Johnsson, J. (2016). Person Scooping Water Using Green Cup [Photograph]. Pexels. https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-scooping-water-using-green-cup-66090/
Introducing the Clean Water Act
The Clean Water Act (CWA) is a piece of United States legislation that regulates the discharge of pollutants into waters of the United States and aims to “restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Nation’s waters” (CWA § 101). A couple of the mechanisms for regulating pollutants include the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) and Water Quality Standards. Today, the CWA has had relative success. “700 billion pounds of pollution have been kept out of our nation’s rivers and the number of waters that meet clean water goals has doubled since 1972” (Michalski, 2022).
Some Context
The Act is an amendment to the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (FWPCA) of 1948, the first major law to address water pollution in the United States. The FWPCA mostly depended on voluntary cooperation from states and was missing clear regulatory standards which hindered the effectiveness of the law (History of the Clean Water Act, 2018). The FWPCA was amended to establish a structure for regulating discharges of pollutants into waterways and to regulate water quality standards and through this, the CWA came to be.
History of the Clean Water Act
Prior to the enactment of the CWA, water pollution across the country was rampant. It was common for factories and cities to dump trash, raw sewage, and industrial chemicals into local waterways (Lewis, 2022) making many of them unsuitable for aquatic life or human use. A notable example of the degradation of U.S. waterways is Ohio’s Cuyahoga River being so polluted that it caught on fire on several occasions. This event and other similar events “created the consensus that led to the surge of environmental legislation in the 1970s” (Hawkins, 2023) among which, the CWA was born.
[Cuyahoga River Fire]. (n.d.). [Photograph]. Retrieved August 5, 2024. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/cuyahoga-river-caught-fire-least-dozen-times-no-one-cared-until-1969-180972444/
Looking Ahead
The Clean Water Act has had significant accomplishments, but there is still progress to be made, particularly with non-point source pollution. Regulating non-point source pollution has proven an obstacle because it comes from many different sources and is hard to track. Other obstacles the Act has faced include jurisdictional authority and differing interpretations of the law.