Concluding
Remarks
The 1996 CWNS has built on the accomplishments
of past surveys. Both the breadth and depth of the CWNS have increased.
The States provided the staffing to update the quality of the
cost and technical information in the database. This involved
extensive redocumentation and data quality improvement efforts
which succeeded in eliminating obsolete data, updating ongoing
project information, and ensuring the currentness of the CWNS
database. Increased attention was given to the needs of small
communities, which contain the majority of wastewater treatment
facilities.
The 1996 CWNS incorporated several major improvements in estimating
the needs related to CSO, SW, and NPS controls. This reflects
EPA's increasing concern about wet weather contributions to the
nation's water quality problems. Cost curves were developed to
estimate better site-specific CSO needs. The CWNS results show
that the States are giving increasing attention to SW and NPS
problems. The documented SW and NPS needs have increased. Many
States, however, have not yet systematically documented their
SW and NPS needs. Accordingly, EPA developed a national SW needs
model and refined the NPS model that was introduced in the 1992
CWNS.
In the future, more extensive documentation, especially addressing
SW and NPS problems, will improve the needs estimation for a broader
range of SRF-eligible programs and projects. EPA also expects
to continue expanding the range of water quality problems included
in the CWNS. States will be encouraged to augment further their
documentation of the wet weather conditions that contribute to
their water quality problems. Additional refinements will be made
to the SW and NPS modeling to supplement the documented needs
further.
The use of watersheds for organizing needs information will enhance
both EPA's and the States' understanding of the overall water
quality requirements. The watershed approach makes sense for both
environmental and financial reasons because it facilitates program
integration and focuses energy on holistic environmental results.
Coordinating efforts across traditional program areas allows for
a comprehensive look at all of the issues within watersheds, which
results in a more complete understanding of the cumulative impact
of various human activities. Analysis of needs by watershed offers
the prospect of defining more specifically the investment required
to meet the CWA goals. Such analysis can also help determine how
water quality investments can be optimized. Looking ahead, EPA
expects that future CWNSs will become even more comprehensive,
encompassing the full spectrum of the nation's water quality problems.
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