In most cases the resources (financial, human, and others) required for addressing all identified water quality problems significantly exceed the resources allocated to the water pollution control sector. Priorities, therefore, need to be assigned to all problems in order to concentrate the available resources on solving the most urgent and important problems. If this is not done the effect may be an uncoordinated and scattered management effort, resulting in a waste of scarce resources on less important problems. Ultimately, the process of assigning priority to problems requires a political decision, based on environmental, economic, social and other considerations, and therefore.
