The Water Act Of 1972

Introduction: The purpose of this research is to determine whether there has been a change in the overall water quality of the Lake Tarpon Basin, and if so, whether the quality has improved or worsened. The variables that will determine whether the quality has changed are: nutrients (phosphates and nitrates) and dissolved oxygen (DO). The expected changes are lower dissolved oxygen levels (from the already low levels), higher nitrogen levels (from the already high nitrogen levels), and the state qualifications still are not met for nutrients and dissolved oxygen (Levy, Flock, Burnes, Myers, Weed, River 2010). This topic relates to environmental management because the changes in water quality would be due to pollution, which relates to the question “How does human activity lead to the pollution of water stores?” The hypothesis that will be tested is that Lake Tarpon’s water quality will have worsened since the last measurements by Levy, Flock, Burnes, Myers, Weed, and Rivera in 2010.

On March 4, 2015, the Microbead-Free Waters Act of 2015 was introduced to the United States House of Representatives. Sponsored by Democratic Representative of New Jersey Frank Pallone, the bill called to amend “the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to ban rinse-off cosmetics that contain synthetic plastic microbeads beginning on January 1, 2018” (congress.gov, H.R. 1321). The bill was then passed with amendments to it in the House in December, with Senate passing it a week later by unanimous consent. The Microbead-Free Waters Act of 2015 is unlike a lot of bills that have attempted to pass through the House and the Senate because it did not face the all-too-common gridlock that one can expect nowadays from the United States Congress. Pallone said to the New York Times that although he was surprised by the quick success of the bill, it passed simply because it had a lot of support in the House and the Senate and did not have much opposition (New York Times).

All the controversy about the lead problems in Flint, Michigan has stirred up questions across the country. Every day there are several news stories about cities across the country discussing the lead issue and how they meet the requirements of the Safe Drinking Water Act. While the average person may feel comforted by these news stories, it doesn’t mean that every home served by the water supply has lead below the EPA’s recommended action level. It’s the job of water treatment professionals to educate those served by municipal water about the regulations surrounding lead and copper and what those consumers can do to protect themselves further.

What if Long Lake had no fish? Would it still be the same lake? Pretty soon they won't be. Water pollution is rampant in the entire country and humans are the cause. The major contributor to water pollution in Minnesota is contaminants in runoff that make its way to pollute watersheds. Everyday water drainage or runoff that is not redirected causes pollution. Many household products with water usage such as soaps and detergents include phosphorus and also contribute to water pollution.

Just a few miles away, our Great Lakes are being ravaged by plastic particles being released throughout. Issues around the world regarding water have always been prevalent. Dehydration kills about 2.2 million children every year. We can not stand idle by as a possible solution degrades daily right next to us. Lake Erie is known as the most polluted of the Great Lakes however, Lake Michigan is close behind. Due to the boom in industry in the Milwaukee and Chicago areas during the Industrial Revolution, and the disregard of the environmental impact, Michigan has already absorbed a large amount of pollutants. Only one percent of the water in the Great Lakes leave the

Cynthia Barnett wrote an article titled “Water Works”, the article is about water conservation and the importance of reusing, reducing, and recycling water. So why might this be important? Runoff water “soaks up toxic metals, oil and grease, pesticides and herbicides, feces, and every other scourge that can make its way to a gutter. This runoff impairs virtually every urban creek, stream, and river in Washington.” (Barnett) She also mentions how our sea creatures are becoming some of the most PCB-contaminated creatures on the planet, like the Pacific Northwest killer whales, and how it is making two species of salmon extinct and is killing large amounts of Coho within hours before they can reproduce.

Water pollution in a unique ecological system called the Great Lakes has recently become a national problem for the two countries - the USA and Canada. The primary ways by which the Great Lakes were polluted for many centuries include wastewater discharge, toxic pollution of water with heavy metals and pesticides, soil erosion, as well as urbanization and, consequently, air pollution.

The Water Pollution Acts (1977 and 1990) and the EPA Act 1992 were licenced, which outline the control of discharge of various materials in industrial activities. They enforce industrial companies to use various technologies to remove or recover the metals from wastewater before released to sewer. Most of the companies are unable to treat the waste themselves due to cost effective treatment to remove these metals, therefore they send their wastewater to companies such as RILTA environmental. There are many technologies available for recovery of heavy metals from wastewater such as electrodialysis, ion exchange and reverse osmosis. However these techniques may be expensive and ineffective especially when the metals are present in the wastewater

Although the growing concern about cyanobacterial blooms, as well as the intoxication by cyanotoxins worldwide, in the United States there is not any regulation for cyanobacteria or cyanotoxins levels in the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) or in the Clean Water Act (CWA) (USEPA, 2015a). Since the SDWA provides the authority for the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) to publish health advisories (HAs) for agents that do not have any national drinking water regulation. Therefore, USEPA is the agency that is responsible for the implementing and enforcing of the guidelines, standards or HAs related to cyanotoxins. Based on this, during summer 2015, the USEPA issued a 10 days HAs for two cyanotoxins:

The Federal Water Pollution Control Act (FWPCA) (P.L. 80-845, 62 Stat. 1155) of 1948 was the first major law enacted by Congress to address the problems of water pollution in the United States (n.d). Legislators created over 100 bills in an attempt to pass legislation over the previous half century, but were not successful. Industrial and urban growth caused by World War II in 1948, led to obvious, notorious pollution of the country's rivers, streams, and lakes, urging Congress to finally address the issue. Unfortunately, the act was not designed well enough to achieve the goals set out to address the issue. It did not ban pollution, only gave limited power to the federal government, and provided an extremely awkward enforcement mechanism. The Federal Water Pollution Control Act was not successful in preventing and reducing water pollution. Pollution continued to increase because of the federal government's inability to require any direct reduction in discharges. As a result, the quality of the nation's waters had no improvement. On the other hand, the act established a popular and political support for pollution control efforts. Congress rewrote the act in 1972 to provide more acceptable protection for the nation's waters. It also established the basic agenda for water pollution control, which was amended by Congress afterwards. Congress made changes to the act six times before rewriting it in 1972.

Thanks to the Clean Water Act, we have come a long way from the days of rivers catching fire. The Clean Water Act required industries and municipalities to filter out wastes before they reached the water. The culprits of yesterday, factories and sewage treatment plants, are largely under control. Additionally, those “point sources” of pollution were easy to identify and target because they generally discharged pollutants directly into the water. However, much of our assessed surface waters are still impaired since they do not meet ambient water quality standards. Today’s sources of water pollution, “nonpoint sources,” are more discrete and therefore harder to control. Mainly, this insidious form of pollution takes the shape of “runoff

Iowa has been working for decades to protect and improve water quality; however, more can be done. Our suggested strategy is to direct efforts to reduce nutrients in surface water from both point and nonpoint sources in a scientific, reasonable, and cost-effective manner. Our proposal is prompted by the 1972 Federal Water Pollution Act (Clean Water Act) as well as the 2008 Gulf Hypoxia Action Plan. Both of these plan’s objectives are to restore and maintain the chemical, physical and biological integrity of the nation’s waters by preventing point and nonpoint pollution sources and seek to provide assistance to publicly owned water treatment facilities. The 2008 Gulf Hypoxia Action Plan takes these goals one step further by calling Iowa and other states along the Mississippi River to develop strategies to reduce nutrient loadings to the Gulf of Mexico. Moreover, establishing that there needs to be at least a 45% reduction in total nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment loads in order for waters to be fishable and swimmable. Our proposal seeks to apply the guidelines in these bills to the Fourmile Creek watershed in Central Iowa in order to make the waters in ‘our backyard’ fishable and swimmable once again.

Water pollution is a major global problem which is the pollution of seas, lakes, rivers, swamps… The pollution is made of storm and rainwater, sewage water and industrial waste. In developing countries, 70% of the waste dumped into waters are coming from industries. More than 80% of sewage from sewage treatment plants pollutes rivers and lakes without being treated first. 43% of America's rivers and lakes are too polluted for fishing, swimming, or aquatic life. 1.2 trillion gallons of sewage water and industrial waste are released into US waters every year. Water pollution can also be in the form of solid waste.

Since clean water is necessary for the body to function properly and people don’t have access to clean water on their own, clean water is a basic human right and should be treated as such by the government. Before the industrial revolution in America, our water was cleaner, and people had access to clean water on their own. There was no need for water cleaning facilities to provide clean water because there was less pollution. In my geology class last semester, I was shocked to learn that today only 3% of the Earth’s water is technically “freshwater,” 85% of that 3% consists of glaciers and icebergs, leaving hardly any available freshwater. Once factories started popping up all across America and companies started dumping waste into waterways. This caused natural water sources to become heavily polluted and unsafe to consume without being treated. Figures 1-4, were taken at the Oradell Reservoir. Most towns and cities have some facility for cleaning their water and pumping that clean water into their homes. Figure 3 is a photo of the new water treatment plant in Oradell, NJ. This water treatment plant provides water to thousands of residents in several different surrounding towns. Without this water treatment facility, these residents would not be able to

The commodification of water throughout history has had substantial impacts the way we live our lives and the health of our nation. Initially effluents from towns, various types of mills, and tanneries were channeled to the nearest waterway to be carried downstream and away from the pollution source. This theory of "dilution is the solution to pollution" worked for a little while but as population grew and the demand for freshwater for humans consumption increased as well Americans learn quickly that this theory was incorrect.