1. Clean Water Act (CWA) (1977, 1981, 1987)

2. Description and Affects This Act was put into place in order to regulate the amount of pollutants that were being found in the US waters Some changes that have been made are the pollution control programs like setting wastewater standards for industry After some things were implemented by the CWA it was illegal to discharge any pollutant from a point source to navigable waters Although if your discharges do go to directly to surface waters it is legal if you have a permit granted to you by the NPDES The CWA allowed EPA to authorize the NPDES Permit Program to state governments which enabled states to perform many of the enforcement aspects of the NPDES Program

3. The National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) is the biggest and most influential enforcement group for the Clean Air Act The NPDES permit program controls water pollution by regulating the amount of discharge into waters of the US by point sources Ever since the implementation of the NPDES program in 1972, there has been a significant improvement in the United States water quality The EPA also plays an important role regarding the inspection of these facilities by : – sampling wastewater discharges to navigable waterways and other points in the generation or treatment process – inspecting the processes that generate and treat wastewater