View Rule

The Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), as amended in 1996, requires that the EPA establish a program to monitor specified unregulated contaminants every five years. The EPA published the first Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule (UCMR 1) in the Federal Register on September 17, 1999 (64 FR 50556), the second (UCMR 2) on January 4, 2007 (72 FR 368), the third (UCMR 3) on May 2, 2012 (77 FR 26072), and the fourth (UCMR4) on December 20, 2016 (81 FR 92666). This action addresses the SDWA requirements by proposing the terms for the next cycle of monitoring and drafting a list of the new unregulated contaminants proposed to be monitored during the UCMR 5 period of 2022 to 2026. The proposal will fulfill a key commitment in EPA’s 2019 Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) Action Plan” (https://www.epa.gov/pfas/epas-pfas-action-plan) by proposing the collection of more drinking water occurrence data for a broader group of PFAS.