Water resources management: suggestions to the Brazilian model based on the American experience

Abstract

Continuous population growth, increasing industrialization and expanding irrigated agriculture are all placing a strain on scarce water supplies, including serious depletion of aquifers. To address this reality, in Brazil Law 9433, enacted in 1997, established the National Water Resources Policy and created the National Water Resource Management System, introducing a new integrated approach to environmental management policies through the application of economic-based instruments. This law defined the hydrographic basin as the unit of planning, considering multiple water uses, and introduced many changes at the institutional and policy instruments levels. However, nearly fourteen years after the enactment of this law, instead of integrated management and planning as originally envisioned, in many respects Brazil has returned to a strictly command and control approach. Evidence of this trend is the process of revising the rules on water quality standards and pollutant discharge limits by the federal environmental agency (CONAMA Resolution 357/2005). This process resulted in CONAMA Resolution 396/2008, which despite many criticisms maintained fixed limits for pollutant discharges, thus making no distinction between these discharges according to the related polluting activity or technology, or the carrying capacity of the natural water body. The wisest course would have been to base the revision on the international water management experience. This article aims to contribute to this effort, by analyzing the case of the United States, which can provide valuable insight in terms of defining water quality standards and effluent discharge limits based on control technologies and industrial typologies. Some of the main water pollution Water Resources Management VI 39 www.witpress.com, ISSN 1743-3541 (on-line) WIT Transactions on Ecology and the Environment, Vol 145, © 2011 WIT Press doi:10.2495/WRM110041 control instruments contained in the US Clean Water Act (CWA, 1948), which regulates water resource management in the U.S., along with the Code for Federal Regulation – CFR, Title 40 are analyzed in this paper. Among them are the Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) and the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES). Finally, based on the U.S. water resources management model, this paper makes some suggestions that could be incorporated in Brazilian legislation.