"August 1986"--T.p. "MTR-86W84"--T.p. "Sponsor: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency"--T.p. "Contract no.: EPA 68-01-7054"--T.p. EPA 540-R-86-021, per NSCEP's publication title list for this publication.

This report describes an analysis intended to show whether available data for Superfund sites support the present distance limits (3 miles in streams and rivers, or 1 mile in static water) used for scoring the surface water pathway target population in the Hazard Ranking System. The data, concentrations of released substances at various distances from their points of entry into surface waters, were limited, by agreement with the sponsor, to what was available in the National Priorities List (NPL) site files and remedial investigation reports. There are insufficient data to allow drawing any conclusions for the static water case. However, the available data suggest that the 3-mile targets distance limit for streams and rivers warrants upward modification, at least for those cases in which no observed release has been shown. The data do not permit making a recommendation as to what farther distance limit should be used.