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Clean Water At The Crossroads Thirty years after the passage of the landmark Clean Water Act, water quality in the United States has improved considerably. However, much of the nation?s existing wastewater infrastructure is close to or beyond the end of its design life, and many other contributors to water quality degradation must still be addressed. To ensure that progress continues, the nation must reaffirm its commitment to the act?s objectives. By Jay Landers Passed by Congress over a presidential veto on October 18, 1972, the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments (P.L. 92-500) ushered in a new approach to wastewater regulation in the United States. Popularly known as the Clean Water Act, the law was a direct response to the undeniable degradation of many of the nation?s major rivers and lakes, not to mention countless smaller streams and other water bodies. One of the most ambitious environmental statutes in the nation?s history, the Clean Water Act has led to a number of success stories. In many cities, for example, rivers that formerly repelled people because of pollution now draw crowds. Yet 30 years on, the country is still far short of meeting the law?s objective to ?restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the nation?s waters.? At the time of the law?s passage, the image of the Cuyahoga River catching fire in Cleveland in 1969 was still fresh in the nation?s growing environmental consciousness. The rivers in most other major cities also were degraded and often devoid of all or nearly all aquatic life. The quantity and variety of pollutants flowing in these waterways posed threats to human health as well. In the late 1960s, anyone coming into contact with the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., was advised to seek medical treatment. Realizing that existing water quality regulations had proven inadequate, Congress decided to overhaul the nation?s approach to achieving the necessary levels of wastewater treatment. In 1899 the federal government had passed the Rivers and Harbors Act, its first effort to protect the nation?s waters. The law regulated the construction of structures in or over certain rivers, any work affecting the course or location of a river, and the discharge of material into a river. Nearly 50 years would pass before the federal government enacted its next law designed to protect rivers and streams from water pollution. With the passage of the Water Pollution Control Act of 1948, the federal government began providing grants and technical assistance, but regulatory and enforcement powers remained largely with the states. The state-by-state system for controlling water pollution before 1972 led to a ?hit or miss approach,? as some states tried hard to regulate wastewater dischargers while others did not, says Michael Cook, the director of the Office of Remedial and Emergency Response in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and from 1991 until earlier this year the director of the agency?s Office of Wastewater Management. What is more, a large degree of scientific uncertainty complicated and often confounded attempts to enforce water quality standards, Cook says. In the second half of the 20th century, the population and industrial output of the United States expanded rapidly, with deleterious effects on the nation?s rivers and streams. By 1965 the Water Pollution Control Act had been amended five times, but water quality continued to worsen, setting the stage for the 1972 amendments that would completely overhaul the way that industries and municipalities approached the matter of wastewater treatment. Faced with a growing number of environmental problems, Congress in the late 1960s and early 1970s began granting the federal government authority to step in. The United States had passed such far-reaching environmental legislation as the National Environmental Policy Act and the Clean Air Act, which were overseen by the relatively new EPA. By 1972 one did not need to be a water quality professional to realize that the nation?s rivers and streams were suffering. ?The water pollution was visible,? says Tracy Mehan, the assistant administrator of the EPA?s Office of Water. ?It was very readily apparent to the average citizen.? This visibility, combined with the growing demand for a greater governmental response, prompted the Clean Water Act. ?I think that there was a perception of a need and a certain societal evolution that said we need to get on with cleaning up our waters in the United States,? Mehan says. ?This tied in to the whole environmental thrust across the board.? Before 1972, wastewater regulation focused mainly on whether water quality had been impaired, recalls H. Gerard Schwartz, Jr., the chairman of St. Louis?based Sverdrup Civil, a Jacobs Engineering company, and the president of asce. ?You had to prove basically that the water was degraded,? he notes, and to show that requiring a certain level of wastewater treatment ?would improve the quality of the water sufficiently.? Such tasks often proved difficult to carry out. In many cases where a city was located next to a major river, it was commonly believed that the river?s ?assimilative capacity? obviated the need to build expensive wastewater treatment plants or upgrade existing ones. However, the sheer volume of highly polluted water being discharged simply