be accessed in one location through Water Quality Portal. The EPA estimates that up to 100 requests will be sent to states, territories and tribes per year for fish tissue data. The actual cost for a respondent to complete the survey is anticipated to decrease because EPA will only be requesting fish tissue data. When the fish program data collection is implemented, the total annual respondent cost under this ICR is estimated to be $25,968.00 (5.78 hours per year at an average labor rate of $44.93 per hour per respondent for 100 respondents).

The latest form for EPA's National Fish Program (Renewal) expires 2022-04-30 and can be found here.