Once a purely technical sub-discipline of hydrology, water quality management is now a social and political discipline, with concerns ranging from ensuring adequate health standards to preserving biological diversity and ecosystem integrity. This book goes beyond the technical manuals and specialty publications to provide support and guidance for the everyday decisions made by water-quality managers. Water Quality: Management of a Natural Resource addresses the rarely touched upon social, biophysical, land-use and policy considerations, which reflect the issues that confront managers and decision-makers. In a series of incisive reviews, experts address key topics in modern water resource management and case studies illustrate the successes and failures of past management efforts. Water Quality: Management of a Natural Resource develops and presents a management view requiring an awareness of: the social context of management, new ecological theories, and how policy is implemented in different situations and countries.

In 1997, New York City adopted a mammoth watershed agreement to protect its drinking water and avoid filtration of its large upstate surface water supply. Shortly thereafter, the NRC began an analysis of the agreement's scientific validity. The resulting book finds New York City's watershed agreement to be a good template for proactive watershed management that, if properly implemented, will maintain high water quality. However, it cautions that the agreement is not a guarantee of permanent filtration avoidance because of changing regulations, uncertainties regarding pollution sources, advances in treatment technologies, and natural variations in watershed conditions. The book recommends that New York City place its highest priority on pathogenic microorganisms in the watershed and direct its resources toward improving methods for detecting pathogens, understanding pathogen transport and fate, and demonstrating that best management practices will remove pathogens. Other recommendations, which are broadly applicable to surface water supplies across the country, target buffer zones, stormwater management, water quality monitoring, and effluent trading.