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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 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]
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 ]
WQBELs are based on ambient water quality standards. [22] Permit components NPDES permit components. All NPDES permits must contain the following five components: Cover page – indicates authorization for discharging and its locations; Effluent limits – limits used to control discharges through technology-based or water quality-based standards
Summary of the Clean Water Act from the EPA "Clean Water Act Jurisdictional Handbook." Environmental Law Institute (2nd ed., 2012) NYT Investigation: Corporations Violated Clean Water Act Over 500,000 Times in Last Five Years (2009-09-14) - video report by Democracy Now! Works related to Clean Water Act at Wikisource; EPA programs
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 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 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.