vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
Drinking water supply and sanitation in the United States
In 1987 Congress passed the Water Quality Act , which replaced the construction grant program with a system of subsidized loans using the Clean Water State Revolving Fund ( CWSRF ) . The intention at the time was to completely phase out federal funding after a few years . Funding peaked in 1991 and continued at high levels thereafter , despite the original intentions . New challenges arose , such as the need to address combined sewer overflows for which EPA issued a policy in 1994 . In 1996 Congress established the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund , building on the success of the CWSRF , in order to finance investments to improve compliance with more stringent drinking water quality standards .
Drinking water supply and sanitation in the United States
The 1987 Water Quality Act amended the CWA , replacing the sewage treatment construction grant program with a system of subsidized loans , using the Clean Water State Revolving Fund ( CWSRF ) . The loans use a combination of 80 % federal funds and 20 % matching funds from states . The intention at the time was to completely phase out federal funding after a few years . Funding for the CWSRF peaked in 1991 and continued at high levels thereafter , despite the original intentions . New challenges arose , such as the need to address combined sewer overflows for which EPA issued a policy in 1994 , and which was codified into law by Congress in 2000 . In 1996 Congress established the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund , in order to finance investments to improve compliance with more stringent drinking water quality standards .
Environmental policy of the United States
The Clean Air Act amendments of 1970 and the Federal Water Pollution Control Act amendments of 1972 moved environmental concerns in a new direction . The standards that they put in place were unattainable with existing technology -- they were technology forcing . The standards that the EPA put into place called mainly for state implementation . Each state prepared state implementation plans ( SIPs ) , requiring EPA approval , and each state had to request permits from the EPA to emit pollution into any surface water . Congress also provided for a massive public works program to assist in the construction of water and waste treatment plants for municipalities . The 1970 Clean Air Act also enacted deadlines and penalties for automobile emission standards in new cars , resulting in the development and adoption of catalytic converters and greatly reducing automobile pollution .
National Flood Insurance Program
Insufficient map topographic detail or accuracy can result in the unwarranted determination of Special Flood Hazard Area ( SFHA ) . An application for a Letter of Map Amendment ( LOMA ) uses an Elevation Certificate ( prepared by a Registered Land Surveyor or Registered Professional Engineer ) to ask FEMA to remove the flood insurance requirement on individual properties .
Drinking water supply and sanitation in the United States
The economic regulation of water and sanitation service providers in the U.S. ( in particular in relation to the setting of user water rates ) is usually the responsibility of regulators such as Public Utility Commissions at the state level , which are organized in the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners . ( see economic regulator ) . However , while all investor - owned utilities are subject to tariff regulation , only few public utilities are subjected to the same regulation . In fact , only 12 states have laws restricting pricing practices by public water and sanitation utilities .
Drinking water supply and sanitation in the United States
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of February 17 , 2009 , provided $4 billion for the Clean Water SRF , $2 billion for the Drinking Water SRF and , among others , $126 million for water recycling projects through the United States Bureau of Reclamation . This program exceeded previous levels of financing , since Congress approved only US $1.5 billion of federal funding for State Revolving Funds in 2008 . This was much below the historical average of US $3 billion / year for the Clean Water State Revolving Fund ( 1987 -- 2006 ) and US $1.2 billion / year for the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund ( 1997 -- 2005 ) . The share of federal funding for sanitation has declined from almost 50 % in the early 1980s to about 20 % in the early 1990s . A May 2016 article asserted that there has been `` a huge federal retreat from helping cities fund water projects , '' stating that overall federal spending on water utilities `` has dropped 75 percent since 1977 , '' and that experts expect more situations like the Flint water crisis to emerge .
Drinking water supply and sanitation in the United States
Numerous efforts have been undertaken in the United States to control the pollution of water resources and to make drinking water safe . The most comprehensive federal regulations and standards for the water treatment industry were implemented in the 1970s , in reaction to a huge increase in environmental concerns in the country . In 1972 , Congress passed the Clean Water Act ( CWA ) , with the unprecedented goal of eliminating all water pollution by 1985 and authorized expenditures of $24.6 billion in research and construction grants . In 1974 , Congress passed the Safe Drinking Water Act , specifying a number of contaminants that had to be closely monitored and reported to residents should they exceed the maximum contaminant levels . The CWA included substantial federal grant funding to improve sewage treatment infrastructure in the form of construction grants to local governments .
