Clean Water Act
The Clean Water Act is a US federal law that regulates and aims to improve the quality of the nation's water resources. It sets standards for wastewater discharge and pollutants in surface waters, and provides funding for wastewater treatment facilities. The law also includes provisions for protecting wetlands and controlling nonpoint source pollution.
7 Key excerpts on "Clean Water Act"
eBook - ePubEnvironmental Policy and Public Health
Air Pollution, Global Climate Change, and Wilderness
- William N. Rom(Author)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- Jossey-Bass(Publisher)
...Chapter 16 The Clean Water Act and Water Ecosystems Learning Objectives To understand the political and historical factors leading to the creation of the Clean Water Act To understand the problems with the implementation of the Clean Water Act To understand the problems with keeping drinking water safe and how the government seeks to protect drinking water To understand water ecosystems and public health and environment Clean water became an issue in the environmental movement with the visible pollution of lakes and streams in the 1960s and culminated in the surface fire of oil and organic pollutants on the Cuyahoga River that reached its terminus in Cleveland, Ohio, and Lake Erie. Approved much earlier, the Federal Water Pollution Control Act of 1948 was the first major U.S. law to address water pollution. Growing public awareness and concern for controlling water pollution led to sweeping amendments in 1972 and again in 1977; the law was named the Clean Water Act. The Clean Water Act The Clean Water Act (CWA) established the basic structure for regulating pollutant discharges into the waters of the United States. It gave the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) the authority to implement pollution control programs, such as setting wastewater standards for industry; maintained existing requirements to set water quality standards for all contaminants in surface waters; and made it unlawful for any person to discharge any pollutant from a point source—for example, a factory site into navigable waters—unless a permit was obtained. It prohibited the discharge of pollutants in toxic amounts; funded the construction of sewage treatment plants under the construction grants program; and developed technology necessary to eliminate the discharge of pollutants into navigable waters...
eBook - ePubLiving with the Earth, Fourth Edition
Concepts in Environmental Health Science
- Gary S. Moore, Kathleen A. Bell(Authors)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- CRC Press(Publisher)
...But it was not until the passage of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act in 1972 that the United States began a serious effort to mend its damaged and abused waterways. The Federal Water Pollution Control Act, renamed the Clean Water Act in 1977, established national standards for the nation’s waterways and set limitations on allowed pollutant discharges. The Act’s intent was to clean up the nation’s waterways, including a return of navigable waters to a “fishable and swimmable” condition by July 1983 and a halt of pollutant discharges into waterways by 1985. 55 Subsequent amendments in 1977 and 1987 strengthened this Act, tightening regulation on pollutants. Despite this well-intentioned legislation, many rivers and lakes remain dangerously polluted. 56 The EPA estimates that the public and private cost for water pollution treatment is $64 million/year. 57 Water Quality Water quality encompasses various characteristics of water, from taste and color to temperature and purity. Different levels of water quality are found regionally and throughout the world, based on available technology and economic resources. Water quality can vary, depending on its intended use: high quality is needed for drinking water; lower quality is sometimes acceptable for irrigation purposes, as in wastewater reuse. Water use may also affect water quality, degrading its purity, through pollution or a pH change. With pollution threatening the U.S. water supply, drinking water must be evaluated against certain standards to determine its safety and acceptability. Several different types of pollutants may contaminate a water supply. These can be categorized as physical, chemical, biological, and radioactive contaminants. Each different category poses different types and levels of hazards to the consumer when they are present in the water supply...
eBook - ePub- Shayne C. Gad, Shayne C. Gad(Authors)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- CRC Press(Publisher)
...It is administered by the EPA. The EPA’s main purpose is to authorize the regulation of emissions into water from municipal and industrial sources. In addition, the CWA provides funding for municipal sewage treatment plants. An example of an important action taken under this law includes setting standards for emissions of organic compounds from smelter operations. The provisions of the act are as follows: • To eliminate the discharge of pollutants into navigable waters • To achieve an interim goal of water quality for the protection and propagation of fish, shellfish, and wildlife • To prohibit the discharge of toxic pollutants in toxic amounts • To develop and implement waste treatment processes for adequate control of sources of pollutants • To provide federal financial assistance to construct publicly owned waste treatment works • To develop the technology necessary to eliminate the discharge of pollutants into navigable waters and the oceans Synopsis of Law The EPA has had responsibility for regulating toxic pollutants in water since 1972. As originally enacted, Section 307 of the CWA requires the EPA to develop and periodically update a list of toxic pollutants for which effluent standards (discharge limits) would then be established. The Toxic Pollutant List and the Priority Pollutant List have been developed from the CWA. Section 307 (a)(4) of the CWA specifies that the EPA, when establishing standards for any listed toxic pollutant, must provide an ample margin of safety that would prevent negative effects to public health caused by the pollutant. The law also mandates a rapid timetable and procedure for creating standards for each listed pollutant. The compounds in Table 12.3 are currently regulated under the Toxic Pollutant List. The CWA allows the federal government to recover clean-up costs and other costs as damages from the polluting agency, company, or individual...
