Prepared by:
Leon E. Danielson and David E. M. Patte
Department of
Agricultural and Resource Economics
North Carolina State University
Published by: North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service
Publication Number: AG 441-5
Last Electronic Revision: March 1996 (JWM)
This overview of federal groundwater quality policies and programs presents information about the water quality activities of USGS, USDA and EPA and summarizes several federal statutes that provide the basis for many federal and state groundwater quality programs.
The federal government's general approach to groundwater policy includes programs for prevention, detection, and correction of contamination. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are the three federal agencies most heavily involved in groundwater policy and programs:
While related, the three federal agencies have different approaches to managing and protecting groundwater quality in the areas of regulation, technical assistance, research, cost-sharing incentives, education and land management.
This overview presents the eurrent status of these activities at the time of its writing. Because agency programs are dynamic, changes occur frequently. Often these changes are significant. Since three major statutes, the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, are due for reauthorization in the early 1990s, major changes in federal groundwater protection programs ean be expected in the future.
USGS groundwater quality activities fall within this agency's responsibility to provide geologic, topographic and hydrologic information that contributes to the wise management of the nation's water resources. USGS produces maps, data bases, and descriptions and analyses of the earth's resources, working cooperatively with other federal, state and local agencies, as well as academic and industrial groups.
Groundwater research carried out by USGS is concerned primarily with groundwater quantity, the characterization of groundwater quality and, increasingly, investigations of groundwater contamination problems. USGS also disseminates information on groundwater aquifers, water availability and use, potential sources of groundwater contamination and other related topics.
USGS collects groundwater data from a network of approximately 160,000 monitoring wells. Data are stored in a large database called WATSTORE (National Water Data Storage and Retrieval Systems), maintained in Reston, Virginia.
In the past, USDA has primarily used resource conservation strategies implemented through technical assistanee, costsharing incentives, and education and research to modify production-, soil- and land-management praetices. In recent years, however, farm commodity programs, especially as reflected in the 1985 and 1990 Farm Bills, increasingly have focused on water quality objectives:
USDA is currently embarking upon a new water quality program in response to the President's Water Quality Initiative. The program builds on past and ongoing departmental efforts in soil and water conservation, research, public infommation and education. It is, however, more comprehensive, including a focus on agricultural chemicals and groundwater contamination, in addition to agricultural nonpoint source contamination.
It also is expected to be a more highly coordinated effort among USDA agencies, and the creation of interdepartmental committees should improve coordination among a wider variety of other federal and state agencies. The USDA plan involves cooperation among eight USDA agencies, EPA, USGS and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
The plan will attempt to detemmine the precise nature of the relationship between agricultural activities and groundwater quality. It will also develop and promote the adoption of technically and economically feasible agrichemical management and agricultural production strategies to protect groundwater and surface water quality.
Major components of the program include:
The overall goal of EPA's Groundwater Policy is to "prevent adverse effects to human health and the environment, and to protect the environmental integrity of the nation's groundwater resources." EPA's groundwater programs, which primarily involve regulatory and cleanup activities, are increasingly including groundwater prevention programs. Typically, they involve a federal-state partnership in which EPA sets technical standards and states assume responsibility for their administration and enforcement.
EPA currently administers five major environmental statutes that relate to groundwater quality protection:
EPA has recognized the fragmentation of the statutes to protect groundwater. In 1984, EPA developed a groundwater protection strategy to address the problem and determine its role in a national groundwater protection program. EPA recently updated this strategy in its 1991 Groundwater Task Force Report. Elements of the Strategy include:
EPA's Office of Pesticides and Toxic Substances has addressed pesticide contamination of groundwater and has proposed a strategy for addressing the problem. With the goals and principles of the 1991 Groundwater Task Force Report as the starting point, EPA's proposed Pesticides and Groundwater Strategy frames a new approach in using FIFRA regulatory authorities to address pesticides with significant groundwater contamination concerns.