Environmental policy of the United States
Major Environmental Legislation Year Law Year Law 1899 Refuse Act Hazardous Materials Transportation Act 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 1976 Resource Conservation and Recovery Act 1948 Federal Water Pollution Control Act 1976 Solid Waste Disposal Act 1955 Air Pollution Control Act 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act 1963 Clean Air Act ( 1963 ) 1977 Clean Air Act Amendments 1965 Solid Waste Disposal Act 1977 Clean Water Act Amendments 1965 Water Quality Act 1980 CERCLA ( Superfund ) 1967 Air Quality Act 1984 Resource Conservation and Recovery Act Amendments 1969 National Environmental Policy Act 1986 Safe Drinking Water Act Amendments 1970 Clean Air Act ( 1970 ) 1986 Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act 1970 Occupational Safety and Health Act 1986 Emergency Wetlands Resources Act 1972 Consumer Product Safety Act Clean Water Act Reauthorization 1972 Federal Insecticide , Fungicide , and Rodenticide Act 1990 Oil Pollution Act 1972 Clean Water Act 1990 Clean Air Act ( 1990 ) 1972 Noise Control Act North American Free Trade Agreement 1973 Endangered Species Act 2003 Healthy Forests Initiative Safe Drinking Water Act
Recycling
Legislation has also been used to increase and maintain a demand for recycled materials . Four methods of such legislation exist : minimum recycled content mandates , utilization rates , procurement policies , and recycled product labeling .
Florida City, Florida
Extensive filling operations were conducted in Long Slough near NW 3rd Avenue in the late 1970s . Fill was obtained as waste rock from a nearby rock cutting operation ( utilizing Key Largo Limestone , a local coral rock ) and was allowed to be dumped in the location by the landowners . Today , this portion of Long Slough serves as a housing development .
National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005
The law also lists permissible works : water conservation and water harvesting ; drought proofing including afforestation ; irrigation works ; restoration of traditional water bodies ; land development ; flood control ; rural connectivity ; and works notified by the government . The Act sets a minimum limit to the wage - material ratio as 60 : 40 . The provision of accredited engineers , worksite facilities and a weekly report on worksites is also mandated by the Act .
Federal Reserve System
As an additional means of draining reserves , the Federal Reserve is also developing plans to offer to depository institutions term deposits , which are roughly analogous to certificates of deposit that the institutions offer to their customers . A proposal describing a term deposit facility was recently published in the Federal Register , and the Federal Reserve is finalizing a revised proposal in light of the public comments that have been received . After a revised proposal is reviewed by the Board , we expect to be able to conduct test transactions this spring and to have the facility available if necessary thereafter . The use of reverse repos and the deposit facility would together allow the Federal Reserve to drain hundreds of billions of dollars of reserves from the banking system quite quickly , should it choose to do so .
National Flood Insurance Program
The Biggert -- Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act of 2012 ( Biggert - Waters ) modified the NFIP . At the conclusion of 2011 , as Congress passed Biggert - Waters , the NFIP cumulative debt was over $17 billion . A core principle of Biggert - Waters was to change the NFIP premiums to match actuarial risk - based premiums that better reflected the expected losses and real risk of flooding . These changes included removing discounts to many policies which were being sold below actual actuarial risk targets and eliminating `` grandfathering '' of older rates .
Environmental policy of the United States
Despite criticism from environmental purists , the Clinton administration had several notable environmental accomplishments . Clinton created the President 's Council on Sustainable Development , signed the Kyoto Protocol ( although he did not submit the treaty to the Senate ) , and stood firm against Republican attempts after the 1994 elections to roll back environmental laws and regulations through the appropriations process . During the Clinton administration , the EPA 's budget was increased , and much of the country 's natural resources were put under greater protection , such as the restoration of the Everglades and the increase in size of the Everglades National Park . Important U.S. Supreme Court cases from this period included United States v. Weitzenhoff , et al .
Rhode Island
In 2012 , Rhode Island passed bill S2277 / H7412 , `` An act relating to Health and Safety -- Environmental Cleanup Objectives for Schools '' , informally known as the `` School Siting Bill . '' The bill , sponsored by Senator Juan Pichardo and Representative Scott Slater and signed into law by the Governor , made Rhode Island the first state in the US to prohibit school construction on Brownfield Sites where there is an ongoing potential for toxic vapors to negatively impact indoor air quality . It also creates a public participation process whenever a city or town considers building a school on any other kind of contaminated site .
Environmental policy of the United States
Implementation has been difficult , with years sometimes passing between legislation passage and initial regulations . Superfund was passed in December 1980 , just before Reagan took office . The first administrator of Superfund was Rita Lavelle who had worked for a major hazardous waste generator . The result was that her implementation of Superfund was designed mainly to delay regulation , and the subsequent controversy resulted in the resignation of Lavelle , EPA administrator Anne Burford , and several other top EPA personnel . In 1986 , Congress passed the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act , increasing funding to $9 billion and providing for studies and new technologies . By 1995 , Superfund cleanup still took an average of twelve years per site , and costs for each site can range in the billions of dollars . Superfund , while showing improvements , has been probably the most criticized of environmental programs based on costs of remediation , implementation problems , and the questionable seriousness of the problems it addresses .
