Recreational Fishery Resources Conservation Plan Agency Action Plan

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
December 1996

EPA's Role in Fishery Conservation

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proud to be a signatory to the Recreational Fishery Resources Conservation Plan (Plan) because it expresses our commitment to working cooperatively with our partners toward sustainable recreational fisheries. EPA's primary role in fisheries conservation is through our collaboration with all levels of government, industry, conservation organizations, and the general public to meet the 1972 Clean Water Act (CWA) goal of restoring and maintaining the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the nation's waters.

EPA pursues its CWA goals through several programs. One important program is its standards program. States and tribes with input from all sectors set goals for their waters by designating uses for them, which include aquatic life support. To achieve these uses, EPA helps states and tribes in establishing water quality standards, identifying environmental stresses, allocating pollution control responsibilities through the total maximum daily load program, and developing other regulatory and non-regulatory controls. A central element of these controls is the issuance of permits to regulate the discharge of pollutants from sewage treatment plants, industrial facilities, and municipal storm water systems. Permits are issued by either EPA, tribes, or states with discharge limits that meet state water quality standards and national effluent regulations.

Another important program is EPA's nonpoint source program which provides for both state nonpoint source grants under the CWA's Section 319 and develops guidance on management measures for nonpoint source controls under the Coastal Zone Act Reauthorization Amendments. EPA also provides for the protection of aquatic habitat, particularly wetlands, through a permit program jointly administered with the Corps of Engineers. Finally, EPA provides for the protection of aquatic species through its many watershed programs, including the National Estuary Program, the Great Water Body Programs, and other Community-Based Protection efforts. These are only a sample of programs that directly benefit recreational fisheries. Through these and other mechanisms, EPA is able to work with other governmental and nongovernmental groups to reduce the impacts of pollution sources on the nation's aquatic resources.

EPA's Implementation of the Plan

In our efforts to implement the Plan, EPA will focus on common sense, place-based approaches to enhance our work, as well as improving communication with our partners in environmental protection. EPA is committed to reinvention --finding new ways to do our jobs better, including increasing flexibility and encouraging collaboration and innovation. We will seek common sense solutions --smarter, cheaper ways to get environmental results. We will engage the public as a partner in environmental protection. EPA's efforts to achieve the goals of the Plan will focus on three of the four implementation strategies: resource protection, public education, and working collaboratively with our partners in conservation. EPA's statutory authority does not extend to the Plan's implementation strategy for developing and maintaining fishing facilities and access.

The nation has made tremendous progress in improving water quality over the past 25 years, largely due to successfully controlling pollutants from discrete point sources of pollution. People now fish and swim in once polluted waters. But the job is not done. In 1994, 40% of surveyed rivers, lakes, and streams were too polluted for fishing or swimming. By stimulating a discussion of the real environmental results that our nation should achieve, EPA hopes to advance solutions to cleaner water and improved habitat for aquatic resources. EPA will be finalizing clear, measurable, long-range goals and 10-year milestones that are targets for the nation's aquatic environments. They are targets that EPA believes the nation can and should achieve, by 2005, through one means or another -regulatory and voluntary, public and private.

Develop and promote the use of environmental goals and indicators
EPA, in collaboration with its partners in the Intergovernmental Task Force on Monitoring Water Quality (ITFM), will complete a report that describes water quality in the United States using a set of 18 environmental indicators that measure progress toward national water quality goals and objectives. Many of these indicators relate directly to fish conservation. Two indicators relevant to the Plan's goal include the percentage of rivers and estuaries with healthy aquatic communities and the percentage of aquatic and wetland species currently at risk of extinction.

Encourage implementation of watershed and community based approaches
Citizens are concerned with good fishing in their local streams, lakes, or coastal waters - problems they can identify with because they can see them in their own communities. EPA will embrace the public as a partner in aquatic resources protection. We will be striving to find the most cost effective and efficient ways to meet local communities' environmental needs and to ensure we achieve environmental justice by providing equal access to participate in our programs as well as the infrastructure our programs support.

