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<br />who like the State, assist EP A in drafting permits. The State and EP A follow Forum policy in the <br />administration of the NPDES Program. <br /> <br />o <br />N <br />CJ1 <br />W <br /> <br />There are currently 58 NPDES permits in the Colorado River Basin portion of the state. <br />Nineteen of the facilities are on tribal lands: 17 are municipal wastewater discharges or water <br />treatment plants; 3 are major facilities. The two industrial discharges, Peabody Coal Company and <br />Energy Fuels, are both on the Navajo Nation lands and are "major" facilities with numerous outfalls. <br />There are 37 non-tribal facilities in the basin: 8 industrial (I major); one national fish hatchery and <br />28 municipal systems, of which 5 are majors. Many of the facilities discharge to ephemeral <br />drainages many miles from the river. <br /> <br />Water Quality Management Planning <br /> <br />The Northern Arizona Council of Governments (NACQG) is the designated planning agency <br />for the Colorado River and its tributaries in the northeast and north-central portions of the state. <br />Along the lower mainstem of the river, Mohave, La Paz and Yuma counties, have each been <br />delegated the planning responsibilities for their areas. NACQG and the three counties along the <br />mainsterrt of the river are experiencing tremendous residential growth and have also been targeted <br />for development of merchant power plants. With the delegation, each county must prepare and <br />maintain a water quality management plan that addresses both point and nonpoint sources of <br />pollution. The plans encourage local control and the voluntary use of Best Management Practices <br />to reduce nonpoint source pollution. As the plans are updated, the State is encouraging inclusion of <br />salinity control issues and the importance of working cooperatively with the Salinity Control Forum <br />in implementing its policies. <br /> <br />To support both the Forum goals for a basinwide approach to salinity control and to ensure <br />compliance with the numeric criteria set for the river through the NPDES Program, in the 2002 <br />Review of its surface water quality standards, Arizona has adopted the Forum's Plan of <br />Implementation contained in the "1999 Review of Water Quality Standards." Another key change <br />in Arizona's water quality standards is the proposed repeal of the turbidity standard in favor of a <br />Suspended Sediment Concentration (SSC) standard coupled with a narrative bottom deposit <br />standard, The State's research has shown that the existing turbidity standard is not a good predictor <br />of impacts to aquatic life in southwest arid environments and has proposed to replace that standard <br />with a numeric standard for SSC and the narrative standard which includes implementation <br />procedures. <br /> <br />Qver half of the waters on the State's 1998 303(d) list are listed for turbidity and coliform <br />bacteria. Nearly all of the watersheds on non-tribal lands within the Colorado River Basin have been <br />assessed, as Category 1 watersheds under the Clean Water Action Plan, Unified Watershed <br />Assessment (UWA). The goal of the State's Nonpoint Source Management Program, developed <br />pursuantto Section 319 of the Clean Water Act, is to develop and implement a program which will <br />reduce human-induced pollutants from nonpoint sources from entering surface and ground waters. <br />Arizona's program has been in place for over a decade and steady progress is being made in <br /> <br />4-16 <br />