National Flood Insurance Program
The program was first amended by the Flood Disaster Protection Act of 1973 , which made the purchase of flood insurance mandatory for the protection of property within SFHAs . In 1982 , the Act was amended by the Coastal Barrier Resources Act ( CBRA ) . The CBRA enacted a set of maps depicting the John H. Chafee Coastal Barrier Resources System ( CBRS ) in which federal flood insurance is unavailable for new or significantly improved structures . The National Flood Insurance Reform Act of 1994 codified the Community Rating System ( an incentive program that encourages communities to exceed the minimal federal requirements for development within floodplains ) within the NFIP . The program was further amended by the Flood Insurance Reform Act of 2004 , with the goal of reducing `` losses to properties for which repetitive flood insurance claim payments have been made . ''
History of New Mexico
Since the late 19th century , New Mexico and other arid Western states have sought to assert sovereign control over water allocation policies within their boundaries . In the 1990s the legislature debated H.R. 128 , the proposed State Water Sovereignty Protection Act . Since the passage of the Newlands Act in 1902 , Western states have benefited from federal water projects . In spite of these projects , water allocation remained a politically charged issue throughout the 20th century . Most states have sought to limit federal control over water distribution , preferring instead to allocate water under the discredited doctrine of prior appropriation .
Water in California
`` The appropriation doctrine confers upon one who actually diverts and uses water the right to do so provided that the water is used for reasonable and beneficial uses , '' regardless of whether that person owns land contiguous to the watercourse . In addition , all appropriative rights are subordinate to riparians or earlier appropriators . In times of shortage riparians are entitled to fulfill their needs before appropriators are entitled to any use of the water . `` And , as between appropriators , the rule of priority is ' first in time , first in right . ' '' Beginning in 1914 , a statutory scheme has provided the exclusive method of acquiring appropriation rights through the California State Water Resources Control Board . The modern system of prior appropriation water rights followed by California is characterized by five principles :
Flint water crisis
President Donald Trump 's plan to fix the crisis in Michigan has been folded into his federal infrastructure plan . Trump 's infrastructure plan proposes $1 trillion in spending on new infrastructure by offering corporations who invest in infrastructure projects tax credits , with the corporations investing approximately $167 billion . This plan would require a return of 9 -- 10 % to investors to remain feasible . This plan has no direct reference to or specific proposal for the crisis in Flint and as of his election he has not proposed a direct federal intervention .
Wetland
Through the building of dams , Wetlands International is halting the drainage of peatlands in Southeast Asia , hoping to mitigate CO emissions . Concurrent wetland restoration techniques include reforestation with native tree species as well as the formation of community fire brigades . This sustainable approach can be seen in central Kalimantan and Sumatra , Indonesia .
Drinking water supply and sanitation in the United States
Centralized water and sanitation infrastructure is typically financed through utilities ' own revenue or debt . Debt can be in the form of soft loans from State Revolving Funds ( SRF ) , credits from commercial Banks or -- in the case of large utilities -- from bonds issued directly in the capital market . In the case of water supply ( i.e. excluding sanitation ) , 42 % of investments were financed by private sector borrowing , 39 % by current revenues , 13 % by government loans including the Drinking Water SRF , 5 % by government grants and 1 % from other sources . Although federal funding for the main of the two SRFs has declined in real terms by 70 % between its peak in 1991 and 2006 , SRFs play an important role in financing water and sanitation investments . There are two SRFs : The larger Clean Water State Revolving Fund , created in 1987 , and the smaller Drinking Water State Revolving Fund , created in 1997 . They receive federal and state contributions and issue bonds . In turn , they provide soft loans to utilities in their respective states , with average interest rates at 2 % for up to 20 years in the case of the Clean Water State Revolving Fund . In addition to the SRFs , the United States Department of Agriculture provides grants , loans and loan guarantees for water supply and sanitation in small communities ( those with less than 10,000 inhabitants ) , together with technical assistance and training .
Water in California
In response to the severe California drought , in April 2015 , Governor Jerry Brown issued an executive order mandating statewide reductions in water use . The mandate aimed to reduce the amount of water consumed statewide in urban areas by 25 % from 2013 levels . The State Water Resources Control Board ( SWRCB ) proposed regulatory instructions that grouped urban water utilities into nine tiers , with conservation standards ranging from 8 % to 36 % .
Environmental policy of the United States
The two major policy tools for protecting the environment are rules and inducements . The United States has chosen to use rules , primarily through regulation . Such regulations can come in the form of design standards and performance standards . Performance standards specify emission levels and let those covered by the rules decide how those levels will be met . Design standards specify exactly how performance standards will be met .
