Rivers and Streams: Upgrading Mnitoring of the Nation’s Freshwater Resources: Meeting the Spirit of the Clean Water Act

The goal of the Clean Water Act (CWA) is to restore and maintain the chemical, physical and biological integrity of the nation’s waters. Much of the monitoring is reasonably delegated to the States to perform and then to report to Congress through the Environmental Protection Agency. States have historically been fully occupied in monitoring the most egregious water quality problems along with high priority water bodies. Hence the expectations of many on our ability to report on progress of meeting the goals of the CWA have not been met. In this chapter we will describe the partnership between EPA and the States to remedy this information gap for rivers and streams. The efforts to move beyond water quality equating to water chemistry will be discussed as well as the design and indicators used to report on progress toward ensuring that the US is able to track progress in the goal of the Act…chemical, physical and biological integrity.

Impact/Purpose

This book chapter describes an important effort conducted by EPA and the States. Within EPA, it was a partnership among the Office of Research and Development (ORD), the Office of Water and the Regions. ORD developed the science underpinning the national monitoring and assessment being conducted by this EPA-State partnership. This chapter describes how the partnership has been able to close a gap between the promise of the Clean Water Act and the monitoring and assessment being conducted in the US. Inclusion of this chapter in the book, Water Quality - Science, Assessments and Policy, increases the awareness of this important EPA-State activity. The chapter on streams and rivers outlines the science and the gap that it is filling. While the National Aquatic Resource Surveys results clearly have policy implications, this chapter focuses on the science and implimentation of the monitoring and assessment.

Citation

Paulsen, Steve, Dave Peck, Phil Kaufmann, AND A. Herlihy. Rivers and Streams: Upgrading Mnitoring of the Nation’s Freshwater Resources: Meeting the Spirit of the Clean Water Act. IntechOpen, London, UK92823, (2020). [DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.92823]

DOI: Rivers and Streams: Upgrading Mnitoring of the Nation’s Freshwater Resources: Meeting the Spirit of the Clean Water Act