EPA can be directly involved in only a fraction of all communities, so most of our efforts will promote and enable community based protection of recreational fisheries and other aquatic resources. EPA will strive to create a framework within which it provides tools, technical assistance, and information for communities and others as needed. Through the implementation of its Healthy Watershed Strategy EPA will focus on water drainage areas as the planning unit for priority setting, community involvement and implementation of programs to protect the physical, chemical and biological integrity of our nation's waters. In addition, EPA will provide states and tribes greater flexibility through performance partnership agreements to target resources to their greatest environmental priorities, including restoring sportfisheries.

Set criteria and standards to protect aquatic life
State, tribal, and Federal water quality standards include a designated use for a particular water body, the criteria to meet that use, and an antidegradation policy. The water quality criteria program currently includes chemical specific aquatic life criteria, whole effluent toxicity (WET) criteria, sediment quality criteria (SQC), biological criteria, and wildlife criteria.

EPA intends to prepare a 5-year plan to identify which chemicals and methods will be revised or have new criteria issued, and to provide a comprehensive framework for the development of integrated water quality criteria. This framework, based on sound science, will enhance the protection provided to the nation's aquatic resources by enabling the selection of the right criteria in the right media to protect the right species for a particular water body or resource, rather than using criteria in each media for each species applied on a nationwide basis.

EPA intends to issue five updated chemical specific aquatic life criteria in FY97: atrazine, diazinon, tributyltin, nonylphenol, and saltwater dissolved oxygen. Updating criteria will provide states with the most recent scientific information needed to make sound watershed management decisions when implementing their Water Quality Standards Programs. In addition, EPA's Aquatic Life Criteria Guidelines Committee will be revising the methodology by which aquatic life criteria are derived to reflect recent advances in science and modeling. Revised guidelines, to be completed in FY97, will provide criteria that more accurately define protective concentrations for aquatic life.

Whole Effluent Toxicity (WET) tests measure the effect of all of the contaminants in an effluent, rather than just the effect of a specific chemical on selected organisms such as fish. EPA, working with our stakeholders, will complete a multi-year strategy to improve the use of these tests for setting water quality standards, enforcement and compliance, NPDES permitting, and exposure assessment.

EPA will develop sediment quality criteria (SQC) to protect the benthic dwelling organisms of the nation's water bodies. These organisms are the herbivores and detritivours that are a food source for higher level organisms, including recreational fish species. Fish advisories have increased 36% since 1993, and the chemicals at the route of most fish advisories are known to accumulate in sediments. The implementation of a sediment quality criteria program will help our state partners identify and control these contaminants to protect their aquatic ecosystems and improve the condition of recreational fisheries. We will also prepare a SQC User's Guide to provide guidance on deriving criteria, sampling and handling sediments, making criteria and sample comparisons, and site evaluations.

Biological criteria describe the composition, diversity, and functional organization of a reference aquatic community for waters of a given designated aquatic life use. EPA has developed biological criteria and guidance for streams and small rivers, and will be developing biological criteria and guidance for lakes and reservoirs, rivers, estuaries and near coastal waters, coral reefs, and wetlands.

Prevent pollution

The principal mechanism for reducing the discharge of pollutants from point sources to our nation's waters is through implementation of the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) program, established under Section 402 of the 1972 Clean Water Act (CWA). All facilities which discharge pollutants from a point source to waters of the United States must apply for and obtain an NPDES permit. Nationally, EPA has direct review and enforcement authority over NPDES permits and administers the program directly unless individual states are authorized to run the program. Traditionally, the program has focused on chemical-specific technology-based and water quality-based permit limits and requirements. More recently, NPDES permits have included whole effluent toxicity monitoring requirements and limits. In addition to these baseline activities, EPA has undertaken a number of newer initiatives including storm water permitting; sewage sludge permitting; combined sewer overflow permitting; and incorporation of sediment criteria and biocriteria in point source discharge permits. These requirements and initiatives cover hundreds of thousands of point source pollutant dischargers including approximately 70,000 industrial and municipal wastewater dischargers; 15,000 combined sewer overflow points in 1,100 communities; 150,000 industrial storm water dischargers; and 800 municipal separate storm sewer systems.

Over the last twenty years, the efforts of states and EPA in administering the NPDES permit program have resulted in significant environmental improvements. However, not all aquatic environmental problems have been corrected. A major challenge facing the NPDES program is managing these efforts to control point source discharges within the context of both limited resources and environmental impacts and priorities that vary from location-to-location. In order to meet this challenge, EPA has developed the NPDES Watershed Strategy.

