The original post is about water quality standards and protection. Chp 93 has a hierarchy of WQ designations Exceptional Value, High quality, coldwater fishes, trout stocked fishes and warm water fishes. EV and HQ streams are considered special protection and there can be coldwater and warm water streams that are added to the special protections list and as a result receive higher water quality protections.
There are a few biological criteria that can be met in order for a stream to qualify as HQ, one of which is a class A population of wild trout considering wild trout are supposed to be indicative of good water quality. The process in which class A wild trout populations are indicative of good water quality and whether or not DEP takes action on that biological indicator is the issue at hand.