The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has become the latest court to hand down a decision in the welter of litigation¹ surrounding EPA's establishment of single-number effluent limitations for industrial point sources under the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972 (FWPCA). Jumping foursquare into the effluent limitations controversy, the court held in E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Co. v. Train² that EPA has the authority to issue such limitations under §301 of the FWPCA, but that such numbers are only "presumptively applicable" to individual point sources.

This ruling gives continuing judicial momentum to the view, already advanced by the Third³ and Seventh⁴ Circuits, that EPA has the power to promulgate discharge limitations under §301. However, the decision serves to confuse even further the related question of the form and effect those limitations should have, and thereby leaves uncertain the achievability of nationally uniform discharge standards within each category or class of industrial polluters.