EPA commits to administering grant programs to provide financial and other assistance for targeted communities to construct wastewater treatment facilities to prevent and control wastewater pollution to our nation's surface waters which will ultimately benefit recreational fisheries. Such targeted communities include small communities, especially those facing economic hardship; Indian tribes; colonias in Texas and Arizona; communities on both sides of the Mexican Border; and Alaskan rural and native villages.

EPA will implement its national guidance to prevent or control pollution from combined sewer overflows. In addition, EPA is working with a Federal advisory committee to develop effective policies and guidance to prevent or control pollution from storm water discharges and sanitary sewer overflows. EPA and the Federal advisory committee will strive to offer guidance and policy on implementing these goals on a watershed basis. Because these efforts will help prevent pollution from urban wet weather pollutant sources like combined sewer overflows, storm water discharges, and sanitary sewer overflows, recreational fishing opportunities will ultimately benefit.

Nonpoint source pollution (NPS) is the nation's largest remaining water quality problem¹ and threatens recreational fisheries. NPS occurs when rainfall, snow melt, or irrigation return flows run over land and deposit pollutants into water bodies. Potential sources include agriculture, forestry, grazing, septic systems, recreational boating, urban runoff, and construction. NPS by its nature is diffuse and therefore more difficult to treat than point source pollution because it does not enter the water ways through discrete pipes or conduits. To protect against NPS, EPA will award grants² to states, territories, and tribes to implement NPS controls. As of 1995, EPA had awarded more than $370 million to address NPS. In addition, EPA, in partnership with NOAA,³ will help protect coastal recreational fisheries from NPS by providing technical guidance on management measures for sources of NPS.

EPA will help communities and citizens protect their local aquatic resources, including recreational fisheries, by providing information on the effectiveness of land management tools and techniques for solving NPS problems through its Section 319 National Monitoring Program. Watersheds across the country, including several with impaired recreational fisheries, will be monitored using EPA funding over a 6- to 10- year period to evaluate how improved land management reduces NPS. EPA leverages support from our partners in aquatic resources protection to provide the needed land treatment.

Restore/protect aquatic resources habitat

EPA implements a variety of programs that provide our partners in aquatic resources protection with tools to restore and protect the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the nation's aquatic resources. Historically, EPA has concentrated its efforts on improving and restoring the chemical integrity of the nation's waters through its programs to reduce and control pollution. Great strides have been made in this area. Consequently, we are increasing our attention to the physical and biological aspects of habitat quality for aquatic resources, like recreational fisheries. A good example of this is our commitment to protect wetlands, which serve as important nurseries to fish and shellfish, from the discharge of dredged or fill materials through the implementation of our CWA Section 404 program.

EPA commits to administering a wetlands grant program that funds our state and tribal partners' efforts to protect and restore wetlands by enhancing existing programs or developing new ones as well as the CWA Section 319 NPS grants program which can be used to fund wetlands preservation and restoration.

EPA commits to administering the National Estuary Program (NEP). The program uses community based consensus-building techniques to develop a comprehensive plan which serves as a blue print for action to protect and restore each estuary participating in the NEP. Recreational fisheries is one of the issues that each national estuary program addresses. For example, in the Albemarle-Pamlico Sound NEP, the decline in both recreational and commercial fisheries productivity is a major issue and this estuary's conservation plan calls on a collaborative approach including local government and citizens to increase wetland and other aquatic habitat protection to restore the fishery.

Establish monitoring protocols and report on nation's water quality
EPA will track environmental indicators that measure the nation's progress in conserving and enhancing aquatic systems and public health. These indicators include fish consumption advisories, healthy shellfish waters, waters with healthy aquatic communities, aquatic species at risk, fish and shellfish consumption support and the rate of wetland acreage loss. These indicators will be communicated to the public via the internet and other outreach mechanisms such as fact sheets. In addition, EPA will deliver water quality information to Congress and the public through its biennial National Water Quality Inventory.

EPA will be periodically issuing a National Watershed Assessment that will depict the relative health of watersheds in the nation. This will help EPA, in partnership with the states and other stakeholders such as recreational fishery groups, to set national priorities to protect and restore the physical, chemical and biological integrity of our Nation's waters.

