Water Quality Standards

Code of Federal Regulations, Title 40 Part 132: Protection of Environment, Water Quality Guidance for the Great Lakes System. Description of the Great Lakes Water Quality Initiative, as well as specific methodologies for development of water-quality criteria and other procedures.

The Indiana Storm Water Quality Manual provides guidelines and specific storm water quality measures for controlling soil erosion; controlling and treating the nonpoint source pollution associated with sediment-laden runoff; and the management and treatment of pollutants associated with post-construction land uses. The manual is provided by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM).

Indiana Administrative Code statute regarding water-quality standards.

Scorecard.org is an online resource for information about pollution problems and toxic chemicals. The site has a community activist aesthetic to it. The site compiles publicly available data on polluters collected by federal regulatory agencies and distributed in digital form. The Web application pulls data from many disparate federal datasets and compiles them for integrated searches by geographic area, pollution topic, or chemical profile. The provided link describes the Clean Water Act (CWA) status for Indiana.

The Drinking Water Standards and Health Advisories Tables are revised periodically by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) in order to update reference dose and cancer values, so that they are consistent with the most current Agency assessments of chemical contaminants that may occur in drinking water and to introduce new Health Advisories. The current version of the standards is from 2006. A downloadable PDF version of the tables can be downloaded from a link on this Web site.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (USEPA) compilation of national recommended water-quality criteria is presented as a summary table containing recommended water-quality criteria for the protection of aquatic life and human health in surface water for approximately 150 pollutants. These criteria are published as directed by the Clean Water Act (CWA) and provide guidance for states and tribes to use in adopting water quality standards.

The Clean Water Act (CWA) requires that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) publish and periodically update ambient water quality criteria. The criteria are not rules and do not have regulatory impact. The criteria can and should be used for guidance concerning the environmental effects that can be useful to derive regulatory requirements. Many sources defer to the “Gold Book” for water-quality targets. The “Gold Book” superseded the “Red Book,” which was published in 1976.

The Water Quality Standards (WQS) program in Indiana is managed by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM). Other State Agencies, such as the Indiana Department of Natural Resources and the Indiana State Department of Health, at times work with IDEM on WQS issues.