National Water Program Performance Results Fiscal Year 2011

The FY 2011 National Water Program Best Practices and End of the Year Performance Report describes the progress made in 2011 by EPA, states, tribes, and others toward the objectives and subobjectives described in the FY 2011 National Water Program Guidance and the FY 2011–2015 EPA Strategic Plan.

EPA's FY 2011–2015 Strategic Plan is divided into five goals. The National Water Program is addressed in Goal 2, "Clean and Safe Water."

The FY 2011 National Program Guidance is divided into 2 objectives and 15 subobjectives and includes strategic target measures and national Program Activity Measures (PAMs) to assess progress toward the goals in the Strategic Plan.

• In FY 2011, 64% of OW measures were met (down 6% from 2010), 22% were not met (down 2% from 2010), and 14% did not have data available (up 8% from 2010).
• Trend data shows that OW has averaged about 66% measures met (range of 63% to 70%), 23% not met (range 22%-25%), 10% with data unavailable or not reporting (range 6%-15%).

• The Wetlands, U.S.-Mexico Border, Coastal and Oceans, Gulf of Mexico, and Drinking Water subobjectives were most successful in meeting FY 2011 commitments.
• The Pacific Island, South Florida, and Puget Sound subobjectives had the most difficulty in meeting their commitments in FY 2011.

• Oceans and Coastal Protection, Columbia River, Puget Sound, Wetlands, Drinking Water, and Great Lakes subobjectives have been the most successful in meeting their commitments over the past four years.
• Wetlands and Mexico Border show greatest improvement over FY 2010.
• Chesapeake Bay saw a significant decline in average measures met due to a drop in measures reporting in FY 2011.

• The core programs were more successful than the geographic programs in meeting their commitments in 2011 (70% vs. 56%).
• Though the geographic programs had more measures not met (28% vs. 17%), they also had a higher universe of measure data not reported (16% vs. 13%).
• Geographic programs saw a significant decrease in measures met in 2011, reversing the trend from FY 2010.

• On average, all Regions performed well above the national level, meeting 83% of their commitments in FY 2011 (compared to 87% in FY 2010).
  • Region 1 had the highest (95%) and Region 7 (73%) had the lowest percent of measures met in FY 2011.
  • Nine Regions saw a drop in the percent commitments met in FY 2011 compared to FY 2010.

• The number of commitments met for Tribal-specific measures increased in FY 2011 (7).
• The Agency fell short in meeting its commitments for the number tribes with water quality standards approved and the number of American Indian and Alaska Native homes provided access to safe drinking water.

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• Of the 54 commitment measures reported at mid-year, 91% (49) were on target. Two percent (1) were not on track.
• Of the total 103 commitment measures reported at the end of the year, 64% (66) measures were met; and 22% (23) were not met.
  • Several measures that were on target at mid-year were not met at the end of the year.

EPA was successful in meeting two-thirds of its commitments under the Water Safe for Swimming subobjective in 2011. For coastal and Great Lakes beaches monitored by state-based beach safety programs, EPA found that 96% of days of the beach season were open and safe for swimming (FY11 commitment–951). EPA has consistently met this commitment over the past five years.
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EPA has been working with states to structure their permit programs to better support comprehensive protection of water quality. A key strategy is to focus efforts on high-priority permits that need to be issued or reissued to help implement TMDLs (total maximum daily loads), watershed plans, effluent guidelines, or other environmental and programmatic actions. In 2011, both EPA and authorized states issued 1,005 priority permits (132% of the universe), exceeding the national commitment of 763 permits (100%)
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The 28 National Estuary Programs (NEPs) and their partners protected or restored over 60,000 acres of habitat within the NEP study areas—almost 40,000 acres short of EPA's goal of 100,000 acres. Several factors are responsible for the decline in results over the past two years including an economic downturn that has made it difficult for the NEP partners to come up with the matching funds for projects. The 28 NEPs and their partners protected or restored over one million habitat acres within the NEP study areas since 2002.

