On Thursday, one of the country's most effective environmental laws — the federal Clean Water Act — will turn 40. The act sets wastewater standards and regulates the discharge of pollutants into the nation's oceans, rivers and lakes. The Clean Water Act as written can't create the universally fishable, swimmable and drinkable (where appropriate) waters that Congress envisioned when it passed the act 40 years ago. It hasn't been updated in 25 years, and it desperately needs to be. Many kinds of pollution stemming from agriculture, mining, septic systems and the timber industry are still largely unregulated, and they are causing problems such as dead zones, hypoxic waters and harmful algal blooms in the nation's waters. Storm-water pollution regulations also need to be strengthened. After 40 years, the Clean Water Act is in need of updating. We need storm-water pollution regulations that incentivize and require state-of-the-art technologies. We need infrastructure retrofits that will allow the capture and treatment of polluted runoff to the level required by water quality standards. And we need to upgrade sewage treatment plants to treat water to a level that can more easily augment local water supplies.The question now is how to achieve these things.

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