Comparison of pesticide concentrations observed in community water systems to predictions from U.S. regulatory aquatic exposure models

Abstract

The Variable Volume Water Model (VVWM), the receiving water body model for the USEPA regulatory assessment of aquatic pesticide exposures, is composed of a set of static and quasistatic receiving water body conceptual models, but research comparing performance of these models to observations is limited. The water body models included are the constant volume (CVol), constant volume with overflow (CVO), and varying volume with overflow (VVO) models. This work quantified the performance of these three VVWM conceptual models compared with atrazine observations in 50 community water systems (CWSs), and the effect of alternative conceptual models on estimated environmental concentrations of pesticides in regulatory screening assessments. The 50 selected CWSs most relevant to the static and quasistatic VVWM concepts were small in size, with estimated time to peak flow of <1.5 d for consistency with the daily runoff assumption in USEPA landscape Pesticide Root Zone Model (PRZM). The CVO and VVO conceptual models resulted in similar distributions of bias across CWSs with the median result being close to no bias, but the CVol model resulted in overestimation in the majority of CWSs with median model bias near three times the observed values. At present, the CVol conceptual model parameterized with conservative input assumptions has been the regulatory standard invoked in VVWM, yet our results showed that a more physically correct conceptual model (CVO or VVO) could be invoked in regulatory exposure modeling for ecological risk assessment, reducing structural model bias while still allowing users to introduce conservative model inputs for screening purposes.