The proposed Strategy provides states the opportunity to manage pesticide use at the local level, based on differenees in the use, value and vulnerability of groundwater. It also emphasizes prevention, highlighting voluntary programs of source reduction, as well as use of FIFRA regulatory authorities.
A joint project between EPA's Offfice of Drinking Water and Offiee of Pesticide Programs, the National Pesticide Survey tested 566 community water system wells and 783 domestic wells throughout the United States between 1988 and 1990. The wells were statistically selected to represent the nation's 13 million domestic wells and 94,600 community wells. Designed to provide EPA with a national assessment, results will help EPA make regulatory decisions regarding the use of agrichemicals.
EPA estimates that 10.4 percent of the community water system wells and 4.2 percent of the rural domestic wells in the U.S. contain at least one pesticide or pesticide breakdown product, with 0.8 percent and 0.6 percent respectively found to exceed EPA's health advisory levels (HALs) or maximum contaminant levels (MCLs).
Nitrate was found in 52.1 percent of the community well systems and 57 percent of the rural domestic wells, with MCLs being exceeded in 1.2 percent and 2.4 percent of the samples respectively.
The following summaries of statutes are based on reports of federal agencies and the Congressional Research Service.
The Federal Water Pollution Control Act, also known as the Clean Water Act, is the major piece of legislation that speeifically addresses the quality of the nation's waters. Originally passed in 1948, it has been amended several times. Notable amendments were made in 1972 and 1987; at the latter time it was amended to focus more directly on groundwater quality.
Before 1987, most attention was given to surface water quality. Two of the six major water goals established in the 1972 amendments to the Federal Water Pollution Control Act were:
The 1987 amendments to the Clean Water Act place more emphasis on groundwater quality through two new sections:
The Safe Drinking Water Act, originally passed in 1974, was amended in 1986 to place greater emphasis on groundwater. The Act allows EPA to:
Federal drinking water standards are important to groundwater protection efforts not only because groundwater is the source of water for more than 80 percent of the public water systems, but also because many states adopt these standards as their own groundwater quality standards. The underground injection control program regulates the underground injection of wastes or other fluids that might endanger underground sources of drinking water. The sole-source aquifer program is designed to protect aquifers that are the principal drinking water supply for an area. Wellhead protection (WHP) programs consist of the identification of recharge areas for public wells, identification of sources of contamination within the WHP area, development of management approaches to protect these drinking water sources, and development of contingeney plans for each well field should contamination occur.
The 1976 Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) established the federal program regulating the handling, transport and disposal of solid and hazardous wastes. Amended in 1984, RCRA:
Over time, the program has evolved from concentration on waste disposal, resource recovery and reduction of wastes generated to a more active role in preventing pollution.
Subtitle C of RCRA covers the regulation of hazardous wastes including "cradle to grave" monitoring and reporting requirements for hazardous wastes, performance and construction standards, and monitoring and reporting requirements for facilities that store or dispose of hazardous wastes.
Subtitle D of RCRA regulates municipal solid waste landfills and all other nonhazardous wastes not covered in Subtitle C (such as sewage sludge and surface impoundments).
Subtitle I of RCRA regulates underground storage tanks and provides for response to leaking tanks.
Popularly known as the "Superfund," CERCLA gives the federal government authority to respond to discharges of hazardous substances and to clean up contaminated abandoned hazardous waste sites. The Superfund has a specific groundwater dimension because its goal is to protect human health and the environment, including groundwater and drinking water supplies.
Most of the money in the Superfund comes from taxes and fees on crude oil and 42 chemicals. Sites are ranked using a Hazard Ranking System and the highest scoring sites are placed on a National Priority List to ensure that the worst problems are resolved first. Of more than 900 sites listed, approximately one-fourth are municipal landfills.
FIFRA does not specifically mention groundwater, but it does address concerns related to user risk, risk-benefit relationships, and consumption of food and drinking water. With this relationship to groundwater, FIFRA could be important to the agricultural sector because it provides the authority to regulate marketing and use of pesticides.
