Standards
Whatever the ownership structure, water quality standards and environmental standards relating to wastewater are usually set by national bodies, such as (in the UK) the Drinking Water Inspectorate and the Environment Agency. In the United States drinking water standards are set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). U.S. pollution control standards are developed jointly by EPA and state environmental agencies pursuant to the Clean Water Act. For countries within the European Union, water-related directives are important for water resource management and environmental and water quality standards. Key directives include the Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive 1992 (requiring most towns and cities to treat their wastewater to specified standards), and the Water Framework Directive 2000, which requires water resource plans based on river basins, including public participation based on Aarhus Convention principles. See Watertime - the international context, Section 2. International Standards (ISO) on water service management and assessment are under preparation within Technical Committee ISO/TC 224.
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Famous quotes containing the word standards:
“If one doesn’t know one’s own country, one doesn’t have standards for foreign countries.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“With his brows knit, his mind made up, his will resolved and resistless, he advances, crashing his way through the host of weak, half-formed, dilettante opinions, honest and dishonest ways of thinking, with their standards raised, sentimentalities and conjectures, and tramples them all into dust. See how he prevails; you don’t even hear the groans of the wounded and dying.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There are ... two minimum conditions necessary and sufficient for the existence of a legal system. On the one hand those rules of behavior which are valid according to the system’s ultimate criteria of validity must be generally obeyed, and on the other hand, its rules of recognition specifying the criteria of legal validity and its rules of change and adjudication must be effectively accepted as common public standards of official behavior by its officials.”
—H.L.A. (Herbert Lionel Adolphus)