In the wake of the ‘golden age’ of economic growth in the early 1970s, public provision of urban infrastructure came under the close scrutiny of governments seeking to reduce the size of their bureaucracies in the face of expanding budgets, rising prices, and increasing unemployment. Australian governments and water utilities followed the UK and USA by introducing price mechanisms to attain more efficient water use. This coincided with severe droughts that affected urban water supplies and led state governments to impose residential water restrictions, save for Brisbane, where catastrophic floods in 1974 reminded residents of their vulnerability to the elements. Growing concern for the environment, as well as the implications of environmental degradation for human health, meant that the sights, smells, and sounds of the Australian suburbs were on the eve of change. The use of suburban waterways as drains for industrial and domestic waste would no longer be tolerated, as local residents campaigned to protect built and natural environments from pollution and development projects. Such health and ecological concerns collided with the neoliberal reform agenda of the 1990s, when newly restructured water utilities faced a series of crises in their provision of water and disposal of wastes.

This chapter provides a discussion of the conclusions and implications of this research. In many respects, the assumption of initial state interest and resources sufficiency has not been met, although many states have been able to overcome their initial deficiencies in the intervening years. While most observers conclude that the Water Quality Act has served to improve water quality in the nation, the lack of a valid, reliable, and agreed-upon measure of state water quality hampers the ability to reach specific conclusions about the overall effects of the Water Quality Act. The conclusions also highlight the tensions between the financial and environmental elements of the Clean Water State Revolving Fund program, as well as tensions between national environmental goals and state choice in program implementation.

The Water Quality Act of 1987 is a product of the ideas of federalism in place at the time of its development and passage. Driven by the "Reagan revolution," the 1980s was a time of substantial policy change as new imperatives such as states' rights, a smaller national government, an expanded role for the private sector, and deregulation came into vogue. The WQA is an expression of this policy environment, and represents several of these imperatives in the form of a revised infrastructure program to provide clean water. With a switch from a categorical grant to a block grant, the WQA exemplified a policy instrument consistent with the underlying tenets of the "Reagan revolution." This chapter examines the underlying elements of Reagan's philosophy of federalism, and details the ways in which the mechanisms and structure of the WQA reflect this philosophy. Finally, this chapter serves to lay the foundation for context of the development, implementation, and administration of the Water Quality Act.

This introduction discusses the impetus for the creation of this research. The year 2016 marks the 30th anniversary of the Water Quality Act, the longest-lived example of federal water pollution policy. The introduction presents a discussion of the major themes of the book, including federalism, states' rights, state choice in water quality policy, and the importance of implementation in policy outcomes. an outline of the content of the chapters is also presented.

The Water Quality Act contained language that expressed the intent of Congress for the Clean Water State Revolving Fund (CWSRF) program to serve certain classes of communities: communities with significant environmental need, communities with populations less than 10,000, and communities facing financial hardship. In addition, Congress allowed CWSRF funds to be used to fund nonpoint pollution projects. Using data from EPA in conjunction with other data, a series of regression models are presented to determine the factors and conditions that lead states to meet these uses. The models and hypotheses tested in this chapter are developed in Chapter Six. Using data for all 50 states measured between 1988 and 2016, the models indicate that factors over which states have control- whether to leverage, the program structure, and others- determine the ability of states to meet the needs of most categories of applicants. State political factors are less important, although demographic variables do provide some explanatory power. Water quality needs matter for communities with significant environmental need. The results also indicate that communities facing financial hardship are not being well served by the program.

This chapter presents in-depth case studies of initial implementation of the Clean Water State Revolving Fund (CWSRF) program. The four states chosen- Alabama, California, Georgia, and New York- represent states that took very different approaches to initial implementation: Alabama represents a state with a highly leveraged program and significant private sector involvement; California is a state with large needs that did not leverage; Georgia is a state that did not leverage and implemented the program without private sector involvement; and New York had huge needs but was delayed in implementation. Data are drawn from state documents, survey data, and in-depth interviews conducted with state program administrators. The case studies highlight the unique circumstances present in each state, and how these circumstances shaped the implementation decisions and, ultimately, the nature of the program developed in the state.