EPA will develop innovative volunteer monitoring protocols for our nation's waters. EPA has already developed methods for volunteer monitoring in estuaries and lakes. In cooperation with the Intergovernmental Task Force on Monitoring Water Quality (ITFM), EPA will implement a nationwide strategy for water quality monitoring to achieve effective collection, interpretation, and presentation of water quality data and to improve the availability of existing information for decision making at all levels of government and the private sector.

Conduct research that supports recreational fisheries

EPA will sponsor research on the effects of pollutants on fish and other aquatic organisms because this information is critical for establishing limits on the kinds and amounts of pollutants that may be discharged to surface waters. Working closely with our stakeholders, including industries, trade associations, and environmental groups, EPA will use its research findings to incorporate pollution prevention techniques into manufacturing processes to prevent polluting chemicals from being created or used.

For example, EPA in conjunction with the New England Aquarium will conduct research on the finfish community that utilizes eelgrass in Massachusetts waters. Preliminary results indicate that striped bass frequent this habitat during feeding. These results have been corroborated by discussions with striped bass fishermen. This data has been influential in altering or denying several proposed coastal development projects.

EPA commits to disseminating the results of its research on the impacts of climate change to recreational fisheries and associated economic impacts to interested stakeholders and partners in aquatic resources habitat protection.

Develop data systems and related tools

Surf Your Watershed

is a data system EPA is creating in partnership with numerous Federal, state, private and local partners to provide to citizens and water resources managers water quality and other environmental information as well as mapping services on individual watersheds. EPA has just added Surf Your Watershed (still under construction) to the Water Channel on EPA's world wide web site (www.epa.gov/surf). Surf Your Watershed will enable anglers to educate themselves on the watersheds in which they fish.

EPA will be collaborating with states and other partners to assess the health of each watershed and identify watersheds at risk by assembling and using the wide array of data that is now available for the over 2,000 watersheds in the Nation. This National Watershed Assessment Project (NWAP) will draw on many of the data sources provided to the public through Surf Your Watershed and will provide decision-makers with the information they need to focus resources on the most pressing water quality problems. EPA will completer the first report assessing the relative health of the Nation's watersheds early in 1997. The NWAP report will enable anglers groups, grass roots organizations, and communities to focus their aquatic resources conservation/restoration efforts on those watersheds that are most impaired.

EPA intends to update its National Listing of Fish and Wildlife Consumption Advisories database annually, to assist Federal, state, tribal, and local government agencies to assess for the potential human health risks that are associated with eating noncommercial fish and shellfish that are contaminated with chemicals. The data contained in this database may also be used by the general public to identify locations and specific information for each body of water for which an advisory has been issued.

Mercury is the nation's most widespread contaminant of fish tissue. EPA will be completing the data collection of fish tissue contaminated with mercury which will be input into a Mercury database that will be used to evaluate trends in fish contamination across the nation and to identify sources contributing to this problem.

EPA's National Sediment Quality Survey has demonstrated that 96 watersheds have potential widespread sediment contamination, and there is evidence from EPA's National Sediment Contaminant Point Source Inventory that this contamination is potentially a result of point source discharges in a number of the watersheds. EPA will pursue recommendations to: further evaluate these watersheds to examine trends of contaminant levels over time, assess the risks to aquatic resources and the communities who use these resources, and determine if natural recovery is a feasible option for risk reduction or if future action will be necessary to protect downstream sediment quality to the degree necessary for natural recovery. In addition, EPA will compile existing data on sediment quality, identify those sites that are contaminated, and submit a biennial report to Congress on sediment quality in the U.S.

EPA will be finishing the development of BASINS, a powerful new geographic information system that links information on sources of pollutants with water quality for every watershed in the continental United States. BASINS will allow users to locate potential sources of pollutants and estimate the effects of pollutants from all sources on recreational waters, aquatic life, wildlife habitat, drinking water supplies, and other critical uses of waters in a watershed. BASINS will enable water quality analysts, watershed managers, and the public to quickly assess large amounts of point source and nonpoint source data in an user friendly format. We anticipate that it will become an invaluable tool for developing cost-effective approaches to aquatic resources protection and watershed planning.

