Global Water Forum

The Global Water Forum wrote articles as far back in 2014 on point source and nonpoint source pollution urging us to contact local EPA offices.

"The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently released a report recommending that Congress revise the CWA so that EPA can better address nonpoint source pollution through regulation. In this report, GAO assessed a representative sample of 191 TMDLs (out of a universe of approximately 50,000) and found that most of the water bodies analyzed have not fully attained water quality standards, largely due to lack of nonpoint source pollution reduction. This failure stems from TMDL implementation plans that lack key components such as identification of appropriate stressors, landowner participation, and adequate funding. Overall, both states and EPA have little information about the status of the implementation of TMDLs."

National Water Quality Assessment

The National Water-Quality Assessment shows that agricultural nonpoint source (NPS) pollution is the leading source of water quality impacts on surveyed rivers and streams, the third-largest source for lakes, the second-largest source of impairments to wetlands, and a major contributor to contamination of surveyed estuaries and groundwater.

Unlike the obvious connection between hardened surfaces and urban rainwater runoff, agricultural land surfaces are largely permeable the results of multiple studies indicate that the negative effects of agricultural land drainage on surface water quality are significantly greater than urban rainwater runoff. As such, it is plausible that the agricultural land is saturated with contaminants beyond its capacity to absorb and/or contain long enough to allow for degradation or detoxification. Consequently, during irrigation or rain events these contaminants are drained from the land surface to creeks, canals, and other sources of water. Research suggests that shortly after application of slurry or manure on agricultural land fecal coliform levels are significantly elevated (Ramos, Quinton & Tyrrel, 2006)

Likely, the most beneficial mitigation effort is source reduction. With respect to source reduction, effective management of manure plays a key role. Given the intensification of farming in North America, there is an insufficient land base to handle the amount of manure applied to the land, and, as such, surface watercourses are negatively affected with fecal coliform and overloaded with nutrients. To avoid these impacts it is recommended that EPA Fisheries and other government organizations provide support for manure-to-recycling manure-to-energy and manure reduction projects (financial or otherwise).

These projects would assist farmers and regions in handling the excess manure, create higher quality (products like recycling shavings, composts), fertilizers and reduce environmental impacts (El-Sadek, Feyen, Skaggs, & Berlamont, 2002; Ramos et al, 2006). These projects have shown to greatly reduce fecal coliform and nutrient loading in surface water and lower greenhouse gas emissions by combusting methane into carbon dioxide (Steiner, 2005; Richard, 2006; Deutsch, 2007).

In the United States, control of nonpoint-source pollutants occurs pursuant to Sec. 208 and 304 of the Clean Water Act of 1977, which delegates wastewater management planning (point and nonpoint source) to state and local levels of government. This planning process must develop and incorporate "Best Management Practices (BMP)" for the control of nonpoint sources following guidelines established by the federal government (U.S. EPA).