Major Water Quality Research Goals

The Office of Research and Development has written a multi-year research plan to support the water quality goals under the Clean Water Act (CWA). Three long-term major research goals have been established, is described below. ORD envisions a logical progression in meeting water quality goals by:

1. setting water quality criteria that are logically connected to specific designated uses;
2. monitoring for the condition of designated water bodies and listing those having impairment;
3. applying relevant criteria and stakeholder input to evaluate if action programs are needed to either protect high quality systems or to restore impaired waters;
4. diagnosing the causes (stressors) of observed impairment and determining the sources of the stressors;
5. developing an array of management and restoration actions that can be deployed to protect high quality habitats or restore degraded systems to desired designated uses; and
6. deploying institutional, implementation, and monitoring systems to ensure that long-term and sustainable success is achieved.

EPA's mission includes protecting human health and the environment via the Clean Water Act through research components required to achieve measurable and measured improvement in water quality and attain desirable overall outcomes as follows: impaired waters are accurately and efficiently identified and characterized; causes and sources of stressors leading to impairments are made readily apparent; all interested stakeholders will have robust and efficient tools at their disposal to assess the restoration requirements, evaluate their costs and feasibility, and project their optimum deployment; locally developed and implemented systems to regulate or motivate actions are available; water quality improvements from action programs are fully documented at reasonable costs; and water quality is sustained and maintained in a balanced fashion that reflects legislative mandates, reflects public and stakeholder interests, and that provides ecosystem and public health services for future generations.