Two years ago the President signed into law an important piece of water quality legislation, the Water Quality Act of 1965.
The legislation provided that if a state would, before June 30, 1967, and after a public hearing, adopt water quality criteria applicable to interstate waters or portions thereof within its borders and a plan to implement and enforce such criteria, the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare would make a determination as to whether the state criteria and plan were consistent with protection of public health and welfare and were designed to enhance water quality and in general serve the purposes of the act. If the determination were favorable, the state criteria and plan would thereafter be the water quality standards applicable to those interstate waters or portions thereof. If a state failed to establish such criteria and plan, or if they were found by the Secretary to be unacceptable, the federal government would establish standards.
Following the legislation, guidelines for the states were established by the Secretary of the Interior, in his capacity of head of the department that includes the Federal Water Pollution Control Administration. In general, the guidelines required that water quality be enhanced and, by implication, that the criteria were not to be conventional or arbitrary but the results of a process of analysis and decision making.
By midsummer, all the states had filed criteria. The Secretary of the Interior has approved those proposed by ten of the states, but action on the others has been held up by claims of conservationist groups that Guideline 1—which specifies that no watercourses may deteriorate below their current quality level—has not been strictly adhered to, even in some of the ten approved sets of standards.
Once accepted, the standards will strengthen hands of the states and the federal government in water quality control. Formerly, it was necessary the federal authorities to demonstrate result actual interstate damages resulting from waste discharges in order to bring enforcement proceedings against waste dischargers. Now it will only be necessary to demonstrate that the standards applying to the interstate waters are being violated and that the control program is not proceeding as scheduled. If it is not, the process of hearings and ultimate recourse to the courts as developed in earlier legislation can get under way. If a legal action is finally brought to secure abatement of discharges, the court is instructed to enter whatever judgement and orders the public interests and equities may require after having given due consideration to the practicability and to the physical and economic feasibility of complying with the applicable standards.
Despite the intent, most of the standards submitted for approved are on conventional physical water quality criteria: that is, criteria deemed to be generally acceptable are applied to particular river basins without regard for special characteristics and conditions. In view the brief time permitted to set the criteria and the shortage of persons qualified to conduct the studies needed for a more rational process, this result is not surprising. There is, perhaps, only one location in the United States—the Delaware estuary area—where an adequate analysis of economic costs and gains and of alternative ways of achieving various levels of water quality was available. In this case, the Federal Water Pollution Control Administration had carried on for several years a comprehensive water quality survey which had produced a large amount of information and analysis. As a result, it was possible to work out a range of estimated costs and benefits for various levels and time-periods of water quality characteristics and for various ways of implementing alternative water quality programs.
The development of these alternatives for the Delaware estuary was accompanied by a program of public education leading to excellent debate on the question of the appropriate standards (as required by the guidelines) at public hearings held early in the year. This exemplified a useful blending of technical, scientific, and economic studies with a democratic decision process.
Ideally, a process of this kind should occur wherever standards are set. The law seems to be rather flexible in permitting adaptation of standards as improved techniques and information become available. Clearly, the present sets of standards submitted by the states need not be considered immutable but as useful first efforts and guides to action for water quality management.
