Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
than delegating it to an administrative agency. He called it a hammer with
which to hit the auto companies.
After the passage of the Clean Air Act, Congress took the obvious next
step and passed the Clear Water Act in 1972. Every few years starting in
1948 Congress had enacted water legislation for research and for planning,
but now it seemed time for a comprehensive law. This one gave the national
government, with its functions now centralized in EPA, the authority to
set water quality standards nationally. Implementation was assigned to
the state agencies. This had been done to a limited extent in the Clean
Air Act, but now it was more explicit, not so piecemeal. Unlike the Air
Act, this one required all polluters to have a permit. The system evolved
from the authority of the Army Corps of Engineers to issue permits under
an 1899 law. Although the original intent was to protect river channels
dredged for navigation, courts had seized on the old law to require permits
for polluters. Enforcement was to concentrate on effluent—what came out
of the pipe—rather than on the quality of the receiving water.
Again like the Air Act, this bill set deadlines. It grandly declared that the
goal was for all waters to be fishable and swimmable by 1983. The law's stan-
dards were to be technical, but defined rather legalistically as “best practi-
cable technology.” EPA would determine the engineering details. Uniform
national standards eliminated the competition in leniency among states
and cities trying to capture industrial development by allowing dirty water.
Municipal sewage treatment plants were key to success. Many cities still
did not purify their sewage before piping it into the river. Now treatment
was required. EPA was to give out billions of dollars to the cities to pay for
upgrades, which made the program quite popular. Congress recognized the
importance of regional cooperation. It would not be enough for one city to
clean up its plant if another city discharged raw sewage into the same river.
Therefore, the Clean Water Act Section 208 required that all units in the
region join a Council of Governments to cooperate in order to get the grants
of money. Over the years, these “208 COGs” proved to have many benefits
in coordinating environmental and other issues, such as transportation.
During the mid-1970s Congress enacted a series of laws, most being
delegated to the states for implementation. The Coastal Zone Management
Act regulated development near oceans and the Great Lakes. The Resource
Conservation and Recovery Act regulated solid waste from the cradle to
the grave, that is, from manufacturing to final burial. The Surface Mining
Act of 1977 regulated coal mining. This law was the purest form of a dele-
gated program. A new agency in the Department of the Interior, the Office
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