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FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
An Act that is Getting Old
By Ronald Poltak, NEIWPCC
The Clean Water Act of 1972 has achieved spectacular successes in mitigating the harm that population growth and widespread development wreaked upon the nation’s landscape and in particular its water resources. By setting national goals and objectives, establishing technology-based and water quality-based standards, funding grant programs including those targeted at wastewater facilities and research, and creating an administrative and enforcement structure, the CWA has enabled the country to address the pollution that threatened to destroy our waters. Those who created this statute and those who have worked to implement it over the years have much to be proud of.
Now, however, we all must realize that in its present form, the CWA is simply no longer achieving water quality improvements as initially intended. While the fundamental principles of the act remain sound, those principles have not been comprehensively implemented or defined through the regulatory programs that support them. To cite just a few examples: Not all point source discharges have been controlled properly (enforcement is difficult, limited by resources and sometimes politics) and pollution from nonpoint sources remains significant and in many cases subject to weak non-enforceable controls. Furthermore, a large percentage of water bodies across the United States continue to violate ambient water quality standards; implementation has focused on chemical pollution to the detriment of other significant levels of aquatic ecosystem impairment; and permits for discharges of dredge and fill material into wetlands and other waters are dispensed so frequently that over time many of those resources have simply been eliminated entirely.
In fact, multiple issues currently challenge the capabilities of the Clean Water Act:
- Federal, state, and local governments spend more than $35 billion annually on wastewater construction and operations yet nearly half of all surveyed waters remain impaired.
- The gap between the water and wastewater funding that is needed and the amount that is appropriated continues to enlarge.
- Aging infrastructure will strain budgets beyond our ability to “repair and replace” prior to failure, threatening water quality and public health.
- Our ability to improve water quality in our nation has flatlined; wastewater and water treatment facilities, having spent billions to improve water quality, are now bumping the technology ceiling in their pursuit of further improvements.
- Nonpoint source pollution continues to degrade water bodies and accounts for 40-50% of impaired water nationwide, highlighting the need to dramatically improve our ability to address water pollution from causes other than traditional point sources.
- Our ability to detect problems is much stronger than our ability to “improve and remove.”
- Climate change will alter our watershed management needs and likely increase wet weather challenges, rendering current laws and programs insufficient for an adequate response.
- Over the next 37 years, the U.S. population will grow to more than 400 million; treated effluents will, as a result, increase pollution loads to 1972 levels or beyond.
- We need to revise our definition and interpretations of “waters of the United States” to go beyond “navigability” to a focus on the sustainability of aquatic ecosystems for human and natural uses—sustainability being defined as “the ability to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.”
The challenges I have outlined are serious. But they are not insurmountable. Looking ahead, emphasis needs to be placed on the utilization of a holistic watershed approach that utilizes biological assessments. Coordination needs to be performed in a multi-media capacity especially on issues that pertain to atmospheric deposition of pollutants such as mercury and nitrogen that are impacting surface waters.
Most importantly, we need appropriate legislative and regulatory policy tools. It is essential that with a new administration in Washington, Congress and the water community provide these tools through new forward- thinking legislation that modernizes the Clean Water Act. Whether through reauthorization, amendment, an entirely new act, or any combination thereof, the legislation must assert new principles that are based on our changing societal circumstances. Only then will we be able to renew the progress on water quality.