Watershed Approaches

Did you know that cleaner source water can result in lower treatment costs and less wear and tear on infrastructure assets?

One of our highest priorities is using a watershed approach to address our impaired waters. EPA is focused on the several programs assisting state and local governments as they strive to look beyond their traditional geographic boundaries to create interstate and inter-local partnerships based on watershed boundaries. The focus is on making sound infrastructure and growth decisions within the context of how water flows through a watershed. Our success at restoring and protecting impaired waters requires strong partnerships between federal, state, and local levels.

To encourage the merger of watershed management principles into utility management, so that key decision makers consider watershed-based, cost-effective alternatives alongside the traditional treatment technology investments. EPA programs that are focused on watershed management principles include, but are not limited to:

Watershed Based National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Permitting emphasizes addressing all stressors within a hydrologically-defined drainage basin, rather than addressing individual pollutant sources on a discharge-by-discharge basis.
Source Water Protection can be successful in providing public health protection and reducing the treatment challenge for public water suppliers. Source water quality can be threatened by many everyday activities and land uses, ranging from industrial wastes to the chemicals applied to suburban lawns
Water Quality Trading is an innovative approach to achieve water quality goals more efficiently. Trading is based on the fact that sources in a watershed can face very different costs to control the same pollutant. Trading programs allow facilities facing higher pollution control costs to meet their regulatory obligations by purchasing environmentally equivalent (or superior) pollution reductions from another source at lower cost, thus achieving the same water quality improvement at lower overall cost.
Green Infrastructure can be both a cost effective and an environmentally preferable approach to reduce stormwater and other excess flows entering combined or separate sewer systems in combination with, or in lieu of centralized hard infrastructure solutions. EPA is working with state and national partners to reduce runoff through the use of approaches such as green roofs, trees and tree boxes, rain gardens, and porous pavements.
Wet Weather Integration: Aging sewer line infrastructure in many communities allows rain and snow melt to enter sanitary sewer systems. During significant storm events, these high volumes can overwhelm certain parts of the wastewater treatment process and may cause damage or failure of the system. Operators of wastewater treatment plants must manage these high flows to both ensure the continued operation of the treatment process and to prevent backups and overflows of raw wastewater in basements or on city streets.
Onsite/decentralized Wastewater Management of septic systems that treat and disperse relatively small volumes of wastewater from individual or small numbers of homes and commercial buildings. Septic system regulation is usually a state, tribal, and local responsibility. EPA provides information to homeowners and assistance to state and local governments to improve the management of septic systems to prevent failures that could harm human health and water quality
Smart Growth is development that serves the economy, the community, and the environment. It changes the terms of the development debate away from the traditional growth/no growth question to "how and where should new development be accommodated."

Watershed Approaches

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