75 



alone revei"se it. This is the situation today 

 in some of our Great Lakes and some 

 estuaries. 



The level of acceptable water quality is 

 determined partially by the use society 

 wishes to make of the water. If the water is 

 to be used only for commerical transporta- 

 tion, perhaps people can even tolerate its eu- 

 trophication.^ However, accelerated eutro- 

 phication, as exhibited in Lake Erie, must be 

 avoided if residential and certain recreational 

 use is to be made of the shoreline. For the 

 waters tliemselves to be suitable for swim- 

 ming, the standards must be even higher. To 

 be useful as a nursery for marine life, the 

 water must be still purer. Finally, if selected 

 marine preserves are to be safeguarded for 

 future ecological studies, at least the major 

 etfects of man must be eliminated from these 

 areas. 



The requirement in the Water Quality Act 

 of 1965 that each State must prepare water 

 quality standards ior its rivers and coastal 

 waters recognizes the need to consider prac- 

 tical trade-offs in establishing objectives for 

 pollution control. Standards, adopted to 

 water use in the 1970's, have been prepared 

 by the 50 States, and the Department of the 

 Interior is completing its review of them. 



The State Coastal Zone Authorities and 

 Coastal Zone Laboratories can be of great 

 assistance to governments in maintaining 

 estuarine water quality. The Commission en- 

 visages that some States might make their 

 Coastal Zone Authorities responsible for pre- 

 paring standards and perhaps even initiating 

 enforcement actions in the estuarine areas. 



* Entrophlcatlon Is the process of the aplnp of a lake 

 which can be accelerated by man through the overenrich- 

 raent of waters hy excessive concentrations of nutrients 

 which Induce prolific growths of aquatic organisms (espe- 

 cially obnoxious weeds and algal scums), depletion of 

 dissolved oxygen, and extensive decay. This is the last 

 stage in the geological life cycle of a lake In which the 

 lake is transformed Into a marsh and eventually into a 

 meadow. 



Major oil spills, like that from the 

 tanker Ocean Eagle off Puerto 

 Rico in 1968, have focused interna- 

 tional attention on the serious 

 problem of oil pollution of the seas. 



In other States these functions might be 

 shared, or the Coastal Zone Authority might 

 operate in an advisory role to the State pol- 

 lution control agency. In every case the 

 existence of an agency exclusively concerned 

 with the effective planning and managing of 

 the State's coastal zone should help to focus 

 attention on the difficult problems of estu- 

 arine pollution and water quality and water 

 and land use planning. 



Beyond the limits of State jurisdiction 

 there are now no water quality standards and 

 few programs for pollution control. The dra- 

 matic oil spills of the past year focused inter- 

 national attention on the problem of oil 

 pollution of the high seas. This problem is 

 being con.sidered by the U.N. International 

 Maritime Consultative Organization. The 

 elements of a comprehensive program for 

 protecting U.S. coastal regions from the ef- 

 fects of high seas spills of oil and other 

 hazardous materials have been detailed in the 

 National Multi-Agency Oil and Hazardous 

 Materials Contingency Plan of September 

 1968. 



In summary, water quality objectives nec- 

 essarily represent a balancing of many fac- 



