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The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) plans to propose regulations that would update specific elements of the existing National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) in order to better harmonize regulations and application forms, improve permit documentation and transparency and provide clarifications to the existing regulations. In this effort EPA plans to address application, permitting, monitoring and reporting requirements that have become obsolete or outdated due to programmatic, technical or other changes that have occurred over the past 35 years. Specifically, EPA plans to focus on revising the NPDES permit application forms to specifically include all final Agency data standards, improving the consistency between the application forms, updating the applications to better reflect current program practices, and specifically incorporate new program areas into the forms (e.g., Clean Water Act section 316(b) requirements for cooling water intake structures). EPA also plans to address other program elements including permit documentation, EPA state permit objection, and public participation procedures to improve the quality and transparency of permit development. As an example of a regulation which could be proposed to change to reduce burden, as well as improve transparency and public access to information, EPA is considering whether to revise the public notice requirements to allow a State to post notices of draft NPDES permits and other permit actions under the Clean Water Act on its State agency websites in lieu of a traditional newspaper posting.