Water in California
Though California has laws governing surface water usage and quality , there exist no statewide groundwater management laws . Each groundwater basin is individually adjudicated to determine water rights . Otherwise , for all practical purposes , land ownership implicitly carries the right to virtually unlimited groundwater pumping .
Hurricane Katrina
Over fifty breaches in New Orleans 's hurricane surge protection were the cause of the majority of the death and destruction during Katrina on August 29 , 2005 . Eventually 80 % of the city and large tracts of neighboring parishes became flooded , and the floodwaters lingered for weeks . According to a modeling exercise conducted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers ( USACE ) , two - thirds of the deaths in Greater New Orleans were due to levee and floodwall failure . All of the major studies concluded that the USACE , the designers and builders of the levee system as mandated by the Flood Control Act of 1965 , was responsible . This is mainly due to a decision to use shorter steel sheet pilings in an effort to save money . In January 2008 , Judge Stanwood Duval , U.S. District Court , ruled that despite the Corps ' role in the flooding , the agency could not be held financially liable because of sovereign immunity in the Flood Control Act of 1928 . Exactly ten years after Katrina , J. David Rogers , lead author of a new report in the official journal of the World Water Council concluded that the flooding during Katrina `` could have been prevented had the corps retained an external review board to double - check its flood - wall designs . ''
Water supply and sanitation in Abu Dhabi
Law No ( 2 ) of 1998 Concerning the Regulation of the Water and Electricity Sector in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi and Law No ( 17 ) of 2005 Concerning the Establishment of Abu Dhabi Sewerage Services Company ( ADSSC ) .
Water in California
Three related themes distinguish Update 2013 from Update 2009 . The five year time span reinforced the value of integrated water management , and Update 2013 closely examines the practices and policies that allow water managers to combine flood management , environmental stewardship , and surface water and groundwater supply actions to deliver multiple benefits across a region . Fundamental to that integrated approach is better alignment in the management of data , planning , policy - making , and regulation across local , State , tribal , and federal governments .
Flint water crisis
On January 8 , 2016 , the U.S. Attorney 's Office for the Eastern District of Michigan said that it was investigating . A month later , they said they were working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation , the EPA 's Office of Inspector General , the EPA 's Criminal Investigation Division , and the Postal Inspection Service on the investigation .
Flint water crisis
On April 20 , 2016 , criminal charges were filed against three people in regards to the crisis by Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette . Former MDEQ employees Michael Prysby and Stephen Busch are charged with misconduct in office , conspiracy to tamper with evidence , tampering with evidence , a treatment violation of the Michigan Safe Drinking Water Act , and a monitoring violation of the Federal Safe Drinking Water Act ; former city water plant operator Michael Glasgow was charged with willful neglect of office , a misdemeanor , and felony tampering with evidence . On May 4 , 2016 Glasgow accepted a plea deal with prosecutors , admitting to filing false information about lead in Flint water and agreeing to cooperate in other prosecutions . Exactly a year later , the case against Glasgow was dismissed , with prosecutors acknowledging his cooperation and the fact that he was the person who reported the crimes of his colleagues to the MDEQ .
Environmental policy of the United States
There are many more environmental laws in the United States , both at the federal and state levels . The common law of property and takings also play an important role in environmental issues . In addition , the law of standing , relating to who has a right to bring a lawsuit , is an important issue in environmental law in the United States .
Flint water crisis
On March 25 , a federal lawsuit filed by the ACLU asked for an order requiring water to be delivered to homes of people without access to transportation or who are physically disabled . The case was settled a year later for $87 million ( with an additional $10 million in reserve ) , which will be used to replaced 18,000 lead pipes by 2020 .
Dust Bowl
During President Franklin D. Roosevelt 's first 100 days in office in 1933 , his administration quickly initiated programs to conserve soil and restore the ecological balance of the nation . Interior Secretary Harold L. Ickes established the Soil Erosion Service in August 1933 under Hugh Hammond Bennett . In 1935 , it was transferred and reorganized under the Department of Agriculture and renamed the Soil Conservation Service . It is now known as the Natural Resources Conservation Service ( NRCS ) .
Flint water crisis
Upholding the Clean Water Act passed in 1972 would have prevented an outbreak of lead poisoning in Flint . This act `` established the basic structure for regulating pollutant discharges into the waters of the United States '' . The EPA has also updated its standards and created six goals bettering the drinking water of the nation . This plan was created in November 2016 and if upheld should decrease the amount of pollution we see in waters today .
Drinking water supply and sanitation in the United States
The environmental and drinking water quality regulation is the responsibility of state departments of health or environment and the EPA .