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There are two principal federal laws effecting NPS water pollution: the Clean Water Act and the Coastal Zone Management Act. In addition, EPA's "Clean Water Action Plan" (2009) outlines a strategy for enforcing CWA requirements, some of which are applicable to nonpoint sources. [22]
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 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.
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 ...
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]
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]
Funding from Clean Water Grants are available to farmers to install projects to help control agricultural pollution before it enters water sources. [71] Methods to minimize and contain water pollution from agriculture in the United States include watershed efforts, nutrient management, cover crops, buffers, management of livestock waste, and ...
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.