ABSTRACT
Regulatory agencies use various bioassessment methods to determine stream quality. Stream health is often classified as meeting attainment or nonattainment of biological integrity; thus, biocriteria are the benchmarks for water resource protection and management (Gibson et al. 1996). Once steam health is determined, criteria developed, and the bioassessment method tested, the next step for the regulatory agency is to determine how the criteria will be implemented. There are different methods, procedures, and regulations each regulatory agency must follow, but there is some common ground about how and why states implement the biocriteria.
