This manual is designed for use by State, Tribal, and Federal water resource managers as they address the cultural enrichment of their waters in conjunction with the EPA National Nutrient Criteria Program. It is intended to provide a stepwise sequence of actions leading to the development of nutrient criteria for estuarine and near-coastal marine waters to be used in correcting this overenrichment problem. The premise of the National Nutrient Criteria Program is that many, if not, most, of our nation's estuarine and coastal waters are moderately to severely polluted by excessive nutrients, especially nitrogen and phosphorus. This nutrient pollution affects not only the biotic integrity of the waters and the decline of valuable fish and shellfish, it has the potential to cause harm to the public health through hazardous algal blooms and the propagation of waterborne diseases. To address this problem, EPA uses a regionalized, waterbody type specific approach to the development of nutrient criteria or benchmarks for management decisionmaking. These criteria are based on the measurement of the most natural (or least impacted by human development) waters of a given type in a given area reflecting the condition to be expected in that region if human impacts are not a factor or are at least minimized.

"October 2001." "EPA-822-B-01-003." Includes bibliographical references.