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Groundwater Policy and Management

     The United States EPA has developed programs and policies to help manage and regulate the groundwater resources in the United States.  The goals of these programs and policies are to prevent and protect human health and the environment from adverse effects as well as protect the environmental integrity of the groundwater resources [16].  The programs include research, prevention, regulatory and cleanup activities. In most cases, the programs involve a partnership between the Federal and State governments where the States administer and enforce the technical standards set by United States EPA [16]. 

     The technical standards administered by the EPA that relate to groundwater are outlined in five major environmental statutes [16].  These are the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA or Superfund), the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide ACT (FIFRA), and the Clean Water Act (CWA) [16].  More Detail about each is listed below.

A.    Safe Drinking Water Act

     Congress originally passed the SDWA in 1974 to regulate the nation’s public water supply for the protection of human health [17].   The law was amended in 1986 and 1996 to include many actions that protect drinking water and its sources (river, lakes, reservoirs, springs, and groundwater wells) [17]. The Amendments added in 1986 allowed the EPA to set maximum contaminants levels allowable in drinking water, to regulate underground injection wells, to develop the Wellhead Protection program, to designate areas that rely on a single aquifer for their water supply, and to create a nationwide program that designates states to establish their own programs to protect public water supply wells .[16] The Amendments in 1996 added even more enhancements by recognizing source water protection, operator training, funding for water system improvements, and public information as important components of safe drinking water[17].

B.     Resource Conservation and Recovery Act

     Congress passed the RCRA in 1976 to give the EPA the authority to control hazardous waste from the "cradle-to-grave" [18].  This includes hazardous waste manufacturing, generation, transportation, treatment, storage, and disposal [18].   RCRA allows EPA to regulate solid and hazardous wastes to prevent contaminants from leaching into groundwater from municipal landfills, underground storage tanks, surface impoundments, and hazardous waste disposal facilities [16].  Amendments to the RCRA in 1984 and 1986 focused on minimizing and phasing out of land disposal of hazardous waste and enabled EPA to address environmental problems that could result from leaking of underground tanks and other waste storage facilities.  

C.    Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act 

     After discovering toxic waste dumps such as Love Canal and Times Beach in the 1970s, Congress passed the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) to address the dangers of abandoned or uncontrolled hazardous waste sites in 1980. ‘Superfund’ was the name given to the fund created by this act as well as the environmental program established to meet its requirements[19, 20].  This law allows the EPA or other federal agencies to respond to contamination or a substantial threat of a contamination.  The EPA has the authority to cleanup the contamination and require responsible parties to reimburse the government for the cleanup or perform cleanups themselves.

     Under the Superfund program, the EPA has responded to thousands of actual or potential contamination sites (see Figure 5).  The response varies by either short-term or emergency removal actions or longer-term cleanup efforts known as remedial actions[20]. The latter provides more permanent solutions for human and environmental protection and may require years to design, implement, and complete[20].  Remedial options can include a variety of possible remedies, ranging from containment of wastes to treatment to institutional controls [20].   The Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986 (SARA) expressed a preference for treatment over containment or removal and disposal in remediation of Superfund sites [20].  Amendments in 1986 also authorized citizens to sue violators and establish programs that provided the community with knowledge of the contamination [16] .

Figure 5:  Superfund sites in the United States taken from [21].

     The EPA [19] reports that as of September 2005, 1,536 sites had been listed on the National Priority List (NPL). The NPL primarily serves as an information and management tool during the Superfund cleanup process.  Sites are listed on the National Priorities List (NPL) upon completion of Hazard Ranking System (HRS) screening, public solicitation of comments about the proposed site, and after all comments have been addressed [22]. Identifying sites for the NPL is intended to guide the EPA in: determining which sites warrant further investigation to assess the nature and extent of the human health and environmental risks associated with a site; identifying what CERCLA-financed remedial actions may be appropriate; notifying the public of sites EPA believes warrant further investigation; and serving notice to potentially responsible parties that EPA may initiate CERCLA-financed remedial action[22].

     Of the 1,536 sites that have been listed on the NPL, 307 had been deleted, leaving 1,229 sites.  An additional 54 sites were proposed for listing as of September 2005[20].   For each NPL site one or more Record of Decision (ROD) is to be applied.  A ROD is a public document that explains which cleanup alternatives will be used to remediation a site [23].  It contains site history, site description, site characteristics, community participation, enforcement activities, past and present activities, contaminated media, the contaminants present, scope and role of response action and the remediation approach selected for cleanup [23] .   Multiple RODs can be prepared for some sites, especially large areas, to tackle different areas of the site known as operable units (OU) and different media within a site.  In addition, each OU may require a number of RODs to address different media or contaminants, or ROD amendments to revise the selected remediation approach [20]. Groundwater remediation has been implemented or was planned as part of the RODs  at 1,072 NPL sites, which is nearly 70 percent of the sites  [20].

D. Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act

     Congress originally passed FIFRA in 1947 to control the use of pesticides for pesticide efficiency and for safe use in agricultural production.  In 1970, the focus of FIFRA changed to control the use of pesticides for the reduction of unreasonable risks to man and the environment [24].    The shift in focus was supported by the passage of the Federal Environmental Pesticide Control Act of 1972 (FEPCA) and other amendments which provided more details in the methods and standards of control outlined in FIFRA.  Under FIFRA, no one may sell, distribute, or use a pesticide unless it is registered by the EPA, or it meets a specific exemption as described in the regulations [24]. The EPA classifies each pesticide and designates who has the authority to use the pesticide.  This control helps prevent the use of certain pesticides and the application of pesticides by inappropriate people to minimize their ability to leach into groundwater [16].  

E.     Clean Water Act

     The basis of the CWA was originally established in 1948 as the Federal Water Pollution Control Act and with amendments and significant reorganization and expansion it became known as the “Clean Water Act” in 1977 [25].   The CWA allows the EPA to regulate direct pollutant discharges into the waters of the United States and develop water quality standards for surface waters [16, 25].   Under CWA, the EPA also provides funding for the construction of municipal wastewater treatment facilities and authorizes states to develop controls for non-point source pollution and polluted runoff [16].    Indirectly, these actions can lead to groundwater protection.  

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