EDITORIAL
Editor: Russell F. Christman Associate Editor: Charles R. 0’Melia WASHINGTON EDITORIAL STAFF Managing Editor: Stanton S. Miller Associate Editor: Julian Josephson Assistant Editor: Lois R. Ember MANUSCRIPT REVIEWING Manager: Katherine I. Biggs Assistant Editor: David Hanson MANUSCRIPT EDITING Associate Production Manager: Charlotte C. Sayre Assistant Editor: Gloria C. Dinote GRAPHICS AND PRODUCTION Production Manager: Leroy L. Corcoran Art Director: Norman Favin Artist: Diane J. Reich Advisory Board: P. L. Brezonik. Joseph J. Bufalini, Arthur A. Levin, James J. Morgan, Sidney R. Orem, Frank P. Sebastian, John H. Seinfeld. C. Joseph Touhill, Charles S. Tuesday Published by the AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY 1155 16th Street N.W. Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 872-4600 Executive Director: Robert W. Cairns
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Please send research manuscripts to Manuscript Reviewing, feature manuscripts to Managing Editor. For author’s guide and editorial policy, see June 1975 issue, page 547, or write Katherine I. Biggs. Manuscript Reviewing Office €S& T
Water cleanup strategies Strategies for water quality control require the establishment of standards. These may be either effluent standards for waste discharges or “stream” standards for receiving waters. Selection of the type of standard affects the management strategy to be adopted, the costs of that strategy, and the benefits that are derived from it. Quality standards for receiving waters are based primarily on the protection of human health, the preservation of aquatic ecosystems, and the prevention of aesthetically unpleasant conditions. They are established chiefly by the effects of water pollution and not by its causes. Effluent standards are often based on technical or economic feasibility. The inevitable result is that the costs of pollution control are too high and the benefits are too few. For example, present requirements for secondary treatment of a / /point-source municipal discharges necessitate aerobic biological treatment and chlorination. Application of this requirement to cities such as Los Angeles that discharge into well-flushed oceanic waters results in enormous costs and no discernible benefits. Similarly, aerobic biological treatment is of little use for municipal discharges to many lakes. Here nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus are proper concerns, and these are not removed by conventional secondary treatment. Effluent standards can be based on stream standards by relating discharge rates to the quality that results in receiving waters. This requires knowledge of physical, chemical, and biological phenomena and is usually expressed mathematically in a model. Specific models are needed for specific pollutants and specific locations. Costs are incurred by developing these models, but significantly greater costs can be in’curred by not developing them. Such models have been formulated in the past by environmental scientists and engineers to provide a base for strategies for controlling pathogens, for managing dissolved oxygen resources and, more recently, for controlling eutrophication and thermal pollution. Prudent management of our economic resources requires that we discard present uniform treatment requirements. We should then expand our efforts at the development of models for regional water quality management, encourage research to perceive and solve new problems as they arise, and promote the education of environmental scientists and engineers who are needed to develop and implement sound strategies for pollution abatement.
Volume 10, Number 3,March 1976
211
