Closing Statement The TMDL Program: Back to the Future

摘要

In August of this presidential election year, Washington printers are humming with papers advocating new directions for a new administration and assorted measures to expand, reform, strengthen, or weaken our federal environmental laws. This column is not about that. Instead, it is about unfinished business - the work of EPA and the states to complete the set of programs intended to clean our rivers and streams to fishable and swim-mable levels intended under the Clean Water Act of 1972.rnThe TMDL program is one of them. It requires the states to determine Total Maximum Daily Loads of specific pollutants for state waters that remain impaired even after achieving compliance with point source technology-based permits affecting the waters. The requirements are straightforward: identify the waters that will remain polluted; set priorities for addressing them; and establish TMDLs that, when allocated among polluting sources, will reduce their discharges enough to meet water quality standards.