The Senate Against Clean Water

By Lynn Thorp, National Programs Coordinator Clean Water Action was founded to make sure we kept pushing our country to meeting the ambitious goals of the Clean Water Act.  That project is far from over. Next week the U.S. Senate will vote on a spending bill amendment that would move us backwards. We've been working for almost a decade to restore water protections lost under what we have called the Bush Administration’s “No Protection” policies. Thanks to those policies, more than half the nation’s streams and 20 million acres of wetlands now lack clear protections under the federal Clean Water Act. Next week’s Dirty Water Amendment would permanently block the Army Corps of Engineers from working to fix this problem, thus stalling all federal agency efforts.  This amendment would be a major setback. It would leave drinking water sources for over 117 million people vulnerable and perpetuate permitting and enforcement confusion. The Administration is proposing common sense solutions to this gap in water protections.  We think it’s time to focus on the unfinished business of the Clean Water Act, not keep arguing about the definition of the word “All”. Tell your friends and neighbors.  We all want clean water. Let’s do something about it.