Reaching the Potential of Water-Quality Trading

In 003 the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) created a Water Quality Trading Policy consistent with the Clean Water Act of 97 . Building on the successes of the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit program to address point-source discharges and the Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) program, which established watershed pollution loads, water-quality trading was created as a new rule to address the approximately 40% of the rivers, 4 % of the streams and 0% of the lakes that had still not met their designated uses. Section 303(d) of the Clean Water Act mandates that states assess their waters every two years. Each state creates a list of waters that are impaired. TMDLs are then written for those impaired water bodies, allocating allowable pollutant loads from the various sources in the impaired watershed. Part of this is to set a load limit for point sources such as wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) and industry. TMDLs were referenced in Section 303 of the 97 Clean Water Act. Water-quality trading is defined as (USEPA, 003):