Collecting Information about your Water Source
by Colleen Williams
CRWA Source Water Technician
What do you know about the water in your community? If you are concerned about protecting the source of your drinking water for future use you will need to begin by collecting information about your water source and educating yourself. Congress understood that unless citizens got involved and stayed involved, we would never clean up the nation's water. Therefore, Congress built significant public information requirements into the Clean Water Act. As a result, many state and federal agencies have produced considerable amounts of information about every watershed in the nation. The good news is that this information is public and accessible. This information can be helpful as you are beginning to develop a Source Water Protection Plan for your community drinking water system.
Documents that Tell the Storv of Water Quality in Colorado
The Clean Water Act directs public agencies and pollutant discharge permit holders to provide significant amounts of information about our waters, ranging from comprehensive and often bulky national reports to monitoring data from single dischargers. The following are a few of the most important types of information available through state water quality agencies and the EPA.
Section 305(b) Report
The Clean Water Act Section 305(b)(1) requires that each state submit a biennial report to the United States Congressthrough the United State Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The 305(b) Report includes the following:
§ An assessment of water quality of the State
§ An analysis of the extent to which the waters of the State provide protection for the propagation of aquatic life and recreation in and on the water
§ A report of the water pollution control programs
§ A description of the nonpoint source pollution control programs, ground water and drinking water program
The State of Colorado's 305(b) Report titled "Status of Water Quality in Colorado - 2006: The 2004 Update to the 2002 and 2004 Section 305(b) Report" can be accessed via the internet at the website:
http://www.cdphe.state.co.us/op/wqcc/wqresdoc.html
This update provides the State's assessments of water quality that were conducted during the past five years. Specifically, it compares the designated uses of all surface waters within the State to the corresponding standards in order to assess the degree to which waters are in attainment of those standards. This update also includes a summary of ground water quality assessments that were conducted during the 2004 and 2005 time frame.
What are Designated Uses?
The Colorado Water Quality Control Commission divides a river into stream segments and designates uses for each stream reach. The Commission has established four classifications of uses for Colorado's surface water. These are: aquatic life, domestic water supply, agriculture, and recreational use. The Commission is responsible for setting the standards necessary to protect those uses. Most states have focused on chemical measures of water quality. Numeric levels are assigned to a chemical parameter showing the limits that cannot be exceeded in order to maintain clean water.
Section 303(d) of the Clean Water Act (CWA) requires each state to identify waters that are impaired, those not expected to meet their water quality standards. Water bodies qualify for these "impaired waters lists' when they are too polluted or otherwise degraded to support their designated and existing uses. States must also establish a priority ranking for waters, taking into account the severity of the pollution and the uses to be made of such waters, and develop total maximum daily loads (TMDLs) for these waters. A TMDL specifies the maximum amount of a pollutant that a waterbody can receive and still meet water quality standards, and allocates pollutant loadings between point and nonpoint pollutant sources. The most current 303(d) list of water quality limited segments requiring TMDLs can be found at:
http://www.cdphe.state.co.us/op/regs/waterregs/l00293wqlimitedsegtmdls.pdf
Section 304
The Clean Water Act creates a system of permits to regulate pollution discharges. Each discharger must obtain a permit that establishes legal limits for the types and amounts of pollutants that may be released to public waters at a specific point. Discharge permits are issued under the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES). The Colorado Water Quality Control Division's Permit Unit regulates the discharge of pollutants into the state's surface and ground waters. To find out who has permits in your area go to the CDPHE Water Quality Permitting site at:
http://www.cdphe.state.co.us/wq/PermitsUnit/index.html
Permitees are required to monitor the quality of their discharges and determine if they have exceeded limits. They must also submit regular Discharge Monitoring Reports (DMR's) to the state. Every watershed group should obtain a list of all the permitted discharges in its area. You should periodically review summaries of permit violations that occur within your source water area. If one or more dischargers are frequent permit violators, you should ask the state for a summary of past and current enforcement actions for those discharges. Local health departments can be another source for those enforcement actions, as they are often copied in the correspondence.
A list of the permitted discharges in your watershed and the recent DMR for each should be available from your state environmental agency. Much of this information is also available on the Web through EPA's "Permit navigator." Web site: http://www.epa.gov/echo.