The Environmental Protection Agency recently awarded the Environmental Law Institute an eight-month contract to prepare a handbook which will assist local governmental bodies known as "208 planning agencies" in the design of regulatory programs for the control of water pollution. The handbook will focus on the legal and institutional aspects of programs regulating water pollution and will supplement other EPA technical studies.

Section 208¹ is the most significant of several planning requirements in the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972 (the Act).² It provides for designation of state and local government agencies to do areawide waste treatment planning and management, including developing procedures for control of nonpoint sources of pollution, such as erosion, construction and agriculturally related run-off. Section 208 is the only provision in the Act that deals directly with these important sources of water pollution.