NPDES
"As authorized by the Clean Water Act, the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit program controls water pollution by regulating point sources that discharge pollutants into waters of the United States. Point sources are discrete conveyances such as pipes or man-made ditches.... Industrial, municipal, and other facilities must obtain permits if their discharges go directly to surface waters."
Basically the cycle is as follows... The industrial facility brews something up and is left with chemical waste. What do they do with it? Well ideally they just run it out through some pipes and forget about it. The problem then arises when the rain comes and further washes all of these chemicals into fresh water systems that we humans use for resources such as drinking water. Chemicals don't taste good.
The NPDES is in charge of keeping up with how many of these chemicals are making their way into our water and also investigating the origin of such chemicals. Long story short they police and manage the polluters. Sounds good right?
***SPOILER ALERT***
They aren't perfect
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Many environmentalists have noted a few looming issues they have with the permitting requirements as established by the NPDES. First and foremost the primary method the NPDES has of measuring individual pollution runoff for each permitted is through as accurate as possible estimation and reporting by managers of the permitted industry. (Raise your hand if you think that sounds like a really bad honor code) Then if that was not bad enough, if the NPDES decides a particular source is polluting too much they simply ask them nicely to "Please don't pollute anymore than you have to" (How's that for a slap on the wrist?)
However, despite such complaints the NPDES has reported great improvements in the amount of pollution that is showing up in subsequent testings of waters. To deny that it has had an impact on pollution runoff would be tragically erroneous, but many think that it could do even more.
TMDL
Many have proposed that NPDES make better use of Total Mass Daily Load statistics (TMDL) that measure how much pollution can safely be dumped into a water source before it becomes dangerous for human consumption.
By implementing such methods the NPDES would be able to more proactively seek out and correct areas where water pol-lution is at especially dangerous levels. This would mean being able to excess polluters and impose harder more concrete requirements when necessary.
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