Setting Clean Water Goals - Water Quality Standards

The Clean Water Act requires states like Wisconsin to identify the desired water quality for streams, rivers and lakes in Wisconsin so that the waters are “fishable and swimmable.” These are known as “water quality standards,” and they establish the levels of pollution streams and lakes can withstand without harming fish and wildlife.

Water quality standards consist of the designated use of a waterbody, such as the protection of a cold or warm water fishery, and specific water quality “criteria” established to preserve and protect that use. One water quality criterion in Wisconsin is for dissolved oxygen, which is necessary for fish to breathe. For example, Wisconsin has set 4.0 milligrams per liter of dissolved oxygen to protect bass, walleye, and other fish that might be found in a stream or lake that supports a “warm water sport fishery.”

Wisconsin DNR has set use designations for all of the streams, lakes and rivers in the state. These include Outstanding Resource Waters, Exceptional Resource Waters, Fish and Aquatic Life waters, and Great Lakes System waters. The DNR has created several subcategories of the “Fish and Aquatic Life” use, including

  • cold water communities (e.g. trout waters)
  • warm water sport fish communities (e.g. bass waters)
  • warm water forage fish communities (e.g panfish)
  • limited forage fish communities, and
  • limited aquatic life
 
     

The DNR has prepared guidelines for how it designates uses. In those guidelines, the DNR has changed the categories of designated uses, without actually promulgating a new rule. Because the categories above are what are listed by the DNR in its rules, we continue to use those categories. Click here to review the guidelines.

The DNR may not remove designated uses if the use they propose is “attainable.” For example, if a stream can support trout, then the DNR may not remove the “cold water” designation and list the stream as a warm water sport fishery.

If the DNR wanted to remove the “cold water” designation, federal regulations require that it undertake a “Use Attainability Analysis.” In the past, the DNR has proposed to remove key designated uses without first undertaking Use Attainability Analyses for each of the streams.

Click here to review MEA’s comment letter to the DNR on its proposal to remove designating uses. [scan comment letter as a PDF and link here]

Click here to view a slide show on designated uses and Use Attainability Analyses. [go to hanson/professional development/ public speaking/Clean Water Week and link to powerpoint presentation]

To read more about Midwest Environmental Advocates' Clean Water Campaign, click here.