Water Quality

An Evaluation Method for the Construction Grants Program--Methodology Gao ID: PEMD-87-4A December 17, 1986

GAO evaluated existing Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) data concerning the Construction Grants Program's effectiveness in upgrading sewage-treatment plants in order to develop guidelines to evaluate the upgrades.

GAO found that: (1) adequate stream data to assess the effect of treatment plant upgrades do not yet exist; and (2) using existing data would provide a more realistic estimate of the program's effectiveness than is now available. GAO developed a method which successfully answered essential evaluation questions with available data and software. GAO found that: (1) there were statistically significant post-upgrade decreases in the pollutants discharged from each plant that it examined and improvements in downstream water quality in three of the four cases; (2) for the most part, changes in plant discharge were moderately reflected in stream water quality; and (3) a correlation between changes in a plant's discharge levels and stream indicators does not mean that the plant's upgrade is the sole determinant of a change in water quality downstream.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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