Delivering tools for healthy water

Washington's waterways connect us all, flowing through our neighborhoods and working lands, supporting communities statewide, and sustaining the fish and wildlife that define our region. Safeguarding the health of these waterways is a shared responsibility that takes coordinated and sustained strategies. As part of that commitment, we're proud to announce two key milestones: our updated Nonpoint Plan and the completion of our Clean Water Guidance.

What is nonpoint pollution?

Nonpoint pollution doesn't come from a pipe or a single location. Instead, it comes from many everyday activities and conditions across Washington. It includes things like rain washing bacteria from animal waste or chemicals off land into rivers, or losing shade trees next to streams that keep water cool. Because these problems are so widespread, they're among the toughest water quality challenges we face.

That's where the Nonpoint Plan and Clean Water Guidance come in. Together, these resources help shape our approach to address nonpoint pollution and support clean, cool water across Washington.

Updating Washington's Nonpoint Plan

Washington's Water Quality Management Plan to Control Nonpoint Sources of Pollution (Nonpoint Plan) outlines strategies for reducing water quality impacts from nonpoint pollution. For example, the plan summarizes financial incentive programs and statewide partnerships, which are both essential to be successful in this work. The plan is required under the Clean Water Act and helps secure the funding that Ecology and our partners use to implement clean water solutions. During the last plan cycle, it helped support more than $68 million in nonpoint pollution reduction efforts statewide.

Because this work is so collaborative, we strive to update the plan regularly in close coordination with our partners to reflect our collective strategies. For this update round, we used surveys and a three-month comment period during summer 2025.

Crafting guidance for clean water

At the same time, we completed the Voluntary Clean Water Guidance for Agriculture (Clean Water Guidance). The guidance is designed to reflect the diversity of Washington's agricultural industry and offer best management practice (BMP) options that can be tailored to site-specific needs while protecting water quality. For example, depending on the type of soil and erosion risk of a particular location, the guidance outlines different conservation tillage methods to help keep soil on the land instead of washing into waterways. The goal is to provide best practices that support both healthy farms and water.

Just as with the Nonpoint Plan, developing the Clean Water Guidance was a collaborative effort. An advisory group including representatives from producer groups, Washington State University-Extension, conservation districts, other state agencies, the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission, and agricultural and conservation experts helped inform the guidance.

To provide as much opportunity for public review as possible, we released draft chapters on a rolling basis throughout the summer and fall in 2025.

The guidance is organized by chapters explaining best practices for:

1. Tillage and Residue Management
2. Crop Systems
3. Nutrient Management
4. Pesticide Management
5. Soil Stabilization and Capture (Vegetative)
6. Soil Stabilization and Sediment Capture (Structural)
7. Irrigation Systems and Management
8. Subsurface Drainage Management
9. Runoff Control for Agricultural Facilities
10. Pasture and Rangeland Grazing
11. Animal Confinement, Manure Handling and Storage
12. Riparian Areas and Surface Water Protection

Finalizing the documents & submitting to EPA

Hearing from you through our comment periods is an important part of our process, and we appreciate the individuals, groups, and partners who shared their feedback with us. After reviewing all comments, we made a number of updates and developed Response to Comments documents for both the plan and guidance before submitting to EPA earlier this year.

For the Nonpoint Plan, feedback we received resulted in updates such as expanding the discussion of Tribal treaty rights and adding more information about the roles of Ecology's regional field staff and the compliance process. Partnerships continue to be central to our work and we will continue to look for ways to improve our watershed engagement and outreach.

Feedback on the Clean Water Guidance, from both the public comment period and our advisory group, highlighted the need for improved usability. In response, we reorganized the guidance to make it easier to navigate, consolidating all BMP recommendations into one place: the Recommended Best Management Practices document. Read the focus sheet to learn more about the guidance and our implementation recommendations.

What's next

With the updated Nonpoint Plan and Clean Water Guidance now complete, our focus turns to putting them into action. These resources will guide our efforts over the next several years as we work with partners, communities, and landowners to reduce nonpoint pollution and support healthy water.

We'll also incorporate the new recommendations into our funding program so landowners and local partners have support to implement these protective practices.

Both the Nonpoint Plan and Clean Water Guidance will be updated again in 2030, but our commitment to improvement won't wait until then. We'll continue to work with communities, producers, and partners to strengthen our approaches and expand opportunities that support clean, cool water for Washington's people, fish, and wildlife.