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Qilin Li

 

Professor Joel Wood

 

WR 39C 33354

 

January 24,2022

 

I further discussed the problems with CWA and how we can potentially resolve this. Particularly when the federal agency grants money to the sates, it does not have the ability to alter the plans of the states. And problem here is that since they scheduled all voluntary activity, it is not very useful. Thus I raised several arguments upon asking filling out forms and checking sites of potential spots to solve the problem.

                              Deteriorating water mitigation and potential resolution

 

It is known to us all that water had comprised more than half of our body ingredient and as much as we need air, we need this precious ingredient to survive and thrive. As serious as former statement sounds, there aren’t many of us who go into depth regarding saving some daily water or even make a fully usage of our water. Climate changes had also done some damages to water body around the entire world in a relatively subtle way. The extreme floods and droughts or even bacteria released from another stream into our well would put potential threat on our previously clean water and in the end transmit diseases or go as far to causing individual death. Scientists have accomplished a great and through job in realms of water quality and how us human combined with climate change, in both the short and long run, had gradually “poisoning” the water.

Americans, recognizing this environmental issue, had enact the 1972 Clean Water Act (CWA) which had done a remarkable job when it comes to reducing factories’ wastewater and loss of wetlands. One important sign is the waterways nowadays are cleaner than they were before the passage of CWA. Many useful requirements and methods are used when implementing such act. People, as public, deserves the right to know when sewage spill had occurred and how that might affect them. Also, they provide direct find to municipal treatment facilities to construct and expand the State Revolving Fund (SPF). The municipal treatment plants had been successful in what they are designed to accomplish where they managed to decrease industrial wastes and reduced the rate of loss on wetlands.

As perfect as the CWA sounds, there is still problem that over more than 50% of American’s waters are influenced. For instance, many beaches are closed in summer season, the loss of wetland is not unthreatened, and fishing advisories had obviously multiplied. Why would there be such a contradictory effect of the CWA when all its functions are indicating an effective and useful tool of treating the water bodies? The core idea here is the CWA can only accomplish goals which are designed to finish. To illustrate on that, CWA does not address nonpoint source pollution or so many perspectives of habitat modification. The pollution caused by diffuse sources such as runoff of farmland or construction sites (also known as nonpoint source pollution), is the primary reason for deteriorating water today.

Aside from these, the alteration of water flow or even features of habitat is the core reason responsible for many waters failing the standard. Strictly speaking, many professional experts argue that the largest issue regarding aquatic ecosystem is not pollution, but rather the destruction and changing of aquatic habitat. Loopholes had created and further weakened the protection of wetland and other waters. Industrial facilities discharging used water and wastes into municipal sewer systems are in fact not qualified for the pretreatment standards.

Climate change, at the same time, poses a high threat on our water resources. The higher the temperature (Senhorst,2005), the more effects it will put on the seasonal availability of our water through the increased evaporation and lessened snowpack. The southwest area will be largely influenced by this problem due to large drop in rainfall amount. It’s not hard to imagine that coastal areas will inevitably be affected by rising sea level. The extreme weather conditions have a large potential of bringing heavy rainfall, increased overflows of sewers, deteriorating water quality and water-borne diseases.

As CWA constructs a blueprint for future reform, they stride first step on the publishing of technology-based limitations. The congress set technology-based limitations upon point sources to control how much pollution these sources can discharge into waters. And for every point source discharger, they must obtain a permit to do so and not commit to any potential administrative or even criminal penalties. The one crucial step is the utilization of technology-based standards which set the wastewater treatment for a specific industry to be at the same basic level regardless of which industry it is currently in.

When the pollutants had entered the area of publicly owned treatment work’s (POTW) collection system, the technology-based approach demands the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to discern between pollution-reduction controls and to choose the optimal technology that is the most compatible with the congressional objectives. EPA first designs the industrywide regulatory demands by releasing over 50 sets of waste limitations for industries vary from pharmaceutical manufacturing to leather finishing.  After being published, these regulations will merge into the national pollutant discharge elimination system (NPDES) permits for specific facilities. In the end, NPDES permits put attentions on restricting pollutions at its origin and set ahead the specific amount in which the pollutants are allowed to discharge.

              With making the majority of point source pollution (expected pollution like routine factory discharge) under controlled, CWA had certainly done a fabulous job in treating municipal sewage and industrial discharges. Yet not all people are taking this verisimilar solution for granted, they had seen the other side of the coin, and it’s not so promising. As William points out, “The CWA’s success with controlling point sources of pollution contrasts starkly with its failure to address nonpoint sources of pollution” (William, 2008). Indeed, the act itself doesn’t even have a proper definition for nonpoint pollution (e.g., accidental landslide). It largely deviates from how CWA permit requirements demands and prosecution mechanism. One may argue there are state planning and management programs to regulate that, but the truth is it’s out of the realm of CWA. Now it had become the core cause of water pollution today.

