The Clean Water Act (CWA) is the primary federal law that regulates the quality of the nation’s water bodies. In the worst cases, the amount of pollutants in urban runoff are high enough to prevent us from being able to swim or fish in our local waters.Įfforts to reduce the impacts of urban runoff have been happening for some time at federal, state, and local levels. These same impervious surfaces can transport the many pollutants deposited in urban areas, such as nutrients, sediment, bacteria, pesticides, and chloride. Increased runoff from impervious surfaces causes dangerous floods, severe erosion damage to our stream channels, diminished recharge of groundwater, and degraded habitat for our fisheries. By replacing natural land covers (like grasslands and forests) with impervious surfaces (like parking lots and streets), we lose the water retaining role of the soil and vegetation. Urbanization of the landscape has an appreciable negative impact on the quantity and quality of runoff water entering our lakes and streams (Davis, 2005 Wang and others, 2001 Williamson, 1993).
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |