Document Details

National Strategy for the Development of Regional Nutrient Criteria

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) | June 1st, 1998


In February of this year, President Clinton and Vice President Gore released a comprehensive Clean Water Action Plan. The Action Plan provides a blueprint for Federal agencies to work with States and others stakeholders in restoring and protecting the Nation’s water resources and addresses three major goals:

  • enhanced protection from public health threats posed by water pollution;
  • more effective control of polluted runoff; and
  • promotion of water quality restoration and protection on a watershed basis.

A key part of the Action Plan provides for expanded efforts to reduce nutrient overenrichment of waters.

Nutrients, in appropriate amounts, are essential to the health of aquatic systems. Excessive nutrients, however, can result in excessive growth of macrophytes or phytoplankton and potentially harmful algal blooms leading to oxygen declines, imbalance of aquatic species, public health threats, and a general decline in the aquatic resource.

Recent reports on water quality conditions provided by States indicate that nutrients are the leading cause of impairment in lakes and coastal waters and the second leading cause of impairment to rivers and streams. Nutrient overenrichment has also been strongly linked to the large hypoxic zone in the Gulf of Mexico and to recent outbreaks of the toxic microorganism Pfiesteria along the Gulf and Mid-Atlantic coasts.

The Action Plan calls on EPA to accelerate the development of scientific information concerning the levels of nutrients that cause water quality problems and to organize this information by different types of waterbodies (e.g. streams, lakes, coastal waters, wetlands) and by geographic regions of the country. EPA is also to work with States and Tribes to adopt criteria (i.e. numeric concentration levels) for nutrients, including nitrogen and phosphorus, as part of enforceable State water quality standards under the Clean Water Act.

Keywords

nutrients, water quality