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Nonpoint source (NPS) water pollution regulations are environmental regulations that restrict or limit water pollution from diffuse or nonpoint effluent sources such as polluted runoff from agricultural areas in a river catchments or wind-borne debris blowing out to sea. In the United States, governments have taken a number of legal and ...
The Clean Water Act has made great strides in reducing point source water pollution, but this effect is overshadowed by the fact that nonpoint source pollution, which is not subject to regulation under the Act, has correspondingly increased. [41] One of the solutions to address this imbalance is point/nonpoint source trading of pollutants.
TMDL is the end product of all point and non-point source pollutants of a single contaminant. Pollutants that originate from a point source are given allowable levels of contaminants to be discharged; this is the waste load allocation (WLA). Nonpoint source pollutants are also calculated into the TMDL equation with load allocation (LA). [7]
Nonpoint source water pollution may derive from many different sources with no specific solutions or changes to rectify the problem, making it difficult to regulate. Nonpoint source water pollution is difficult to control because it comes from the everyday activities of many different people, such as lawn fertilization , applying pesticides ...
The first FWPCA was enacted in 1948, but took on its modern form when completely rewritten in 1972 in an act entitled the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972. [4] [1] Major changes have subsequently been introduced via amendatory legislation including the Clean Water Act of 1977 [5] and the Water Quality Act (WQA) of 1987. [6]
The Clean Water Act is the primary federal law regulating water pollution in the United States. The language of the Clean Water Act describes itself as pertaining to "Waters of the United States". The act defines these waters as "navigable waterways", which connects the act to constitutional authority to regulate interstate commerce.
Generally BMPs focus on water quality problems caused by increased impervious surfaces from land development. [11] BMPs are designed to reduce stormwater volume, peak flows, and/or nonpoint source pollution through evapotranspiration, infiltration, detention, and filtration or biological and chemical actions. [12]
Water pollution also reduces the ecosystem services such as drinking water provided by the water resource. Sources of water pollution are either point sources or non-point sources. [4] Point sources have one identifiable cause, such as a storm drain, a wastewater treatment plant or an oil spill. Non-point sources are more diffuse.