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The U.S.-Mexico Border program significantly improved its performance over the past year. The Border program has removed 108 million pounds of biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) loadings to waterbodies in the U.S.–Mexico Border area since FY 2003.
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The Great Lakes National program continued to receive a historically high level of funding in FY 2011. Despite a significant increase in the number of new measures being reported in FY 2011, the program was able to maintain a consistently high level of performance with 67% of measures meeting their commitments.
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EPA's Chesapeake Bay Program was unable to report on most of its performance measures in FY 2011 due to the fact that the measure language and FY 2011 commitments were no longer applicable under the requirements of a new TMDL established for the Bay watershed in December 2010. The program has developed new indicators for tracking the implementation of nutrient and sediment reduction actions.
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Based on annual monitoring from the prior year, the Bay Program reported 79,550 acres of underwater grasses in the Chesapeake Bay. This represents approximately 43% of the Bay program's long-term goal of 185,000 acres.
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EPA met three of its four commitments for the Gulf of Mexico program in FY 2011.  According to the recently published National Coastal Condition Report (IV) based on data collected from 2003-2006, the overall health of coastal waters of the Gulf of Mexico maintained a rating of Fair/Poor. The hurricanes of 2005 (Katrina and Rita) significantly affected the data collected and influenced the overall health condition score. 
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The size of the hypoxic, or "dead," zone in the Gulf of Mexico decreased from 8,000 square miles in 2010 to 6,764 square miles in 2011. There were a number of hydrological, climate, and monitoring factors that lead to variability in the size of the hypoxic zone from year to year.
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The Gulf of Mexico Program restored water and habitat quality to 116 impaired water segments in 13 priority areas in FY 2011 which was a 40% increase over FY 2010 results.

EPA's performance was mixed in FY 2011 in restoring and protecting the Long Island Sound. EPA fell short of its 2011 goal of reopening 92% of 50 additional river and stream miles to migrating fish passage.
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In 2011, the duration of hypoxia in Long Island Sound was 54 days and the area affected was 130 square miles. This was an increase in the duration and size of the hypoxia zone from 2010.
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EPA's performance for restoring and protecting the Puget Sound declined for the first time in four years.  Failure to meet annual targets for restoring harvestable shellfish beds and remediation of contaminated sediments accounted for the shortfall. One of the performance highlights in 2011 was the restoration of over 14,600 acres of tidally- and seasonally-influenced estuarine wetlands the Puget Sound Basin since FY 2006. The program significantly exceeded its 2011 commitment (12,363) due to the fruition of a number of habitat protection projects funded in 2007-2009.
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In 2011, 4,037 acres of shellfish bed growing areas were placed under new harvest restrictions primarily due to pathogen pollution in Puget Sound's Jamish Bay. As a result, EPA, state, local, and tribal partners fell short of their annual goal of maintaining 4,953 acres of harvestable shellfish beds. 
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EPA has met two of its three commitments for the Columbia River subobjective in FY 2011. Working with EPA and other partners, the Lower Columbia River Estuary Partnership protected, enhanced, or restored an additional 361 acres of wetland and upland habitat in the Lower Columbia River watershed in FY 2011 for a total of 16,661 acres since FY 2006.  These restored wetlands and habitats provide significant benefits for salmon recovery, toxic reduction, and overall water quality in the Columbia River critical estuarine environment.
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In its first year of reporting, EPA in coordination with other federal agencies, fell just short of reaching its FY 2011 commitment of 100,700 American Indian and Alaska Native homes with access to safe drinking water. The Agency and its partners, however, exceeded its FY 2011 commitment by 9% in providing access to basic sanitation to nearly 57,000 American Indian or Alaska Native homes.

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• About two-thirds of Water Program measures met their commitments in FY 2011, somewhat below the previous year's results.
• Coastal and Oceans and Drinking Water subobjectives are among the most consistent high performers for core programs.
  • Wetlands and U.S.-Mexico Border subobjectives saw significant improvement in FY 2011.
  • South Florida, Pacific Island and Puget Sound showed a decline in performance over FY 2010.
• Reversing the previous year's trend, the core programs were more successful than the place-based programs in meeting their commitments in 2011.
• For the second year in a row, Regions 1 and 2 were the most successful in meeting their commitments in 2011.
• Tribal commitments showed an improvement in FY 2011 over the previous year.