The Clean Water Act
The Clean Water Act (CWA), a pivotal federal law, plays a crucial role in regulating the discharge of contaminated water. In its efforts, the EPA has identified 126 pollutants and established quality standards and guidelines for water treatment, underscoring the significance of this act. Given these broad categories of pollutants, water-polluting industries must not rely on the “One Size Fits All Technology Approach” to meet the EPA’s Guidelines. The EPA estimates that U.S. industrial
water use exceeds 18.2 billion gallons daily, underscoring the potential impact of industry on the environment. A large, percentage of these companies can use reusable water instead of fresh drinking water, a change that could significantly reduce their environmental footprint.
SOURCES OF WATER POLLUTION
Environmental & Industrial pollutants
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The primary industries that contaminate freshwater are chemical production facilities, petrochemical refineries, electrical generating facilities, mining operations, agricultural runoff from livestock ranches, fertilizer/pesticide runoff from farmlands, domestic sewage treatment, urban runoff, and saltwater intrusion resulting from increasing dependency onshallow aquifers in coastal regions.
The types of contaminants found in polluted water include, among many other things, organic matter, pathogens, microbial contaminants, nutrients, salts, acids, heavy metals, toxic organic compounds, silt, and suspended particulate matter. As a result, the water treatment industry created a wide array of treatment processes with questionable outcomes, not safeguarding the environment and human health. This caused policymakers to question their efficiency and effectiveness when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that more than 7.2 million Americans suffer from waterborne illnesses annually.