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History of the CWA, continued

Throughout the many adjustments to federal clean water law, two major approaches are evident: (1) water quality protection rules based on establishing enforceable standards that apply to the chemical, physical, or biological condition of surface water bodies; and (2) protection measures based on treatment technology requirements for facilities that discharge effluent, pollutants, wastes, or other substances into water bodies.

Before 1972, many states had so-called “water quality standards” that attempted to limit pollutant concentrations in their lakes, rivers, streams, wetlands, and coastal waters. Yet the lack of efficient and effective monitoring and assessment tools and the sheer difficulty in identifying pollutant sources resulted in a cumbersome, slow, ineffective system that was unable to reverse growing pollution levels in the nation’s waters. The strength of the 1972 amendments to federal law was the creation of the NPDES permitting system, which required authorization to discharge pollutants from a point source into the waters of the U.S. This approach—attacking pollution problems by focusing on the sources—was extremely successful, because it linked strong enforcement provisions with federal grants to construct wastewater treatment facilities. Regardless, as point source pollutant loads were addressed effectively by hundreds of new treatment plants, the problem with polluted runoff (i.e., nonpoint source pollution) became more evident.

Today, states, tribes, and federal agencies use a dual approach to address water quality: point sources are controlled by permit programs, effluent limits, monitoring, and enforcement, and water body integrity is supported by water quality standards that address all sources of impairment, including point source and nonpoint pollution (i.e., polluted runoff), habitat degradation caused by changes in runoff patterns, and other stressors. This approach allows NPDES discharge permits to be adjusted through the establishment of water quality based effluent limits—in addition to the usual technology-based limits—to ensure that the water body receiving the discharge can support its beneficial uses, such as aquatic life support, recreation, etc.