Abstract |
Environmental indicators have been under development at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for more than a decade. Government-wide programs such as the Government Performance Review Act and National Environmental Performance Partnerships, as well as the environmental goals and milestones of EPA's Strategic Plan, establish the need for outcome-based measures like environmental indicators. EPA conducted a feasibility analysis, developed a methodology, and identified available resources for developing environmental indicators and applying them to the Clean Water State Revolving Fund (CWSRF) program in 1998. EPA's Office of Wastewater Management established a federal-state Task Force to propose and oversee the pilot feasibility testing of a series of environmental indicators specific to the CWSRF program. Participating states cooperated in testing a range of environmental indicators to determine the feasibility of the indicators and their applicability to their respective state CWSRF programs. This report presents the findings of the Task Force, which evaluated a preliminary set of environmental indicators developed for the CWSRF. Pilot testing was used as an approach to evaluate whether data exist to support the selected indicators, and how easy or difficult it is to apply the data to the environmental indicators. |