Program of the Month
Agricultural best management practices include containing liquid animal waste in a storage facility, such as in the picture above of a Franklin County farm. Best management practices are effective and practical ways to prevent or reduce pollution from nonpoint sources to ensure water quality.
Program partners
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Virginia Department of Environmental Quality
Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation
Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy
Virginia Department of Health
Virginia Department of Forestry
Virginia Cooperative Extension
Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services
Natural Resources Conservation Service
Virginia soil and water conservation districts
Virginia planning district commissions
citizens
community watershed groups
local governments
businesses
Virginia’s TMDL Program: Restoring water quality
The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality monitors the state’s rivers, lakes and tidal waters for pollutants every year to determine if the public can use them for swimming, fishing and drinking. If pollution amounts are too high, the waters cannot support their designated uses and fail to meet Virginia water quality standards. These waters are considered “impaired.”
Since 1999, DEQ has developed plans, with public input, to restore and maintain the quality of the impaired waters. These plans establish a “total maximum daily load,” or TMDL, for the impaired waters. A TMDL represents the total amount of a pollutant a water body can contain and still meet water quality standards. DEQ also develops a TMDL implementation plan and works with partners to reduce pollution to the level required by the TMDL.
The Virginia TMDL program has successfully met the demands of a rigorous development schedule. Through a consent order, a federal court established a schedule for TMDL development in Virginia through 2010 for waters identified as impaired since 1998. For other waters, DEQ schedules the development of TMDLs within eight to 12 years of finding the waters impaired.
To develop a TMDL, the state considers:
- Naturally occurring concentrations of pollutants in the impaired waters.
- Pollution from fixed locations, such as a pipe or ditch (point sources).
- Pollution sources without a single point of origin, such as agricultural activities and urban areas (nonpoint sources).
- Seasonal variations.
The program completed 220 TMDLs from 1999 to 2004, and more than 200 have been contracted for completion by 2006. More than 300 consent decree waters remain and are scheduled for TMDL development by 2010. The program has scheduled TMDL development for the remaining 902 non-consent decree waters on the impaired waters list within eight to 12 years of when the water was designated impaired.
Once a TMDL has been completed, it is submitted to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for approval. DEQ then develops an implementation plan. The plan describes ways to reduce pollution levels in the stream, and includes a schedule of actions, costs and monitoring. The TMDL program has completed six implementation plans covering 18 TMDLs and scheduled 16 implementation plans covering 42 TMDLs for completion by 2006. Completion of implementation plans for the remaining waters will be dependent upon available funding and staff.
The program and its partners work to achieve a TMDL by reducing pollution according to the best management practices established in the implementation plan. Best management practices are effective and practical ways to prevent or reduce pollution from nonpoint sources to ensure water quality. They could range from repairing septic systems and establishing storage areas for animal waste to planting vegetation. Virginia’s TMDL program has shown that properly applied and maintained best management practices result in measurable improvements in water quality.
The TMDL program has been working in six watersheds, and five have shown improvement in water quality. It is too early in the implementation process to determine if water quality is improving in the sixth watershed. The portion of the watersheds covered by the implementation plans is about 158,663 acres or 248 square miles of Virginia’s landscape. In most watersheds, local soil and water conservations districts or the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation have taken the lead in overseeing the implementation of the best management practices. To determine the success of the practices on water quality, DEQ monitors the impaired streams.
Dozens of voluntary and government-funded best management practices are used throughout the watersheds. The Middle Creek is a successful example of Virginia’s proactive approach to water quality improvement. This approach aims to clean impaired water bodies through voluntary methods in order to avoid the costly and time-consuming process of developing TMDLs and implementation plans. In this watershed, water quality restoration was driven by stakeholder interest or other resource management programs that preceded TMDL completion.
In early 2005, DEQ in cooperation with the Department of Conservation and Recreation and Department of Mines, Minerals, and Energy released a report that describes the progress of TMDL development, implementation plans and the application of best management practices in Virginia’s TMDL program. The information provided in the annual report on Virginia’s TMDL program will help to identify strategies that will ensure continued success. The report is available on the TMDL web site.