Under the Clean Water Act, states must adopt water quality standards to keep our waters clean and available for multiple uses, including drinking water and recreation. Unfortunately, many bodies of water do not meet those standards. When this happens, states are required to figure out how much of a pollutant can go into the water without violating the standards -- the Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) for that pollutant. States then have to identify the sources of that pollutant, figure out how much each source must reduce its pollution in order to meet the standards, and require the sources to reduce their pollution levels, using existing federal and state law. Bodies of water that do not meet the standards are listed as impaired, and reported to the federal government.

Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) requirements help us keep our water clean, so that we can use this important resource to the fullest extent possible. The federal Clean Water Act vests primary responsibility for TMDL to the states. One very important aspect of the TMDL process is data collection. Every body of water in every state has to be tested for multiple types of pollution. That's a lot of testing, and a lot of data, and a lot of work for states. To help with this, many states have established volunteer programs of citizen water quality monitors, where everyday people can test local waters and report data to the state.

Because each state must develop rules to conduct a TMDL program, ALEC offers a model bill. Unfortunately, ALEC's model bill does its best to undermine the whole point of the process -- increased water quality. ALEC's TMDL Implementation Act bases water quality evaluations on "resource constraints" and "sound scientific data," using these criteria to restrict improvements to those that can be achieved "in the most cost-effective fashion." The act focuses on business costs -- not costs to our health, and does little to protect our drinking water until after it has become contaminated. ALEC's model bill places strict limits on the data collection process, making it hard for volunteers to contribute, establishing cumbersome data review, and limiting the types of data that can be used. It requires that water quality standards be numeric, making it much harder to use relevant, scientifically-based qualitative or biological measures of water quality. The bill also says that polluted waters should be prioritized based, in part, on how much the public cares about them, how expensive cleanup will be, and how economically important the waters are.

This model bill does not serve the public interest nor does it promote clean, healthy water. Instead, it tries to limit the ability of the state to use scientific information and bases decisions about one of our most precious resources on economics rather than science.

Ran 4/8/02