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The Clean Water Act (CWA) was the first federal law designed to directly address water pollution. The CWA has been amended many times, but the 1972 amendments provide the core statutory basis for the regulation of point source water pollution and created the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit program. [23]
The BEACH Act added numerous amendments to the Clean Water Act. For example, section 303(i) requires that states, territories, and tribes along the coasts implement new water quality standards for pathogens and pathogen indicators. The addition of Section 303(i) also authorizes the EPA to regulate states to abide by health standards.
The Water Quality Act of 1965 required states to issue water quality standards for interstate waters, and authorized the newly created Federal Water Pollution Control Administration to set standards where states failed to do so. No mechanism for federal enforcement was established.
The Clean Water Act is the primary federal law in the United States governing water pollution in surface waters. [99] The 1972 CWA amendments established a broad regulatory framework for improving water quality. The law defines procedures for pollution control and developing criteria and standards for pollutants in surface water. [100]
Water quality laws govern the protection of water resources for human health and the environment. Water quality laws are legal standards or requirements governing water quality, that is, the concentrations of water pollutants in some regulated volume of water. Such standards are generally expressed as levels of a specific water pollutants ...
The Clean Water Act (CWA) requires each governing jurisdiction (states, territories, and covered tribal entities) to submit a set of biennial reports on the quality of water in their area. These reports are known as the 303(d) and 305(b) reports, named for their respective CWA provisions, and are submitted to, and approved by, EPA. [ 63 ]
The treatment plants, known as publicly owned treatment works (POTW) in CWA parlance, must protect the health and welfare of the local population by ensuring that wastewater does not contaminate the local potable water supply, nor violate additional water quality standards that protect the ecological health of the water body.
Title V launched a national coastal water quality monitoring program that directs the EPA and NOAA together to implement a long-term program to collect and analyze scientific data on the environmental quality of coastal ecosystems, including ambient water quality, health and quality of living resources, sources of environmental degradation, and ...