overwhelmed even the largest water bodies, including the Great Lakes, and nearly every major river passing through an urban area. P.L. 92-500 tackled such problems head-on by setting technology-based standards for industrial and municipal dischargers. In other words, Congress had completely rewritten the rules pertaining to wastewater treatment, and the federal government was now firmly in charge. Rather than requiring regulators to prove that a particular discharge was harming a particular body of water, the law placed the onus on dischargers to adopt a particular level of treatment as specified by the EPA. The law directed the EPA to develop effluent guidelines for particular industries, with the industries having until July 1, 1977, to meet the standards by adopting, to use the language of the act, the ?best practicable control technology currently available.? Publicly owned treatment works (POTWs) faced the same deadline, but Congress issued a blanket minimum requirement that all such facilities would have to meet?secondary treatment. With this mandate, the law essentially ?put a floor on the level of treatment? municipal wastewater facilities would have to achieve, says Schwartz. In municipal wastewater treatment, primary treatment employs such physical methods as screens and gravitational settling in clarifiers to remove settleable and floatable solids from raw sewage. Secondary treatment, on the other hand, employs biological processes to remove a much larger amount of organic material from the wastewater than is achieved by primary treatment, thereby producing a higher quality of effluent. To meet the EPA?s definition of secondary treatment, the 30-day averages of biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) and total suspended solids (TSS) in a facility?s discharge could not exceed 30 parts per million (ppm), that is, 30 mg/L. (BOD is a measure of the amount of organic material in wastewater that can be consumed by biological processes. The higher the BOD, the higher the pollution. TSS is a measure of the total amount of solid matter?by weight?suspended in a water sample.) Put another way, POTWs had to remove at least 85 percent of the BOD and TSS from their effluents. Processes that treat wastewater to levels beyond what is required in secondary treatment are referred to as advanced, or tertiary. When it established the technology-based requirements, Congress did not abandon water quality standards. Rather, it granted states the primary authority to impose more stringent standards where necessary to protect or maintain water quality in particular water bodies. Since 1972, water quality standards in many cases have been developed requiring dischargers to attain treatment levels well beyond what is obtained through secondary treatment. In another significant change, the law required that all industrial and municipal dischargers obtain permits from the EPA or authorized states before discharging wastewater into a waterway. Known as the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES), the program issues permits specifying the nature and concentrations of the pollutants that a permit holder may discharge. More than 60,000 municipal and industrial dischargers would eventually receive NPDES permits. The law also gave the EPA broad enforcement powers to address permit violations. ?It was the first time that the right to pollute in a sense was questioned and denied,? says Albert Gray, the deputy executive director of the Water Environment Federation, of Alexandria, Virginia. To ensure that POTWs would meet the deadline for implementing secondary treatment, Congress allocated $18 billion in grant money?an unprecedented sum?for this effort over the next three years. Whereas in fiscal year (FY) 1972 the federal government had appropriated $1.25 billion for wastewater infrastructure, it was prepared to spend $5 billion in FY 1973, $6 billion in FY 1974, and $7 billion in FY 1975. Although political wrangling between Congress and President Nixon delayed the release of some of the money, the $18 billion had a dramatic effect on many POTWs. The federal grants could be used to finance as much as 75 percent of the cost to construct new POTWs or upgrade existing plants, and the states frequently footed some or all of the remaining project expenses. This arrangement created ?incredible momentum and stimulus at the local level to build secondary treatment plants and more advanced treatment across the whole country,? says Ken Kirk, the executive director of the American Metropolitan Sewerage Agency (AMSA), of Washington, D.C. ?It also served to force the regionalization of treatment plants,? Kirk says. For example, large metropolitan areas that had dozens of small treatment plants often found it more economical to consolidate operations in a single large facility or a few plants. The regulatory requirements imposed on municipalities and industries and the massive infusion of grant money were the features of the act that did the most to push water quality forward, the EPA?s Cook says. By setting goals, specifying treatment levels and requirements, creating enforcement tools, and providing funding, the law departed significantly from all previous statutes attempting to control water pollution. Secondary
treatment was certainly not a new concept in 1972, having been employed
for decades in such cities as Milwaukee, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.
