^®: CRE Regulatory Action of the Week

Congress Moves to Incorporate Data Quality into ESA
Pending legislation in the House and Senate would amend the Endangered Species Act to impose new data quality requirements on Department of Interior determinations under the Endangered Species Act. For example, they would require DOI to "promulgate regulations that establish criteria that must be met for scientific and commercial data to be used as the basis of a determination under [the ESA] that a species is an endangered species or a threatened species." They would also impose new peer review requirements on ESA determinations.

This legislation, H.R. 1662 and S. 2009, does not mention either the Information Quality Act, or the OMB and agency guidelines promulgated under the IQA. The IQA, OMB and agency guidelines already establish data quality criteria for ESA determinations. It may be desirable to have new ESA-specific data quality requirements. Nevertheless, in order to avoid conflicting data quality requirements, the relationship between the IQA and the proposed ESA amendments should be carefully considered before there is any further action on the proposed House and Senate bills.