EDITORIAL Clean water goals It is a stated goal of the new administration to carefully examine the U.S. environmental regulatory burden as a part of its economic reform. A freeze on the implementation of new regulations has recently been put into effect to clear the way for this effort. Stream pollution control regulations are due for such a serious reexamination. There has been a lot of discussion regarding the rigidity in water quality standards and they should be scrutinized carefully in terms of cost and benefit. The tenuous problems connected with cost-benefit analysis in areas of human health effects are not involved here as are the goals of P.L. 92-500 for the protection of fish, aesthetic values, and general ecologic welfare. A major element of the Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972 is ambient water quality standards. These standards establish the goal for the national effort, with the NPDES permit program and point source effluent standards constituting implementation tools for state and federal regulators. Unfortunately, the reality of the goal and the utility of the tools have been weakened by a series of somewhat independent and rigid interpretations. Section 303, for instance, requires the development of ambient water quality criteria for various beneficial uses of water bodies. Standards setting the specific criteria needed to protect these beneficial uses were to be promulgated by the state and approved by the EPA. But many of the scientific bases for these criteria are questionable and whether or not this nation can afford all of its waterways in a “fishable, swimmable” condition is an open question. Scientific evidence is at best uncertain regarding the level of water quality needed to protect aquatic life. A more substantial data base is needed for criteria development and could include information on a large number of aquatic species and their response to a range of concentrations of dissolved oxygen, ammonia, pH, and phosphorus over long periods of time. There is a wide range of opinion among competent scientists on the degree to which various characteristics affect aquatic life. As mentioned in a recent GAO report (July 2, 1980), the director of the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency notes that the fishable,
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swimmable goal is a biological objective, but the criteria are physical and chemical substitutes. Given this uncertainty, the requirement that dissolved oxygen standards be set assuming the highest stream temperature and the lowest flow condition is ridiculous when applied to stream conditions 365 days a year. Rigid interpretation of standards created in this way tends to make subsequent violations meaningless. Effluent standards were designed initially to permit regulators to adequately allocate pollution loads in streams with the ambient water quality standards as a goal. The creation of these standards has gone through an interminable bureaucratic exercise involving definition of terms such as Best Practical Control Technology and Best Available Control Technology Economically Achievable. What has resulted are specific effluent guidelines promulgated by EPA for discharges from existing and future facilities for 46 different industries. Buried in the effluent guideline approach is the presumption that secondary treatment constitutes an absolute minimum level of effort to be expended on the discharge of any waste, whether the stream needs it or not. Where secondary treatment will not meet stated stream standards, advanced waste treatment practices are required without consideration for the intended use of the receiving water. A major question exists regarding our national ability to afford this requirement. Industry has perhaps received the greatest mistreatment from application of the water pollution control regulations. EPA has created a set of guidelines that is absolutely insensitive to location and provides no incentive for siting industries in places appropriate to production and discharge. This has probably come about through a misguided effort at equity which has had the net effect of raising everyone’s cost. A great deal of money can be saved from a relaxation of this rigid approach. A small fraction of the savings can be prudently invested in research in the important area of establishing scientific criteria.
@ 1981 American Chemical Society
/CYVolume 15, Number 3, March 1981
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