In fact, most municipal treatment plants employed some form of secondary
treatment prior to P.L. 92-500. In 1968, more than 70 percent of the nation?s
POTWs provided secondary treatment and less than 1 percent conducted advanced
treatment, according to the EPA. However, in 1972 nearly 4,900 plants
serving 57 million people were Although the law required that all POTWs achieve secondary treatment capabilities by July 1, 1977, this deadline was not met and was later extended. As the EPA and the states struggled to implement the construction grants program?as the funding effort was known?procedural delays slowed the pace of treatment plant construction considerably. Amid a series of administrative reforms, the construction grants program continued through FY 1990. Amendments made in 1987 to the Clean Water Act phased out the construction grants program after FY 1990 in favor of a controversial loan program, the state revolving fund (SRF). Under the SRF approach the federal government provides a capitalization grant that is distributed among the states, which on their own must add an amount equal to at least 20 percent of the federal dollars they receive. The states then disburse funds to individual utilities to pay for improvements. Recipients of SRF funds must repay the states, and the funds are then lent to other entities. When it adopted the SRF program, Congress envisioned an eventual transition to full state and local financing of municipal wastewater treatment projects. However, federal dollars have been appropriated to the SRF program every year. In fact, since FY 1998 the federal government has contributed approximately $1.3 billion annually. Yet the program has frequently been criticized for imposing too many administrative burdens, and many entities, especially small towns, have had difficulty repaying their loans. All told, $61 billion was provided to municipalities as part of the construction grants program. Between FY 1989 and FY 2002, Congress appropriated nearly $20 billion for the SRF. In large part because of the construction grants and SRF programs, by 1996 fewer than 200 POTWs were providing less than secondary treatment, according to the EPA. That figure included treatment plants operating with the waivers authorized by section 301(h) of the Clean Water Act, which countenances less than secondary treatment of wastewater discharged to certain ocean waters. By 1996, 27 percent of the POTWs were exceeding secondary treatment. Between 1968 and 1996, the U.S. population served by POTWs with secondary or higher treatment nearly doubled, from 86 million to 165 million, according to the EPA. Since 1972 wastewater technology has undergone ?refinements and evolutionary improvements,? rather than major technical breakthroughs, Gray notes. However, the refinements are noteworthy because they have incrementally advanced the practice of wastewater treatment, improving treatment capabilities while reducing costs. Compared with their predecessors of 30 years ago, today?s POTWs are much more efficient, and most important of all, they discharge effluent of a much higher quality. ?The amount we?ve moved [forward] in terms of wastewater treatment has been enormous,? says Schwartz. Before 1972 many secondary plants employed trickling filters, which at the time mostly used rock media. Here wastewater trickles down through a bed of rocks, and microorganisms attached to the rocks remove contaminants, effecting biological treatment. At that time trickling filter systems tended to be sensitive to temperature changes and to variations in hydraulic flows and organic loadings, according to Gray. Activated sludge systems?which mix effluent from primary treatment with bacteria-laden sludge and oxygen to promote the biological breakdown of the organic matter in the wastewater?have replaced trickling filters in many cases. Although trickling filters remain a viable option for wastewater treatment, the activated sludge process tends to be more efficient because it is ?more controllable, less sensitive to climate changes, and more adjustable for hydraulic and organic loadings,? Gray says. Other technical
advances that have helped to create today?s more effective POTWs include
aeration systems, which have become much more efficient and therefore
less expensive to operate, notes Jim Clark, a vice president in the Los
Angeles office of Black & Veatch. Chemically enhanced primary treatment?now
used at many larger and some smaller facilities across the country?has
helped POTWs save money while improving overall performance, says Clark.
Greater use of ultraviolet light?rather than chlorine?for disinfection
after the secondary treatment stage has made it possible for some facilities
to decrease the amount of chlorine discharged to the environment while
also improving safety, Clark says. Over the course of the past 30 years,
automation has had a tremendous effect on the operations of POTWs, says
Michael Sweeney, the director of operations for Kentucky?s Louisville
and Jefferson County Metropolitan Sewer District. Whereas 15 to 20 years
ago many in the industry were hesitant to use computers and instrumentation
