Nonpoint Source Pollution: a NOAA Ocean Service tutorial

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) defines point source pollution as “any single identifiable source of pollution from which pollutants are discharged, such as a pipe, ditch, ship or factory smokestack.” Factories and sewage treatment plants are two common types of point sources. Factori

Agricultural operations account for a large percentage of nonpoint source pollution in the United States. According to the Census of Agriculture, approximately 940 million acres of farmland existed in the United States in 2002. While the vast breadth of this land provides space for farming — an indu