If the inconclusive deliberations of the ninety-seventh Congress are even a partial guide to the future, the ninety-eighth Congress is likely to vote to extend the 1972 Clean Water Act with only minor changes. In contrast to the Clean Air Act, controversy surrounding the Water Act is almost nonexistent. Republicans and Democrats, industrialists and environmentalists, federal and local officials all seem quite satisfied with efforts to clean up the nation's waters.
Lukewarm opposition
The lack of strong opposition on the part of business is not hard to fathom. Despite occasional protests to the contrary, the act has not been much of a burden on industry, mainly because it emphasizes uniform application of "best" pollution-control strategies. Typically, best is defined by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as that approach already used by the largest, most progressive firms in an industry. For those firms—which usually account for most of their industry's production—the additional cost of the EPA regulations over and above what they already spend is very small. As a result, for most of the industry the annualized costs of the act average well under 2 percent of each firm's sales. Even when additional costs are more substantial, the fact that the regulations apply uniformly to all firms in an industry means that most of these costs can be passed on in higher prices.
The sanguine attitude of local officials is even easier to understand. The 75-per-cent federal subsidy provided goes a long way to lessen the pain of the act's requirement to upgrade municipal treatment systems.
The approval of environmentalists is more difficult to explain. It is true that noteworthy improvements have been made in a few waterbodies, such as Lake Erie and the Potomac River, but overall the act has not done much to improve the nation's waters. According to monitoring data and theoretical water modeling, the biggest improvements appear to be in dissolved oxygen content. Yet this is a questionable achievement: in 1972—before the act—only about 30 percent of the nation's waters failed to meet acceptable dissolved oxygen standards.
More important, ten years of effort have produced very little improvement with respect to nutrients, sediment, and toxic substances. The 1977 amendments to the act may improve matters, but serious problems with these pollutants are likely to remain indefinitely, chiefly because of the act's relative neglect of the main "nonpoint" sources of pollution—agricultural and urban runoff. Urban runoff often is the major source of certain toxics, even in such highly industrialized cities as Houston and New Orleans.
Intentions and illusions
Measured objectively, the act's performance has been weak in precisely those areas where improvements were most needed. Why, then, does it receive so much support from the environmental movement? One possibility, suggested by Allen V. Kneese, is that environmentalists place a high ethical value on doing one's "best." Since most dischargers to the nation's waters have permits that supposedly guarantee the use of best technologies, the act from this ethical point of view has been a success.
Another possibility is that environmentalists—along with the rest of us—are forced to rely too much on monitoring data to determine how well or poorly the act has done. However, our monitoring is so sketchy that it would not be surprising if environmentalists are suspicious of this source of information. Uncertain of the effect on water quality, the environmentalists turn more confidently to the effects on polluters. Since these polluters—at least the industrial ones—have permits that restrict their polluting activities, the act offers the illusion of working.
The implication of either possibility is that it does not matter much how well the act does in cleaning up the water as long as tough action appears to be directed against polluters. Thus, without having to look at water quality, Sen. John Chafee (R—R.I.) can confidently assert that a "water quality-based approach to pollution control failed before 1972 and could clearly fail again." In a world where form has priority over substance, it is apparently easier than one thinks to make an environmentalist happy.
Author Henry M. Peskin is a senior fellow in RFF's Quality of the Environment Division.
A version of this article appeared in print in the February 1983 issue of Resources magazine.