to control operations, utility staff today readily rely on highly sophisticated Other technologies are poised to have an even more telling effect on the wastewater treatment process, says Clark. As competition between suppliers of microfiltration and reverse-osmosis membranes begins to increase, POTWs seeking to provide tertiary treatment will find it easier to afford membranes, he notes. After advancing significantly in the past 10 years, membrane technology is ?enabling us to provide the highest possible degree of effluent quality, actually to the point where effluent from wastewater treatment can actually be directly reused in potable water systems,? says Gray. The reuse of treated wastewater has been another significant outcome of the Clean Water Act, says Robert Matthews, the national wastewater practice leader in the Fort Myers, Florida, office of CDM, which is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts. As more POTWs achieve treatment levels of greater sophistication, ?the value of wastewater becomes increasingly significant,? Matthews notes. In the 1980s, especially in the Sunbelt and other arid parts of the country, the reuse of effluent for nonpotable purposes became a cost- effective disposal alternative, he says. Biological nutrient removal is another area that has come a long way in 30 years. In the early 1970s, wastewater treatment efforts focused mainly on addressing such conventional pollutants as organic material, oil, grease, and suspended solids. The practice of removing nutrients?primarily phosphorus and nitrogen?to reduce eutrophication in receiving waters was in its infancy and relied on chemical rather than biological means. Today a variety of biological approaches for removing nutrients are finding use at a growing number of POTWs. In short, wastewater treatment plants have come a long way since 1972, and the nation?s rivers reflect the progress. In Cleveland, for example, no one worries anymore about the Cuyahoga River catching fire. Since taking over Cleveland?s three treatment plants in 1972, the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District (NEORSD) has spent approximately $1.5 billion on interceptor sewers and plant upgrades, says William Schatz, the general counsel for the NEORSD. Although all three plants provided secondary treatment before 1972, they were ?in a sad state of repair,? resulting in frequent discharges of sludge to the Cuyahoga and Lake Erie, Schatz says. At the time, Cleveland?s 200 mgd (757,000 m3/d) Southerly treatment plant discharged effluent with TSS levels between 30 and 40 ppm (30 and 40 mg/L). Fortunately, this state of affairs no longer exists. Southerly is an advanced wastewater treatment plant that employs filters for effluent polishing and produces discharges whose average TSS levels are approximately 4 ppm (4 mg/L). Where it passes through the nation?s capital, the Potomac River has made similar progress, also thanks to significant improvements in wastewater infrastructure. The Blue Plains wastewater treatment plant, in Washington, D.C., was outfitted to provide secondary treatment in 1959, and thus the facility was not immediately affected by the passage of the Clean Water Act. However, over time Blue Plains had to meet ever-stricter discharge requirements. Whereas in 1972 it was producing effluent with BOD levels of 15 to 20 ppm (15 to 20 mg/L), today the 320 mgd (1.2 million m3/d) plant?s tertiary treatment processes result in discharges into the Potomac River having BOD levels between just 1 and 3 ppm (1 and 3 mg/L), says Michael Marcotte, the deputy general manager and chief engineer at the District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority, the agency in charge of Blue Plains. In 1982, the facility began filtering its effluent through mixed media filters to reduce the level of solids in the effluent as well. Growing concerns about eutrophication in the Potomac eventually forced Blue Plains to adopt highly sophisticated nutrient removal techniques. Nitrification was added in 1980 to remove ammonia, and in the mid-1990s Blue Plains implemented biological nitrogen removal, which today purges approximately half of the total nitrogen from the plant?s discharge, Marcotte says. However, as concern about the effect of nitrogen on the Potomac River and the Chesapeake Bay continues to grow, Blue Plains will probably be asked to do more to reduce nutrients, Marcotte acknowledges. Given that Blue Plains already employs state-of-the-art nutrient removal technology, its options for reducing nutrient levels even further are ?not clear cut,? Marcotte says. In addition to refining the existing nitrogen removal process, possible solutions include the use of membranes and high-rate clarification of peak flows, Marcotte says. Although such changes would probably not need to take effect for another 10 years, officials at Blue Plains must begin planning for these possibilities now, he says. The changes at the POTWs in Cleveland and Washington, D.C., are representative of the improvements made in wastewater treatment in countless cities across the United States since the passage of the Clean Water Act. To quantify the benefits of the nation?s substantial investment in wastewater infrastructure, the EPA in 2000 released Progress in Water Quality, a report summarizing the agency?s findings on the extent to which the nation?s water quality improved following the passage of the Clean Water Act. In the report the EPA assessed loadings of BOD and changes in the levels of dissolved oxygen (DO) in rivers and streams downstream of municipal wastewater treatment plant discharge points. The two parameters are not unrelated?high BOD levels typically lead to low DO levels. Adequate levels of DO are perhaps the most important factor in ensuring healthy populations of fish and other aquatic life. Large fish kills are most frequently associated with low DO levels. In 1968 the national aggregate BOD removal efficiency was approximately 63 percent, according to the report. By 1996, this figure had increased to nearly 85 percent, despite a corresponding 35 percent increase in influent BOD loadings. In its assessment of DO levels, the EPA found that 69 percent of the river segments, or reaches, it evaluated showed improvements in DO after 1972. These statistics