The Clean Water Act (CWA) is one of several environmental statutes enacted by Congress in the 1970s. Congress sought to “attain and maintain the chemical, physical and biological integrity of the nation’s waters.” Congress even went so far as to set “the national goal that the discharge of pollutants into navigable waters be eliminated by 1985.” In 2014, we recognize that the CWA’s laudatory goals will take much longer to achieve than Congress envisioned.
Much of the difficulty in restoring the quality of the nation’s waters stems from the competition among the multiple functions that the waters serve. In the CWA, Congress provided that water quality standards “shall be established taking into consideration their use and value for public water supplies, propagation of fish and wildlife, recreational purposes, and agricultural, industrial, and other programs, and also taking into consideration their use and value for navigation.” The dependency of agriculture, industry and municipalities upon discharges to rivers and streams has to date made complete elimination of discharges of pollutants impossible to achieve.
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