Clean Water Act
Clean Water Act
The Clean Water Act is the primary federal law in the United States governing water pollution.[1] Commonly abbreviated as the CWA, the act established the goals of eliminating releases of high amounts of toxic substances into water, eliminating additional water pollution by 1985, and ensuring that surface waters would meet standards necessary for human sports and recreation by 1983.
The principal body of law currently in effect is based on the Federal Water Pollution Control Amendments of 1972[2]and was significantly expanded from the Federal Water Pollution Control Amendments of 1948. Major amendments were enacted in the Clean Water Act of 1977[3] and the Water Quality Act of 1987.[4]
The Clean Water Act does not directly address groundwater contamination. Groundwater protection provisions are included in the Safe Drinking Water Act, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, and the Superfund act
Pollution control strategy in the CWA
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Point sources
The 1972 act introduced the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES), which is a permit system for regulating point sources of pollution.[8] Point sources include:
- industrial facilities (including manufacturing, mining, oil and gas extraction, and service industries)
- municipal governments and other government facilities (such as military bases), and
- some agricultural facilities, such as animal feedlots.
Point sources may not discharge pollutants to surface waters without a permit from the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES). This system is managed by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in partnership with state environmental agencies. EPA has authorized 46 states to issue permits directly to the discharging facilities. The CWA also allows tribes to issue permits, but no tribes have been authorized by EPA. In the remaining states and territories, the permits are issued by an EPA regional office.[9] (See Titles III and IV.)
In previous legislation, Congress had authorized states to develop water quality standards, which would limit discharges from facilities based on the characteristics of individual water bodies. However, these standards were only to be developed for interstate waters, and the science to support this process (i.e. data, methodology) was in the early stages of development. This system was not effective and there was no permit system in place to enforce the requirements. In the 1972 CWA Congress added the permit system and a requirement for technology-based effluent limitations.[10
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