On February 19, 1998, in response to a directive by the Vice-President, the Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency unveiled the Clean Water Action Plan. The plan is a combination of 111 ongoing and future actions aimed at improving our nation's water quality. The purpose of today's hearing is to review and discuss this Clean Water Action Plan. I know that several members have questions and concerns about the plan.
Before we begin, I would like to note the remarkable progress we have made under the Clean Water Act and the great challenges that lie ahead. Before we passed the Clean Water Act, approximately two-thirds of our waters were neither fishable nor swimmable. Due to the hard work of local communities, states, and the federal government, we have reversed that statistic. Today, approximately two-thirds of our waters are now fishable and swimmable.
However we still lack basic data about the health of many water bodies and watersheds. The 1996 surveys conducted by the states examined only 6 percent of all ocean and shoreline miles, and only 40 percent of all lakes and estuaries. We know that many watersheds are impacted by pollution, but 615 out of the approximately 2000 watersheds in the Nation lack the data necessary to make a reliable assessment.
While we may not know everything, what we do know gives us cause for concern. According to the 1996 Water Quality Inventory, 36 percent of the river miles surveyed, 39 percent of the lake acres surveyed, and 28 percent of the estuary square miles surveyed were too polluted to support basic uses such as fishing and swimming. EPA's Index of Watershed Indicators lists 458 watersheds with aquatic conditions well below state and tribal water quality goals, and an additional 708 watersheds are listed as being marginally impaired.
One of the primary causes of water body impairment is polluted runoff from residential areas, city streets, agricultural lands, forests and pollutants settling out of the air. EPA estimates that 75 percent of all water quality impairment is linked to non-point sources of pollution. In contrast to point sources pollution, which are relatively easy to locate, monitor, and permit, non-point sources are diffuse, hard to locate, and even harder to measure. Non-point source pollution control forces us to deal with local land use decisions and individual actions. Increasingly, the debate is centering on such questions as how we farm, where we build, and who should make these decisions.
The majority of the 111 different actions in the plan address non-point source pollution. Some have voiced concern over the process by which this plan was developed, and whether the agencies charged with carrying out these actions have the necessary authority under existing environmental law. In addition to these procedural and legal issues, we need to examine whether the federal government and the states have the resources necessary to implement all 111 actions. Finally, we should consider whether the actions in the plan address the appropriate environmental priorities. I look forward to hearing our witnesses' views on the action plan. Thank you.