In late 2006, EPA released for public review and comment its third Draft Contaminant Candidate List 3 (CCL3), which is issued every five years to give stakeholders the opportunity to nominate currently unregulated chemical compounds for regulatory status under EPA. In response to the findings of a 2000 USGS-sponsored survey of organic wastewater contaminants (OWCs), which detected 50 OWCs in U.S. streams – including 23 pharmaceutical compounds in 11 sampling sites in the Croton watershed – Riverkeeper nominated all 50 of the detected OWCs to be added to the CCL3. In addition, due to the impacts of road salt (sodium chloride) on water quality, aquatic ecosystems, soils, vegetation, wildlife, infrastructure, and human health, we also nominated sodium and chloride to the CCL3.

In 2008, EPA released it second Draft CCL3, which included 93 chemical compounds and 11 microbiological contaminants. Unfortunately, the list included only one pharmaceutical compound (nitroglycerin) despite recent research that conclusively detected myriad pharmaceuticals in public drinking water supplies.

Riverkeeper will continue to urge EPA to re-examine its approach used to identify and evaluate contaminants for inclusion on the CCL3 so that consumers of public water supplies are safeguarded against unnecessary ingestion of many potentially harmful pharmaceuticals.