Clean Water Act (CWA)

• U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) primarily enforces the Clean Water Act (CWA), regulating pollution of streams, lakes, estuaries and coastal waters of the United States.
   
• U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE),through its regulatory program, administers and enforces Section 10 of the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899 (RHA) and with EPA, section 404 of the CWA.
   
• EPA's Administrative Law Judges (ALJs) preside over administrative penalty cases brought by EPA against persons whom EPA believes have violated the CWA in some way, often for discharging pollutants or filling wetlands without a permit.
   
• EPA's Environmental Appeals Board (EAB) has the authority to review challenges to CWA penalties and National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits issued by EPA.
   
• Research on CWA issues involves locating primary materials: statutes, codes, legislative history documents, regulations, and decisions.
   
• Secondary materials (commentary on the law--law review articles, treatises, and newsletters) discuss and provide citations to important primary materials.

Clean Water Act (Office of Law Revision Counsel, U.S. Code)

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

The GW Law Library provides access to the Aspen Learning Library, which includes the Examples & Explanations series and CrunchTime study guides; and the LexisNexis Digital Library, which includes the Understanding and Q&A series. When prompted to login, use your GW Law email address and password.

Print study aids may be borrowed from the Reserve Collection at the Law Library's Circulation/Reserve Desk for up to 2 hours. Older editions may be found in the Law Library stacks. For more study aids in the Law Library's collection, please consult our Study Aids guide.

CALI lessons are interactive online tutorials written by law professors at CALI member schools. They can be used for studying topics in environmental law.

Ask any Reference Librarian for the GW Law CALI code.