Aquatic ecosystems perform many valuable environmental functions. They recycle nutrients, purify water, reduce flooding, enhance and maintain electrical flow, regenerate groundwater, provide wildlife habitat and human recreation. Rapid population growth in many parts of the United States, along with increased industrial, commercial, and residential development, is leading to contamination of surface waters with fertilizers, pesticides, motor oil, toxic landfill leachates, and livestock manure. I'm here. Concurrently with increasing water pollution and the release of nutrient-laden urban sewage, water usage is also increasing, reducing the available streams for waste dilution. Public and private decisions to manage aquatic ecosystems have improved water transport, developed hydroelectric power plants, reduced flood risk, and provided water for urban, industrial, and agricultural use. provided, these activities also altered the physical, chemical, and biological processes involved in aquatic life. aquatic ecosystem. The Commission believes that public opinion in the United States is strongly supportive of increasing environmental concern. State investments in various types of environmental programs are important, but piecemeal and not always effective. Efforts to restore and conserve the environment need to be accelerated. The Commission believes that a comprehensive and positive restoration component should be at the center of such efforts. Restoration means bringing the ecosystem closer to its pre-collapse state. Achieving restoration means restoring or restoring ecosystem structure and function to ensure that natural dynamic ecosystem processes can function effectively again. However, recovery may be impractical or undesirable. When waters naturally devoid of fish have been successfully converted into valuable trout fisheries by stocking, or when significant urban development is located on wetlands. In such cases, the Commission recognizes that the economic value of these developments may hinder attempts to restore existing natural systems at these sites. The Commission also recognizes that preventive measures are important to protect aquatic ecosystems, and that preventive measures that benefit multiple parts of the water cycle should be prioritized. If the environment was well protected in the past, there is no need for many costly restoration projects today. Of course, restoration of aquatic ecosystems is gradual, and certain ecosystem functions and properties (such as drinking water) can be restored even when other ecosystem properties deviate from natural conditions. . Therefore, in certain circumstances, partial ecological recovery may become the goal of operational management and provide significant ecological benefits, even if full recovery is not achieved. The Commission recommends the development of aquatic ecosystem restoration strategies for the United States. This comprehensive program should set specific national restoration goals for wetlands, rivers, streams and lakes and provide a national assessment process to monitor achievement of those goals. The following recommendations are proposed as components of the program and its guiding strategy. Programming details should be developed by federal and state agencies in partnership with non-governmental experts. Achieving these restoration goals requires planning, federal leadership, federal funding, funding sources and active participation at all levels of government, and involvement of NGOs and businesses. Therefore, the federal government should initiate an interagency and intergovernmental process to develop a national aquatic ecosystem restoration strategy. Programs should be developed and maintained under the firm direction of a single responsible body.