The congressional framers of the Water Quality act of 1987 laid out specific expectation for the uses for federal funds authorized in the legislation, as well as expectations regarding the kinds of communities that would be served by the infrastructure program in the legislation. This chapter discusses the larger question of water pollution control, including challenges to effective pollution control policies. In addition, the chapter introduces the underlying research questions for the research, and explains why water pollution control policy is worthy of government attention. The chapter also makes a case for why the WQA is particularly interesting in this regard, and provides a brief description of the block grant program that provides funds for water quality infrastructure, the Clean Water State Revolving Fund program. Finally, the chapter discusses the tensions between environmental and financial goals that are inherent in the revolving loan fund policy instrument.

The history of water quality policy in the US is characterized by incremental changes in policy instruments over time. This chapter traces the origins of water quality policy in the US through the lens of a policy streams model. Beginning with the Refuse Act of 1899, the chapter traces the antecedents of the landmark Federal Water Pollution Control Act of 1948, and discusses the development of the expanding federal role in water pollution policy through the 1950s and 1960. The chapter discusses both the political forces that drove policy development, as well as the larger social and economic context that created a growing demand for national policy.

This chapter develops and presents a model of state choice in the Clean Water State Revolving Fund (CWSRF) program. Based on the extant literature on both the CWSRF and water quality policy more generally, a model is presented that includes elements of state implementation choice in program structure and operation, initial state sufficiency of program resources, and state commitment to water quality. Control variables in the model include a series of demographic variables, political variables, and a measure of water quality need. The dependent variables in the model are measures of the distribution of program resources for different categories of program recipients, as indicated by the dollar value of loans, and the percentage of total loans, to each category of recipient. The recipient categories includes program resources to communities with significant environmental need, communities with populations less that 10,000 residents, and communities facing financial hardship. Finally, a fourth category represents the number (and percentage) of loans made by a state for nonpoint pollution needs.

reconstructs the organisation of urban sanitation. Clean streets and waterways involved ongoing negotiations between governmental bodies and inhabitants, and the latter’s contribution to the upkeep of communally used (water)ways was regular and substantial. From the part of the urban authorities, sanitary-policing officials were the principal group to put policies into practice. They were a permanent presence throughout the Low Countries and developed a variety of measures to fight issues perceived as potentially polluting, damaging or otherwise threatening health. The chapter revolves around two brigades, in Ghent and Deventer, and the reconstruction of their activities challenges the dismissive assessment of the enforcement of hygienic laws in earlier historiography. Sanitary officials performed routine inspections and coordinated waste disposal, and by doing so increased governmental presence in urban spaces and supervised the quotidian affairs taking place in them. Health interests therefore helped to legitimate municipal claims to power, in particular over a specific network of spaces deemed essential to keep clean and accessible.

Chapter 6 examines the regulatory control of water pollution under the Water Pollution Prevention and Control Law (WPPCL) (2017) and relevant state plans and regulations including the Action Plan on Water Pollution Prevention and Control (2015). It introduces the history of statutory control of water pollution from WPPCL (1984) and discusses the command-and-control approach including government’s responsibilities and agencies in charge, standard-setting and government planning, river basin management and key pollution control mechanisms. The chapter further addresses major sources of water pollution including point sources and non-point sources by different regulatory instruments, highlighting drinking water safety to protect public health and environmental emergency response to water pollution incidents to contain and mitigate harm. The chapter concludes with discussion of improved environmental enforcement and sanction, with brief reference to civil liabilities for water pollution under WPPCL (2017).

This chapter looks at China’s environmental crisis and its impacts on public health. In examining the health impacts of air pollution, it highlights ambient PM.25 as the number one killer of all the risk factors for pollution-related mortality in China. Besides air pollution, water and soil pollution also has a significant and independent effect on people’s health. The health impact of pollution is further complicated by exposure to heavy metals such as arsenic and lead. The posited health effects of air, water, and soil pollution are epitomized in the phenomenon of cancer villages. Additional links between the environment and health, including trash and public health, pollution and mental health, pollution and sperm quality, and pollution and antibiotic resistance, are also examined.