eBook - ePubThe Administrative Presidency and the Environment
Policy Leadership and Retrenchment from Clinton to Trump
- David M. Shafie(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...The framework of first-generation command-and-control policies relied on the states to implement their own permit systems, once standards were set by the EPA. States were allowed to seek primacy for their water pollution programs, but little progress was made toward devolving authority to the states before the 1990s. Meanwhile, the EPA’s share of funding for state pollution programs declined between 1986 and 2000, even as the average annual cost of state environmental programs increased by nearly two-thirds. 10 The Clean Water Act authorized grants for sewer construction, which went a long way toward advancing the statute’s goals. The federal share for those projects under the 1972 law was 75 percent, later reduced to 55 percent in 1981. The 1987 CWA Amendments replaced them with block grants for a state revolving loan fund. The legacy of the first two decades of the CWA represents a sharp reduction in pollution from point sources, which include municipal sewer and industrial wastewater discharges, but not agricultural irrigation. The law’s foundation is a system of technologically defined effluent limits on discharges from specific polluters. The law was passed at a time when public concern over the environmental crisis was at its highest, and Congress was willing to dismantle a water quality law based on ambient pollutant levels and state-level management that it passed just seven years earlier. Advocates including Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson believed that only a federal program of uniform standards could improve the condition of interstate waterways such as the Great Lakes. Even those members of Congress who were skeptical about the enhanced federal role were reluctant to oppose the law. 11 The national mood in the early 1970s was predisposed to increased social regulation, so defying the environmental movement in that climate could prove to be politically risky...
eBook - ePubThe Green Years, 1964-1976
When Democrats and Republicans United to Repair the Earth
- Gregg Coodley, David Sarasohn(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- University Press of Kansas(Publisher)
...Baker urged the president against a veto, arguing that the increased money was necessary given the scale of the problem. 57 The conference committee met some forty times from May to September 1972 to try to reach agreement. The conference committee’s final bill, in September 1972, kept the House’s larger funding of $ 18 billion for waste treatment facilities for the next three years. It kept the strongest features of the Senate bill, including mandating the “best available technology,” water quality that would sustain fish and wildlife by 1981, and zero emissions by 1985. It retained strong federal jurisdiction over water quality standards. The bill was weakened only by referring to the deadlines as goals rather than policy and mandating that the funding “was not to exceed” the specified amounts. 58 The bill allowed pollution reduction by “best practical technology” by 1977, but tightened standards in the second phase, requiring use of the “best available technology” by 1981. 59 Polluters had to show that they had used “the maximum use of technology with economic capability and [that this] will result in reasonable further progress toward the elimination of the discharge of pollutants.” 60 The Clean Water Act went further in making limits on discharges of pollutants the key feature. The final bill required an EPA permit for any discharge of pollutants into US waters, and granted citizens standing to sue polluters if the citizen had an interest in swimming, fishing, or other activities on the involved waterway. 61 The Clean Water Act also authorized the EPA to set standards for “toxic water pollutants,” as the Clean Air Act did for toxic air pollutants. “Obviously, no one expects every industry in America to go to zero pollution overnight,” Blatnik told a radio audience. “However, the national interest demands that every industry in America start moving now in that direction...
eBook - ePubEnvironmental Health and Hazard Risk Assessment
Principles and Calculations
- Louis Theodore, R. Ryan Dupont(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- CRC Press(Publisher)
...Under a mandate of national environmental laws, the EPA strives to formulate and implement actions that lead to a compatible balance between human activities and the ability of natural systems to support and nurture life [ 2 ]. The EPA works with the states and local governments to develop and implement comprehensive environmental programs. Federal laws such as the Clean Air Act (CAA); the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA); the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA); and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), etc., all mandate involvement by state and local government in the details of implementation. This chapter provides an overview of key environmental protection laws and subsequent regulations that affect the environment in the United States, particularly from a risk perspective. The following topics are addressed in this chapter: Review of the regulatory system Laws and regulations: the differences Role of the states Resource Conservation and Recovery Act Major toxic chemical laws administered by the U.S. EPA Legislative tools for controlling water pollution Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986 Clean Air Act Occupational Safety and Health Act EPA’s Risk Management Program Pollution Prevention Act of 1990 5.2 Regulatory System Over the past four decades, environmental regulation has become a system in which laws, regulations, and guidelines have become interrelated. The history and development of this regulatory system has led to laws that focus principally on only one environmental medium independently at a time, i.e., air, water, or land. Some environmental managers feel that more needs to be done to manage all of the media simultaneously and in an integrated way. Hopefully, the environmental regulatory system will evolve into a truly integrated, multimedia management framework in the future. Federal laws are the product of Congress...
eBook - ePubWastewater Treatment Plants
Planning, Design, and Operation, Second Edition
- Syed R. Qasim(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...I, WEF. MOP 8, Water Environment Federation, Alexandria, VA, 1992. 3. Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972 (PL 92–500), 92nd Congress, October 18, 1972. 4. Clean Water Act (PL 92–217), 95th Congress, December 27, 1977. 5. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Assessment of Needed Publicly Owned Wastewater Treatment Facilities, Correction of Combined Sewer Overflows, and Management of Storm Water and Nonpoint Source Pollution in the United State, Report to Congress, 1992 Needs Survey, EPA 832-P-03-002, September 1993. 6. Leffel, R. Ernest, Direct Environmental Factors at Municipal Wastewater Treatment Works, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA-430/9-76-003, MCD-20, Washington, D.C., January 1976. 7. Metcalf and Eddy, Inc. Wastewater Engineering: Treatment, Disposal, and Reuse, 3rd Edition, McGraw-Hill, Inc., New York, 1991....