and the obvious improvements to the health of many of the nation?s water bodies support a general view that the Clean Water Act has been a tremendous success. ?Where in the history of the world have you seen such a remarkable turnaround in the way water has been managed in a heavily developed industrialized country?? asks the EPA?s Mehan. ?I think the Clean Water Act sets the bar in that regard.? However, future progress is by no means guaranteed. The EPA?s report predicted that unless the nation continues to upgrade its treatment facilities, the water quality improvements resulting from the reduced BOD loadings will be negated by population growth. Using population projections released by the U.S. Census Bureau in 1996, the EPA estimated that effluent BOD loadings would return to the levels that existed in the mid-1970s. By 2025, those levels could reach 1968 levels, historically the maximum. In other words, if in the next two decades the United States chooses not to maintain and improve its wastewater infrastructure, some of the most significant gains in water quality achieved in the past 30 years will be lost. Many of the treatment plants built in the 1970s are reaching the ends of their design lives and will require rehabilitation or replacement. However, as POTWs work to upgrade and improve their existing facilities and meet increasingly stringent discharge requirements, they also face the challenge of addressing other significant mandates of the Clean Water Act. Only now are many utilities beginning to address provisions of the act related to such wet-weather events as combined sewer overflows (CSOs), sanitary sewer overflows (SSOs), and storm-water runoff. The costs are not inconsequential, and for many of the nation?s older cities they are staggering. Like several other cities, Cleveland and Washington, D.C., have begun building or are planning to build large tunnels to intercept flows from combined sewers that otherwise would enter a receiving stream untreated during a storm. In both cities the costs are expected to exceed $1 billion. Many cities and local governments must also finance measures to address SSOs and adopt storm-water management plans. Although many of these provisions have been part of the act since its passage, they were deemed secondary to the monumental task of implementing the construction grants and NPDES programs. The combination of tighter permit requirements, major upgrade needs, and additional regulatory requirements is expected to require investment over the next few decades on a scale that will rival, if not exceed, the nation?s outlays for clean water programs. The source of that money is a matter of significant debate. Many of those involved with POTWs maintain that the federal government should renew its commitment to protecting water quality by increasing the resources it devotes to the issue. AMSA?s Kirk contends that the large-scale needs of POTWs require a return to a significant federal investment, preferably in the form of grants rather than loans. ?All the major advances in clean water were made under the grants program,? Kirk says. ?All that happened in 1987 was the federal government basically dropped out of the program and now funds only five percent, if that, of the need, and local governments are picking up the tab.? Referring to the need to address CSOs and SSOs, Kirk adds, ?The kicker is what [POTWs] need to be doing is spending twice as much as what they?re spending now, because they have a whole new set of requirements that nobody focused on? during the initial implementation of the construction grants program. It is a sentiment shared by many in the wastewater community. If the federal government wants ?to continue to grow program improvements, there is still a need for some continued support,? says CDM?s Matthews. Meanwhile, the Bush administration, and thus the EPA, reject the notion that the federal government should return to the practice of financing the lion?s share of municipal wastewater treatment needs. At a series of congressional hearings this year, agency representatives have stated flatly that the White House will not support legislation pending in Congress that would significantly boost federal funding for water and wastewater infrastructure needs. Citing the needs related to homeland security and the recent return to deficit spending, the EPA?s Mehan says, ?I don?t know whether you?re going to see the federal government more invested [in wastewater infrastructure] than it is now.? To deal with infrastructure needs, Mehan says, ?several approaches are going to have to be looked at.? In particular, asset management?the practice of systematically maintaining, upgrading, and operating physical assets cost-effectively?will ?have to become a bigger tool in our toolbox? in order to ?prolong the life of our infrastructure and help reduce our long-term funding needs,? he explains. ?But I think whether it?s public or private or some hybrid system, the financial needs are so great we have to do everything we can to reduce that need before we look to private capital or government funding or increasing rates.? In the future the EPA?s Office of Water will provide technical assistance and training regarding asset management to POTWs, Mehan says. Kirk agrees that asset management, increased rates, and opportunities to reduce expenses?including privatization?all need to be evaluated. The nation?s POTWs are taking these steps, but the funding problem remains, he contends. ?The only thing that asset management is going to underscore is the fact that there is this enormous need for investment out there,? Kirk says. Environmental organizations also agree that more money is needed for wastewater treatment, along