ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with the regulation of water pollution and water quality. Without pollution controls, water would become grossly polluted and unusable for a wide range of human and non-human needs. Humans require clean water for drinking and other uses such as manufacturing, food production and agriculture. Once water has been used, it is returned to the aquatic environment as an effluent. These effluent discharges into surface waters and sewers must be regulated so as to maintain a sufficiently high quality of the receiving waters (waters into which effluent is discharged) to meet our needs. These needs vary according to the use which is made of the available surface and groundwaters. Thus, an industrial discharge of effluent into a river will be tightly controlled if there is a fishery downstream of the industrial plant, or water is abstracted from the river for human consumption.
