ABSTRACT
What are water quality standards? Why is it necessary to have them? And how do we establish and enforce them? We answer these questions in great detail in this chapter. In short, water quality standards are numeric values or narrative descriptions of water quality parameters that are meant to sustain the designated uses of a water body. Therefore, water quality standards involve not only the actual criteria associated with water quality parameters, but how certain levels of those parameters negatively affect the use of that water for human and/or ecological purposes.