with increased funding for a variety of measures to improve water quality. Nancy Stoner, the director of the Clean Water Project for the Natural Resources Defense Council, of Washington, D.C., says that her organization supports the call for greater federal funding of POTWs as well as ?other water quality needs.? Anyone evaluating ways to improve water quality needs to ?look not just at traditional engineering solutions but to a full range of solutions,? Stoner says. For example, water conservation and improved storm-water management techniques need to be pursued to a greater extent, she says. Overshadowing all of the debate regarding what else the POTWs need to do is the realization that the nation?s waters cannot be restored solely by the efforts of municipal and industrial dischargers, which are often referred to as point sources because they discharge their wastewater through a pipe or ditch or some other discrete location. On the other hand, pollution from ?nonpoint? sources?the term used to describe more indirect sources of pollution, primarily storm-water runoff from farms, logging sites, and impervious surfaces in urban and suburban areas?is widely recognized as the next major target in efforts to improve water quality. In its biennial assessments of water quality throughout the country, the EPA for several years has cited non-point-source pollution as a serious problem in close to 40 percent of the nation?s waterways. For some in the POTW community, the situation points to what they consider a glaring deficiency of the Clean Water Act itself. As they see it, point sources have had to shoulder the burden of cleaning up the waterways, and the time has come for those largely responsible for non-point-source pollution to assume their share of the work that remains to be done. However, the act contains few provisions for addressing nonpoint sources directly, and the agricultural community has vehemently opposed any efforts to subject farmers to permitting processes along the lines of the NPDES program. For the time being, the EPA intends to leave efforts to control nonpoint sources in the hands of the states. ?States may choose and some states have regulatory programs for nonpoint sources, but I don?t see a new federal program for nonpoint sources in the foreseeable future,? Mehan says. ?I think politically that?s a nonstarter. Moreover nonpoint sources in many ways are very place-based problems, and local jurisdictions and states need to focus on them.? That approach suits farmers just fine, says Don Parrish, the senior director of regulatory relations for the American Farm Bureau, of Park Ridge, Illinois. Parrish says that the Clean Water Act has been a successful law, albeit an enormously expensive one, because it has continued to provide a role for states to deal with their water quality issues as they see fit. Particularly when dealing with nonpoint sources, a ?one-size-fits-all approach? as typified by the NPDES permit program simply will not work, he contends. Only locally administered, voluntary efforts will prove successful, says Parrish. Thirty years after the signing of the Clean Water Act, a widespread perception exists among many in the POTW profession that a new approach is needed to unify the often disparate efforts to improve water quality. Today many argue that the law needs to be revised to facilitate what is commonly referred to as a watershed approach. Essentially, such an approach would enable and even encourage both point and nonpoint sources of pollution in a given watershed to work together to find solutions to water quality problems. ?The problem is not going to go away unless people are brought to the table and have an opportunity to talk about what the community or the watershed needs to do to fix the problem,? Kirk says. Noting that the law addresses such issues as CSOs, SSOs, and storm-water runoff separately, Sweeney says that the law ?falls short as it?s written today in terms of providing municipalities clear direction of achievable results that can be measured, and that make sense. We are forced into thinking in terms of these programs individually . . . as opposed to collectively looking at the issue of wet weather.? Whether the law in its current form will allow more innovative approaches and, by extension, pave the way for the nation to continue to make progress in the area of water quality remains to be seen. Citing the Clean Water Act?s near silence regarding nonpoint sources and its failure to provide for holistic approaches to wet-weather problems, Kirk says the law is not a ?good construct for where we need to go. I think it needs to be changed.? However, he concedes that the current polarization in Congress today complicates efforts to enact reforms. The EPA?s Mehan agrees that the law is not likely to be revamped soon. ?It?s hard to build a consensus for ways to amend the law,? he notes. ?I don?t see changes in the Clean Water Act happening for the foreseeable future.? Although tremendous progress has been made in the 30 years since the passage of the Clean Water Act, much remains to be done. The challenges involved in ensuring that water quality in the United States continues to improve are many and varied. Likewise, the expense associated with funding such efforts as treatment plant upgrades, wet weather strategies, and effective practices for dealing with nonpoint sources will be significant. However, unless appropriate action is taken, the gains so far made could disappear, exacting untold costs across a nation that only recently has begun to reap the benefits of clean water. -- .-``'. Tim
Maddux, Postdoctoral Investigator, WHOI Back to T.O.C. 2
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