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 ater quality has improved dramatically in the 28 years
since the Clean Water Act was passed, due largely to reductions
in industrial pollution. Now, with progress leveling off, the
US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is preparing to enforce
regulations to address the last major impediment to clean water:
"nonpoint" pollution that flows into waterways from
roads, sewers, farms, timber operations, and other sources.
 EPA's
new approach is likely to spur new improvements in water quality
in the United States, according to a new study by Resources for
the Future (RFF) Fellow James Boyd. However, progress will be
tempered by the serious scientific and technical challenges presented
by the new regulations, and by the cost of addressing these challenges.
These regulations
- known as "total maximum daily load" (TMDL) rules
represent a dramatic shift in water quality regulation, the report
says. Traditionally, regulators have targeted industrial and
municipal polluters, often prescribing technology that must be
installed to reduce discharges. This approach has been successful,
but it has left many pollutant sources outside the reach of regulation.
Today, fewer than 10 percent of the nation's most polluted rivers
are affected either primarily or secondarily by industrial sources.
The new rules are far more expansive. Under the plan, EPA will
require states to identify all water bodies that are in violation
of existing quality standards, pinpoint the sources contributing
to the problem, and develop concrete plans and timetables for
bringing the water body into compliance.
Many hurdles
must be cleared for regulators to successfully implement the
proposed TMDL rules, however. Because they target many polluters
who were not previously regulated, the TMDL regulations will
alter the politics, economics, and law of water quality regulation.
Dealing with resistance from newly regulated entities is likely
to drive up administrative costs, the report says.
To conduct
the sophisticated analyses spelled out in the regulations, states
must begin to collect far more and better data than they do presently
about water quality and sources of pollution, and state officials
must improve their technical ability to spell out how a host
of pollutants contribute to a watershed's decline. Because it
is extremely difficult to establish a precise cause-and-effect
relationship between a nonpoint pollutant and impaired water
quality, determining adequate nonpoint controls will be difficult
and contentious.
Boyd examined
the experiences of several state TMDL programs, including the
Columbia Slough, a 19-mile network of channels on the Columbia
River floodplain near Portland, OR. Pollution sources in the
slough include a complex mix of sewer overflows, urban runoff,
landfill material, industrial discharges, sediments, and agricultural
runoff. Interactions between ground and surface water, weather
events, temperature and water quality all make it difficult to
determine the sources of pollution in the waterway, requiring
regulators to develop sophisticated models that simulate the
transport, deposition, and ultimate fate of pollutants in the
water body.
In addition
to scientific and technical challenges like these, states must
contend with jurisdictional conflicts that arise when pollutants
flow downstream or blow in across state lines. It will be particularly
important for federal officials to play an active role in regulations
that involve more than one state, the report says.
One proposed
feature of the TMDL program - pollution permit trading among
industrial and nonpoint sources holds potential for reducing
water pollution control costs in the long run, but may not be
viable in the short term, the report says. Administrative, monitoring,
and enforcement barriers to water quality trading have already
undermined efforts to enact trading among point sources. Rather
than try to enact a trading scheme immediately, officials should
begin to figure out how to monitor the actions of nonpoint sources
and enforce corrective actions when they violate their pollution
restrictions both necessary steps if a trading scheme were to
be put in place. 
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