ABSTRACT
Since the passage of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (Clean Water Act, as amended) in 1972, it has been the goal of the federal government as interpreted by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to “restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Nation’s waters” 1 . In implementing this goal and the goal of toxic pollutant control as mandated by the Clean Water Act of 1987, EPA and state water pollution control regulatory agencies have developed options to be used by the permit issuing authority for the protection of water quality through the issuance of National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits to dischargers to the nation’s waters. The purpose of this paper is to discuss these approaches: the chemical-specific approach to water quality permitting and the whole-effluent approach to water quality permitting. Industrial and municipal facilities that discharge to zero flow receiving streams will be particularly influenced by these options.