            The Congress, recognizing the loophole, quickly enacted section 319 to existing CWA which requires each state to discover waters damaged by nonpoint source pollution plus sources of this impairment. States then were required to develop the best management plans and thus allowed to be funded by EPA. In the end, section 319 gained the biggest EPA water-quality program achieved through direct payments to states. Many critics argue this new section was not as effective as it sounds, nevertheless. According to Andreen, “One major weakness of the section 319 program stems from the fact that many states adopted non-regulatory approaches, including voluntary BMPs (best management plans), to deal with the problem”.

Voluntary programs did not give rise to any discernable improvements and EPA simply have no leverage to deal with that. EPA doesn’t have the ability to promote a federal plan in lieu of an ineffective state plan. Consequently, with a large portion of fund spent, nonpoint source pollution remained a major dilemma. And circumstances would become worse with the rise of climate change, nonpoint source pollution in its essence is closely related to climate and used land. For instance, the storms and precipitation rates (Andreen, 2008). The climate change combined with the land practice (production of corn) us human adapted to cope with climate change had made this potential problem even worse.

 

 

Possible Danger points in the Environment from Uncontrolled Animal Waste

            If there are anything we can learn from previous CWA act, it must be that planning alone is not sufficient and reformation upon section 319 is urgent. Andreen listed several useful and practical methods in implementing these reforms. To begin with, we should change from top down and that means the Congress should amend section 319 to additionally demands states updating their numbers of damaged water due to nonpoint source pollution every two years. More specifically, states must file an “state assessment reports” indicating waters that are unable to meet water quality standard. This makes us stride first step in holding sources accountable for nonpoint source pollution. Besides these, the Congress should also amend section 319 in a way that requires states to review, submit and even change management plans subject to EPA review for every two years (William, 2008). After spotting which of their waters failed the requirements, the states must also submit a management program plan presenting best management practice to control nonpoint source pollution. In addition to this, EPA suggested that a state review and evaluate its program every five years.

           

Furthermore, the Congress should change section 319 to demanding the management plans to incorporate enforceable conditions and requirements. In a simpler statement, section 319 does not force the enforcement, implementation and don’t have the mechanism to do that as well. Even though the guideline states that “demonstrate that each funded element will be implemented”, EPA has no method to completely assure the implementation occurs. It doesn’t even can include specific conditions in state’s management plan. If we don’t change the role of EPA from advising and encouraging, there’s never actual successful nonpoint pollution treatment. Policymakers had used convenient excuse like “establishing controls of nonpoint source pollution is har” (Shana, 2008). In truth, “nonpoint source pollution is not more varied, more site- specific, or more difficult technologically to control” than point (Oliver,1996). This below chart is created by Professor Oliver Houck and summarizes some of the above-mentioned ideas.

Thus, the final amendment should be that Congress should amend section 319 to give EPA the authority to promote all or at least a portion of a state’s nonpoint source management plan in the case EPA disapproves of the state’s plan in all or partially. As this approach is well enforced and implemented, one could certainly imagine a more effective nonpoint source control. In the end, waters of better standards should be expected and seen.

            In Conclusion, Climate change broadly influence our water quality by changing parameters or quantities of air, temperature, and nutrients. Extreme disasters like drought or heavy precipitation could also bring some hidden gases and bacteria which further degrading the water environment. People enacted CWA to resolve this situation and many of the point source treatment plans worked. Nonpoint source treatment, however, remained difficult and disputable. If we could install all the above-mentioned amendments, one could definitely expect a limpid and higher quality water.

 

 

       Works Cited

 

Andreen, William L., and Shana Campbell Jones. “The Clean Water Act: A Blueprint for Reform.” SSRN Electronic Journal,

https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1236162

 

Oliver Houck, “Clean Water Act and Related Programs”, 37 ALI-ABA 295, 314-15 (1996).

 

WHITEHEAD, P. G., et al. “A Review of the Potential Impacts of Climate Change on Surface Water Quality.” Hydrological Sciences Journal, vol. 54, no. 1, Taylor & Francis Group, 2009, pp. 101–23, https://doi.org/10.1623/hysj.54.1.101.

 

Delpla, I., et al. “Impacts of Climate Change on Surface Water Quality in Relation to Drinking Water Production.” Environment International, vol. 35, no. 8, Elsevier Ltd, 2009, pp. 1225–33, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2009.07.001.

       

Senhorst, H. A. J., and J. J. G. Zwolsman. “Climate Change and Effects on Water Quality: a First Impression.” Water Science and Technology, vol. 51, no. 5, 2005, pp. 53–59, https://doi.org/10.2166/wst.2005.0107.

 

Komatsu, Eiji, et al. “A Modeling Approach to Forecast the Effect of Long-Term Climate Change on Lake Water Quality.” Ecological Modelling, vol. 209, no. 2, Elsevier B.V, 2007, pp. 351–66, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2007.07.021.

 

 

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