Wetlands and CWA Programs Other Than §404

• Author: Margaret 'Peggy' Strand/Lowell Rothschild
• Pages: 199-205

Page 199

Chapter 8

Wetlands and CWA ProgramsOther Than §404

While the Corps administers much of §404, EPA has sole federal authority to administer the

remainder of the CWA.1 Congress directed EPA to develop “comprehensive programs for pre-

venting, reducing, or eliminating the pollution of the navigable waters and groundwaters and

improving the sanitary condition of surface and underground waters.”2 Such comprehensive programs

are required to realize the Act’s lofty and oft-repeated objective “to restore and maintain the chemical,

physical, and biological integrity of the Nation’s waters.”3 Accordingly, EPA administers a number of CWA

programs, other than §404, that involve protection of wetlands as part of its comprehensive approach to

attaining CWA goals. ese programs frequently play a role in the §404 permitting process.

I. Wetlands and Water Quality Standards

Section 303 of the CWA establishes the water quality program.4 is is a technically and legally complex

program that is only briey summarized here. Water quality standards consist of three parts: quality goals

for a water body established based on its uses, criteria to protect those uses, and provisions to protect water

quality from pollutants. Subject to EPA oversight and review, states have the initial and primary role in

setting water quality standards.

Each state decides how to categorize its water bodies, including how to separate appropriate segments

of streams and rivers, and determine designated uses for those water body segments. Designated uses

include recreation, water supply, aquatic habitat, and agriculture. e state then sets water quality criteria

to protect the designated use. e water quality criteria may be numeric pollutant concentrations, narrative

requirements, or both. States must also have an antidegradation policy to maintain and protect existing

uses and high quality water bodies.5 Implementation of water quality standards—converting the criteria

into enforceable limits on pollution discharge—involves many technical matters, including low ows, vari-

ances, mixing zones, and other matters.

Once established, water quality standards are included as limitations or restrictions in discharge permits.

Numeric standards for particular pollutants may be expressed as total maximum daily loads (TMDLs),

which reect the total amount of a pollutant that a receiving water can accept while still meeting its water

quality standard. Once a TMDL has been established, permits establish discharge limitations based on an

allocation of the pollutant load among individual dischargers.

Water quality standards can be established for wetlands. In 1990, EPA issued a National Guidance,

Water Quality Standards for Wetlands, which is Appendix B to Chapter 2—General Program Guidance

of the Water Quality Standards Handbook, December, 1983.6is guidance provides advice on how states

1. 33 U.S.C. §1251(d).

2. 33 U.S.C. §1252(a).

3. 33 U.S.C. §1251(a).

4. 33 U.S.C. §1313.

5. See 40 C.F.R. §131.12 for federal antidegradation policy.

6. Available at http://www.epa.gov/owow/werlands/regs/quality.html.