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Meeting the Promise of the Clean Water Act
The water quality-based approach of the Clean Water Act has three primary thrusts.
First, where a stream is impaired by unsafe levels of water pollution or habitat damage, the law requires a "Total Maximum Daily Load" (TMDL). A TMDL is a scientific, conservative, and quantitative analysis of the total amount of pollution a river can handle, with responsibility to make reductions allocated to all the polluters. Citizens groups have filed lawsuits in over 30 states to force EPA and the states to identify impaired waters and to establish TMDLs to restore them because, in the absence of a TMDL, sources are allowed to pollute more than allowed by law. Once a TMDL is in place, however, pollution reductions must be both certain and sufficient to restore waters to standards. More on TMDLs...
Second is the "antidegradation policy." This policy prohibits new pollution into already-impaired streams and protects clean water from becoming impaired. Most states fail to apply the antidegradation policy to either clean or dirty waters. When antidegradation calls for a prohibition on new sources, industries and municipalities see TMDLs that will clean up streams as an business advantage. More on Antidegradation Policies...
Third is the discharge permit system. The Clean Water Act requires permits for pollution that is discharged to water through a discrete conveyance. These permits, issued by the states of Oregon and Washington under the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES), are good for five years, at which time they must be renewed. Permit holders are allowed to discharge pollution into public waters in exchange for reporting the results of required monitoring and meeting the terms of the NPDES permits. The terms are required by law to prevent dischargers from causing or contributing to the violation of water quality standards, however states and EPA often fail to meet legal requirements. The terms of permits can be enforced through citizens' lawsuits. More on Discharge Permits...
The Six Steps to Clean Water:
1. Establish water quality standards.
2. Gather data and information.
3. Compare data to standards to create list of impaired waters.
4. Use antidegradation to prevent deterioration of water quality.
5. Develop TMDLs.
6. Implement TMDLs with point and
nonpoint source controls.
The entire water quality-based program rests on a foundation of water quality standards -- which are defined as the uses to be protected and what is necessary to protect them -- and ends with using many different laws to actually implement the necessary changes. Therefore, the environmental success of the program depends as much upon states' standards as much as the TMDLs themselves. As the TMDL program has begun to impact polluters and land owners, they have begun to attack the underlying standards. For this reason, environmental advocates must be prepared to address the entire regulatory process -- standards, program regulations, and TMDL policies -- at both the national and state level. More on Water Quality Standards..
Non-Point Source Controls
There is one serious gap in the Clean Water Act: its ability to control nonpoint sources of pollution, the runoff from land activities such as logging and farming. The federal law does not directly regulate these activities nor does it require states to effectively control polluted runoff. Instead, TMDL clean-up plans are needed to describe what land owners should do to reduce nonpoint source pollution. Then, a variety of federal, state, and local efforts B including incentive grants, regulatory programs, planning processes, and voluntary activities B must come into play to ensure changes are made. In addition, because it is very difficult to quantify the amount of pollution that enters streams from land activities combined with storm events, follow-up monitoring and further evaluation will always be required when controlling nonpoint source pollution. More on Sources of Polluted Runoff...
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