Educate and involve public in aquatic ecosystem protection

EPA commits to actively seeking to educate and involve the public in aquatic ecosystem protection. EPA commits to providing a wetlands hotline that will provide the public with information about the funding and technical assistance to restore or protect wetlands and will use other outreach vehicles, including EPA distribution centers. We will be developing outreach materials like fact sheets that will inform the public about actions they can undertake to further wetlands protection, NPS control, and estuary protection, all of which are important issues affecting the health of recreational fisheries. Finally, EPA will partner in other efforts to involve the public, including America's Wetlands Month, local wetland run/walks, and an annual Beach Clean-Up. These will raise the public's awareness of the importance of clean water to support aquatic resources, including recreational fisheries.

EPA will also strive to better educate the public on aquatic resources conservation and watershed protection through its Water Channel located on EPA's website (www.epa.gov/). The Water Channel will broadcast aquatic resources information and tools for communities and the American public to use in managing local aquatic resources. The Water Channel will provide a powerful mechanism to promote and strengthen partnerships with the public in our quest to manage, protect, and restore America's aquatic resources.

Develop new opportunities for partnerships, improve existing ones, and build capacity in states, tribes, and local governments

EPA is committed to improving our existing partnerships and developing new ones to protect and to restore our nation's waters.

To encourage and foster the watershed approach to aquatic resources protection, EPA will participate in the Conservation Partnership Council, a voluntary group of approximately 40 public and private organizations interested in and committed to working together to establish more effective partnerships for watershed protection. Among the participating organizations are the River Network, Association of State and Interstate Water Pollution Control Administrators, Natural Resources Defense Council, National Cattleman's Beef Association, National Pork Producers Council. The Forum is open to all organizations. The collaboration among these organizations will ultimately support recreational fisheries by improving coordination and reducing duplication in their effort to protect and restore watersheds.

EPA will improve its partnerships with the states and tribes through the implementation of biological criteria programs. EPA will provide technical assistance to develop a comprehensive approach to assess attainment of state and tribal waters that are designated for aquatic life uses. This approach will integrate biological, physical, and chemical assessment results, and will thus better be able to determine if our nation's waters that are designated for aquatic life, like recreational fisheries, are actually meeting the uses on a sustainable basis.

EPA will strive to improve monitoring efforts in shellfish growing waters and to make more efficient use of federal resources supporting monitoring programs for these waters through its partnership in the Interagency Task Force for Shellfish Growing Waters (ITFSGW). Further, EPA will promote shellfish sanitation to protect harvester and public health with the cooperation of state and Federal agencies, the shellfish industry, and the academic community through its partnership in the Interstate Shellfish Sanitation Conference (ISSC).

EPA will strive to improve partnerships with interested sportfishing organizations by working cooperatively to: incorporate EPA's aquatic resources protection educational materials into these organizations outreach programs; educate their members about EPA's aquatic resources protection programs through avenues such as establishing electronic links in their internet home pages to EPA's Water Channel; and provide interested sportfishing organizations with technical assistance in developing community based projects launched in priority watersheds that have impaired recreational fisheries.

EPA will strive to improve its partnerships with states and interested stakeholders to work collaboratively to advance the use of EPA's State Revolving Loan Fund for construction and maintenence of nonpoint source pollution controls, including boat pumpout stations.

Monitoring success of plan implementation through agency outputs

The Plan calls upon each agency to measure its progress in implementing the Plan using, where applicable, the core-set of agency outputs defined for each implementation strategy within the Plan. In addition to providing a narrative description of EPA's progress in implementing the plan, EPA will strive to report on the following core set of outputs (the other outputs specified in the Plan are not applicable to EPA's activities):

• Percent of surveyed stream miles that are restored or improved as fish habitat or restored to established water quality standards,
  
  
• Number of individuals trained or events sponsored in aquatic resource conservation,
  
  
• Narrative description of the level of success that EPA has in working with its recreational fisheries partners to meet the Plan's goals and carry out the implementation strategies.

EPA Contact

Chris Lewicki
Mail Code 4501T
Office of Wetlands, Oceans and Watersheds
1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20460
Lewicki.Chris@epamail.epa.gov