Home

Protect and restore coastal and marine waters to safeguard human health, sustain the rich diversity of wildlife, promote a thriving economy, and preserve a recreational and aesthetic resource for safe enjoyment by current and future generations.

Toxic and nutrient pollutants, sedimentation, and disease-causing organisms are degrading ocean and coastal water quality and threatening public health, the environment, and the economic well-being of communities that depend on fishing, tourism, and marine commerce. While point sources of pollution, such as discharge pipes, continue to be a problem, the leading cause of water pollution today is nonpoint source pollution, which includes runoff from farmland, suburban lawns, and city streets, as well as pollution that is deposited from the air.
Increasingly, excess nutrients in polluted runoff are contributing to harmful algal blooms and robbing coastal and marine ecosystems of life-sustaining oxygen, creating dead zones that cover huge areas, such as the 7,700-square-mile dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. Pollution can also alter the chemistry of the coastal ocean, which scientists fear is happening in the Bering Sea and other areas.

As pollution continues to contaminate our waters, more and more people are faced with the risk of illness from exposure to toxic contaminants and disease-causing microorganisms, either when eating the fish they catch or through direct contact with polluted waters. In 1998, approximately 30% of all beaches surveyed reported an advisory or closing, and 60% of coastal waters were under fish-consumption advisories.

Ongoing Concerns

• Water quality improvement efforts to protect human health and the environment have been focused primarily on inland and coastal waters. As a result, the impacts of pollution on the marine environment are not as well understood.
• While the federal government has developed national guidance on fish-consumption advisories and recreational water quality monitoring, many tribes and states do little or no monitoring, and variation in their methods and standards persists.
• Contaminated sediments along our nation's coasts are degrading water quality.
• Many former ocean disposal sites are unmonitored, and their impacts on marine and coastal waters and ecosystems are largely unknown.

Recommendations

• Implement the Administration's Clean Water Action Plan to effectively address polluted runoff and other sources of pollution, as well as improve coordination among federal agencies.
• Increase research on the effects of water quality and ocean discharges on the marine environment, including on marine wildlife, and use this information to improve protection for ocean and coastal resources where necessary.
• Assist tribes, states, and territories in adopting fully protective fish-consumption and beach water quality standards, conducting adequate fish tissue and beach water quality monitoring, and developing effective public notification and education programs. Consider legislation that promotes these goals.
• Improve detection of pathogens in fish, wildlife, and recreational waters through research on new technologies, and reduce the occurrence of contaminants in coastal waters through improved controls on sewer overflows, stormwater runoff, and other sources of pollution.
• Effectively manage and remediate both inland and coastal contaminated sediment sites to reduce their impact on coastal water quality.
• Work with tribes and states to identify and address the health of coastal waters that are not meeting clean water goals.
• Assess the impacts of military, industrial, and other coastal and ocean disposal sites, and identify and implement appropriate monitoring, protection, and remedial measures where necessary.
• Work with international partners to reduce the flow of pollutants from land into oceans by implementing the Global Programme of Action for the Protection of the Marine Environment from Land-Based Activities.

For more information

http://www.epa.gov/water
http://state-of-coast.noaa.gov
http://www.fws.gov/cep/coastweb.html
http://marine.usgs.gov
http://www.nos.noaa.gov/programs/ncos.html