What has EPA done to ensure that sampling of floodwater is adequate?
EPA consulted with members of the Agency Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) regarding its draft sampling plan. The independent SAB reviewers provided many useful comments, many of which were incorporated into EPA’s Quality Assurance Sampling Plan. The more significant changes include refining how sampling would be done and what would be sampled, including sampling for total petroleum hydrocarbons which will better characterize pollutants in the visible oil sheens, and the inclusion of adopting a method to get a more accurate count and type characterization of fecal indicator bacteria contamination in the floodwaters.
