Editors' Summary: For the past quarter century, the Clean Water Act has primarily relied on technological standards to abate point source pollution and achieve national clean water goals. Water quality standards lay largely dormant until the 1990s, when they were activated by citizen suits demanding implementation of §303(d) of the Act—the abatement of pollution discharges based on total maximum daily loads.

Editors' Summary: The Clean Water Act is undergoing a dramatic shift toward water quality-based regulation. Leading the charge, and taking their share of opposing fire, are the long-dormant provisions of §303(d) calling for the development of total maximum daily loads (TMDLs) for impaired waters. Earlier Articles in this series described the legislative and regulatory history of TMDLs, the litigation surrounding them, and the Administration's current efforts to redesign the program. This final Article attempts to step back and assess the potential of the TMDL program.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is in the process of redesigning the Clean Water Act's (CWA's) total maximum daily load (TMDL) program. Section 303 of the Act requires states and, if necessary, EPA to: (1) identify waters that do not meet water quality standards; (2) establish the TMDLs for pollutants discharged into these waters that will achieve these standards; and (3) incorporate these loads into state planning. These are of course the classic steps of ambient-based water quality management.

Congress passed the Clean Water Act on October 4, 1972, by overwhelming margins—unanimously in the Senate and with a bare 11 dissenters in the House of Representatives. Rising on the Senate floor that day a full quarter-century ago, Sen. Edmund S. Muskie (D-Me.), chairman of the Senate's Subcommittee on Air and Water Pollution and leader of the Senate's clean water forces, explained with simple gravity why Congress was about to pass by such large margins such a powerful and unprecedented law:

On June 18, 2001, all eight governors of the Great Lakes states and the premiers of the two Canadian provinces bordering the Great Lakes basin gathered at the impressive Prospect Point in Niagara Falls to sign a sweeping joint declaration. Known as "Annex 2001," the document is a supplementary agreement to the Great Lakes Charter of 1985. But unlike the loose and informal charter, Annex 2001 commits this diverse and multipartisan group of political leaders to find a way to collectively manage the Great Lakes basin.

Through the post-World War II era the U.S. Congress, by an incremental process of experimentation and error, developed the knowledge and experience that led to the imposition of individual permits based on uniform technology-based effluent limitations to regulate industrial water pollution. The resulting permit system has gradually reduced the amount of industrial pollution that enters our national waterways.

Agricultural biotechnology has generated much debate about the environmental consequences of field trials and commercialization of transgenic crops. Thus far, the debate has focused on opponents' claims of alleged risks presented by transgenic crops and the proponents' responses to those asserted risks. To date, three issues have dominated the debate:

. the risk of gene flow;

. the risk of weediness; and

. the risk of insect-resistance.

In recent years, the western states have often struggled with the federal government over control and management of natural resources, particularly water. For its part, federal law defers to states in many matters of water resource allocation.

Under the Wetland Conservation subtitle of the Food Security Act of 1985, as amended, commonly known as "Swampbuster," wetlands may be used to grow crops provided they are not degraded by this practice. In the legislation, Congress has made an effort, by use of the "minimal effects" concept, to make precise just what farming practices are acceptable. If a farming practice has only a minimal effect on the wetland's function, then the farmer is not ineligible for participation in federal loan, commodity price and income support, and conservation programs.

The U.S. Supreme Court decision last term in Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (SWANCC), striking down the migratory bird rule for wetlands regulation, warrants some reading of the Court's environmental tea leaves. Some fine commentary in these pages still leaves murky whether the opinion seriously imperils other environmental laws and regulations. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist's SWANCC opinion for a five-Justice majority had worrisome implications that the new restrictive view of the U.S.