Project Manager Jan Mandrup-Poulsen explains TMDLs in about 90 seconds.
www.dewberry.com
Hi, this is Jan Mandrup-Poulsen, and I'm a project manager with Dewberry in Tallahassee, Florida. Today, I'm going to give a brief overview of total maximum daily loads, commonly known as TMDLs. The TMDL program is part of the Clean Water Act’s toolbox for restoring impaired surface water bodies. This program's been around since the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in the early 1970s, but really only ramped up in the late 1990s when Earth Justice began suing EPA in many states, including Florida, for its failure to fully implement the program. The TMDL program is designed to set restoration targets for those fresh and marine surface waters that are not meeting state or federal water quality standards. These standards could be numeric, like low dissolved oxygen or high bacterial counts, or narrative like excessive algal growth or beach closures.
Upon the completion of a rigorous assessment of all the available data and information relating to point and non-point sources within the affected watershed, tools such as statistics or more complex mechanistic models, can be used to assign load reductions needed to achieve water quality standards. The State Environmental Agency or USEPA can formally adopt the TMDL and associated load reductions as a rule, which creates legal obligations for the affected sources to take the actions needed to meet their specified load reductions. This can be achieved through options such as improved treatment levels at wastewater facilities or through the implementation of best management practices, or BMPs. The importance of having stakeholder involvement in all phases of TMDL development cannot be overstated, as ultimately they are the ones that need to support the restoration efforts in their watershed.