EPA is taking direct final action on the Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Regulation (UCMR) for public water systems. The UCMR requires all public water systems to monitor for unregulated contaminants during one year every five years. This direct final rule concerns the suspension of monitoring by small and medium systems for monitoring scheduled to begin after December 31, 1998. EPA is suspending this monitoring since the revised UCMR program, required by the 1996 Safe Drinking Water Act Amendments, is projected to begin during this third round of monitoring. This will allow systems serving 10,000 or fewer persons to save the cost of monitoring under the existing regulation, which if performed as scheduled would overlap with monitoring under the revised UCMR program.