Rural Clean Water Program: lessons learned from a voluntary nonpoint source control experiment

Water quality experts have shown that runoff from rural lands contributes most of the nonpoint source pollution nationwide. Runoff and leachate from agricultural land, for example, can carry all kinds of pollutants - nutrients, animal waste, pesticides, bacteria, sediments. These materials can contaminate ground and surface water supplies, impair recreation uses of surface waters, reduce water storage, harm commercial and sport fisheries, and degrade the water's aesthetic qualities. This report describes how the RCWP (Rural Clean Water Program) has worked so far, its successes and its failures - to help state and local managers put together their own management plans for controlling agricultural nonpoint source pollution.