When passed in 1947 in response to rapidly increasing use of chemicals and pesticides after World War II, FIFRA was administered by the USDA alone. EPA was given a cooperative role in label registration when the ageney was created in 1970 and now plays the leading role.
The Act requires that pesticides be tested for effectiveness and toxicity. Then, before being marketed, they must be "registered" and labeled for the crops and locations on which they can be used safely. Conditions for registration are designed to prevent any unreasonable risk to humans or the environment, taking into account the economic, social, and environmental risks of any use of the pesticide.
FIFRA was rewritten by the Federal Environmental Pesticide Control Act in 1972 because of increasing concerns by Congress about the hazards to health and to the environment from increasing pesticide use. Direct controls were placed on use of pesticides, with usage restrictions on those considered especially hazardous.
Pesticides are classified for restricted or general use; applicators of restricted-use pesticides are required to be "certified" through a training and testing program. States can administer their own certification programs after their plans are approved by EPA. The Extension Service usually provides training, and state departments of agriculture issue permits.
FIFRA also requires registration of manufacturing plants, provides for a national monitoring program for pesticide residues, and adds environmental effects to the list of risks considered in the registration process. In addition, the Act contains provisions allowing control of the transportation and disposal of pesticides.
EPA can cancel or immediately suspend the registration of a pesticide if "unreasonable adverse effects" are found during testing. If this occurs, persons owning any quantity of the pesticide are entitled to compensation by EPA for any economic loss incurred as a result of being unable to use the remainder of the product. (EPA generally has allowed existing stocks of the product to be used.)
EPA has encountered problems implementing the 1972 amendments to FIFRA from the beginning. Amendments enacted in 1978 have not overcome the controversy over whether pesticide regulation should be expanded or curtailed. Amendments to FIFRA passed in 1988 created an accelerated program for re-registering older pesticides, eliminated payments to most parties holding inventories of suspended or canceled pesticides, and required manufacturers to foot more of the bill for pesticide testing. The changes did not, however, significantly address issues related to contamination of groundwater by pesticides.
After being passed originally in the House and Senate in 1971, the Toxic Substances Control Act was enacted in 1976 following highly visible problems with chemicals, including PCBs (poly-chlorinated biphenyls) and chloroflurocarbon emissions.
The Act allows for the testing of existing chemicals, premarket screening of new chemical products, controlling of chemicals with unreasonable risk, and gathering and disseminating information about chemical production.
Blanket testing of all chemical products is not allowed, and EPA must specify which chemicals or groups of chemicals warrant testing. EPA can prohibit the manufacture or use of a chemical, require labeling, limit production or control disposal methods. A section of the Act also establishes controls for asbestos.
Federal agencies are engaged in many prevention, dection and correction activities related to groundwater quality, and many different statutes address sources of groundwater contamination.
Yet, there is no comprehensive legislative mandate to protect groundwater. Groundwater policy therefore has been a fragmented collection of separate efforts by many agencies and programs that address various goals and sources of contamination. However, EPA's Groundwater Task Force recently has developed a set of principles for a comprehensive approach to groundwater protection that could address current fragmented efforts.
Although a clear national policy on protection and cleanup standards does not exist, federal agencies provide program guidance, technical and financial assistance, and the regulation of certain contamination sources. Because these programs are dynamic, as noted earlier, with several statutes up for reauthorization in the early 1990s, readers should watch for changes occurring in the future.
Protecting the Nation's Ground Water: EPA's Strategy for the 1990s. The Final Report of the EPA Ground-Water Task Force. May 1991. U.S. EPA. Washington, D.C.
Water Quality Education and Technical Assistance Plan: 1990 Update. United States Department of Agriculture.1990. Washington. D.C.
Charles Abdalla, Penn State University
David Allee, Cornell University
Leon Danielson, North Carolina State Univenity
Distributed in furtherance of the Acts of Congress of May 8 and June 30, 1914. Employment and program opportunities are offered to all people regardless of race, color, national origin, sex, age, or disability. North Carolina State University, North Carolina A&T State University, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and local governments cooperating.
AG 441-5