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MERCURY MULTI-YEAR PLAN
Citation:
Impact/Purpose:
The Office of Research and Development (ORD) has initiated a multi-year planning effort to plan the direction of our research program in selected topic areas over five or more years. This approach promotes ORD's focus on the highest priority issues and provides coordination for achieving our long-term research goals. The focus of this effort is the development of Multi-Year Plans (MYPs).
The purpose of the MYPs is to provide a framework that integrates research across ORD's laboratories and centers and Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) goals in support of the Agency's mission to protect human health and the environment. The MYPs identify long-term goals, and present annual performance goals (APGs) and associated annual performance measures (APMs) for a planning window of approximately 5-10 years. By helping to identify the impact of potential annual planning decisions, MYPs aid in the evaluation of research options. MYPs also foster the integration of strategic risk-based environmental protection and anticipation of future environmental issues by communicating our research approach and timing for responding to environmental issues. MYPs are intended to be living documents and are updated as needed to reflect the current state of the science, resource availability, and Agency priorities.
MYPs include two major components: (1) a narrative description of the plan, and (2) a matrix of goals and measures. The narrative provides an introduction and background to the topic of the plan, describes the long-term goals, provides the logic/thinking used to array performance goals to achieve long-term goals, and describes the integration between goals and organizations. The matrix is used to indicate annual goals and measures needed to meet the long-term goals identified in the plan. These goals and measures are arrayed across time (i.e., fiscal years) and laboratories/centers and are based on total annual resource levels for the MYP topic area that will not exceed the resource level proposed in the most recent President's Budget.
Description:
A 1997 EPA Mercury Study Report to Congress discussed the magnitude of mercury emissions in the United States, and concluded that a plausible link exists between human activities that release mercury from industrial and combustion sources in the United States and methyl mercury concentrations in humans and wildlife. Regulatory mandates require EPA to address these risks. The Agency is developing risk management research for managing emissions from coal-fired utilities (critical information for rule-making) and non-combustion sources of mercury; risk management research for fate and transport of mercury to fish; regionally-based ecological assessments of the effects of methyl mercury on birds; assessment of methyl mercury in human populations; and risk communication methods and tools. EPA has established two long-term goals for mercury research. The long-term goals established in this MYP are: 1. To reduce and prevent release of mercury into the environment. 2. To understand the transport and fate of mercury from release to the receptor and its effects on the receptor.