Water Pollution Controls: Effluent Guidelines, Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDLs) & Stormwater Permits

Forty years after the Clean Water Act set a national goal of eliminating the discharge of pollutants into navigable U.S. waters, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has made significant progress in reducing pollution from industrial facilities; nevertheless, pollution from these facilities continues to cause concern. EPA’s actions to reduce this pollution have included establishing national technology-based regulations, or effluent guidelines, for separate industrial categories, such as petroleum refining, fertiliser manufacturing, coal mining, and metal finishing. Relatively few effluent guidelines have been revised or created in recent years and environmental advocacy groups continue to raise concerns because industrial facilities annually discharge hundreds of billions, and perhaps trillions of pounds of pollutants to U.S. waters. This book examines water pollution controls with a focus on effluent guidelines, total maximum daily loads and stormwater permits.