Clean Water is Focus of National Water Quaity Month
The best part of summer? Water! We all look to water to cool, recreate, and keep our gardens growing. August is #NationalWaterQualityMonth, a designation by the Environmental Protection Agency to promote and implement conservation measures locally and nationally to ensure we all have access to clean, safe drinking water and plants, animals and their habitats can thrive.
The National Parks Conservation Association recently noted that 207 of our 397 national parks — 52 percent — have waterways that are considered “impaired” under the Clean Water Act, meaning they do not meet appropriate water quality standards.
Per NationalWaterQualityMonth.org poor water quality comes from many different sources, but the top freshwater pollutants come from industrial dumping, agricultural run-off, untreated waste that leaks into our waterways through poorly maintained sewage systems, and products and chemicals used at home.
Stormwater pollution has increasingly become more critical to environmental regulations at the federal, state and local levels. Westward provides short and long-term stormwater planning, including Stormwater Pollution Prevention Plans (SWP3), compliance inspections, audits, agency coordination, and sampling/reporting.
In central Texas, the Edwards Aquifer Protection Program regulates activities that have potential to pollute the Edwards Aquifer, a sensitive karst aquifer and the main source of water for two million people. Development (also known as regulated activity), private or industrial, over either the recharge, contributing or transition zones, is subject to water quality protection rules set forth by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ). The location and type of development will dictate the amount of permitting required. Recharge Zone development has the most stringent requirements including detailed engineering plans and controls in addition to a geologic assessment. Permits are required for regulated activities over the contributing and transition zones to different degrees depending on the level of development.
To keep our fresh water sources clean, companies and municipalities must comply with environmental regulations. Westward offers comprehensive compliance services in our engineering, ecology and geology groups.