Because of the substantial expenditure of Federal funds and expressed interest of several congressional committees in the water pollution control program, the General Accounting Office has examined into the effectiveness of the Federal Water Pollution Control Administration's (FWPCA) construction grant program for abating, controlling, and preventing water pollution. These projects have contributed to abating water pollution because the problem would have been worse if the projects had not been constructed. GAO believes, however, that the benefits have not been as great as they could have been because many waste treatment facilities have been constructed on waterways where major polluters--industrial or municipal--located nearby continued to discharge untreated or inadequately treated wastes into the waterways. The names of the rivers and municipalities have not been identified in the examples because the purpose of the examples is to demonstrate the existence of a problem. The program to date has been administered for the most part using a shotgun approach--awarding construction grants on a first-come-first-served or readiness-to-proceed basis. Little consideration has been given to the immediate benefits to be attained by the construction of individual treatment plants. (Author Modified Abstract)