NPDES Program

The CWA makes it illegal to discharge pollutants from a point source to the waters of the United States. Section 402 of the Act creates the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) regulatory program. Point sources must obtain a discharge permit from the proper authority (usually a state, sometimes EPA, a tribe, or a territory). Though the CWA does contain a long-range goal of zero discharge of pollutants, these permits do not, as the name of this program might suggest, simply say "no discharge." Rather, they set limits on the amount of various pollutants that a source can discharge in a given time.