The Clean Water Act Action Plan
Implementation Priorities
Fact Sheet
May 2011
Office of Compliance
Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW (MC 2221-A)
Washington, D.C. 20460
http://www.epa.gov/compliance/civil/cwa/cwaenfplan.html
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The Clean Water Act Action Plan Implementation Priorities
May 11, 2011
Since the Clean Water Act was enacted in 1972, significant progress has been made to protect
America's waters and to address the most important pollution problems affecting our communities. But,
water pollution challenges—like urbanization, agricultural runoff and increases in the number of sources of
water pollution—remain and demand new, efficient approaches to secure continued improvements in our
country's water quality. To meet these challenges and to ensure that our nation's waters are drinkable,
fishable and swimmable, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) created the Clean Water Act Action
Plan. The Action Plan will build on the power of public accountability and transform the transparency and
efficiency of Clean Water Act compliance and enforcement actions and their effects on watersheds and
communities across the nation. The Action Plan's suite of new approaches will drive improved
environmental performance for both the regulated pollution sources and state and EPA regulatory
authorities to ensure clean water for our citizens.
Under the Clean Water Act Action plan, EPA will:
• Improve compliance with the Clean Water Act requirements and reduce pollution through the
power of public accountability. EPA will replace outdated paper reporting systems with universal
electronic reporting that will be readily available to the public on EPA's website. More than 45,000
municipal and industrial facilities are required to monitor and report their compliance with
permitted pollutant discharge limits. Electronic reporting will reduce the reporting costs for these
businesses and cities and dramatically improve the ability of the public and state and federal
governments to monitor compliance with the Clean Water Act. EPA will also require electronic
reporting of inspections and enforcement actions taken by states and EPA at these regulated
sources so the public is better informed about the performance of their government in taking
actions to ensure compliance and protect their water quality.
• Create more efficient regulatory approaches that will ensure a more focused use of state and
federal resources to compel better compliance and result in significant water quality
improvement. Develop a wide range of more efficient and effective regulatory approaches tailored
to specific sources including: self-monitoring and electronic-reporting, self-certification, public
reporting, and third party certification. In conjunction with these efforts, we will deploy new
techniques to identify and remedy the most serious water pollution violations and continue to
vigorously enforce against serious violations that threaten clean water.
• Jointly plan, evaluate and better orchestrate federal and state CWA programs to focus resources
and expertise on the most important water quality problems. Efforts will include ensuring that
the state and federal permitting, enforcement and compliance systems are working together
cooperatively, effectively and efficiently.
For more information on the CWA Action Plan, please see EPA's website,
http://www.epa.gov/compliance/civil/cwa/cwaenfplan.html
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