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Unified Management of Surface‐ and Ground‐Water Quality Through Clean Water Act Authorities
Author(s) -
Duda Alfred M.
Publication year - 1989
Publication title -
groundwater
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.84
H-Index - 94
eISSN - 1745-6584
pISSN - 0017-467X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1745-6584.1989.tb00459.x
Subject(s) - legislation , agency (philosophy) , water quality , surface water , accountability , environmental planning , subsurface flow , business , groundwater , quality (philosophy) , environmental resource management , environmental science , environmental engineering , political science , engineering , law , biology , ecology , philosophy , geotechnical engineering , epistemology
Existing institutions for protecting surface‐ and ground‐water quality provide uneven results across the nation. Pollutants are transferred across media and political boundaries, important contaminants are not addressed, important sources of pollution are not controlled, and accountability in achieving measurable objectives is not assured. Examples from the seven‐state region served by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) document the wide range of ground‐water contamination issues facing the nation and the importance of interconnections between subsurface and surface waters–both hydrologically and institutionally. National legislation seems imminent to overcome institutional barriers that promote fragmented, ineffective, and expensive approaches. Unified management of subsurface‐ and surface‐water quality makes both hydrologic and institutional sense for dealing with cross‐media, cross‐agency linkages causing water pollution. Congressional testimony presented by TVA suggests that this unified water quality management can be achieved through a narrow amendment to the Clean Water Act requiring state adoption of (1) surface‐ and subsurface‐water classification systems, (2) surface and subsurface numerical standards, and (3) conjunctive surface‐ subsurface‐water quality management programs. National minimum program requirements, federal funding, and federal program/facility compliance would provide leadership in creating new local/state/federal partnerships targeted to priority geographic areas. In this way, the state comprehensive program would become the hub around which the spokes of all different environmental and natural resource management (technology‐based control) programs with surface‐ or ground‐water quality implications would be integrated. This proactive water quality management approach would be less costly to the public than existing reactive approaches which have left taxpayers with a half trillion dollar remedial action bill for cleaning up our surface‐ and ground‐water resources.