By Jennifer Peters, National Water Coordinator
Need clean water? I know you do. All living beings need clean water to survive, yet the protection of clean water has become increasingly politicized over the past decade. It saddens me to write this, but if the original Clean Water Act, which was passed overwhelmingly by a bipartisan Congress in 1972, were to be voted on today in the House of Representatives, it would undoubtedly fail. So far this Congress the House of Representatives has
voted a whopping 30 times to weaken federal protections for clean water. The House is not just at war with water – they have also voted repeatedly to weaken clean air regulations and other critical environmental programs – a total of 209 times!
Fortunately the Senate and Obama Administration have been able to fend off most of these attacks against commonsense policies that protect our communities from harmful pollution. One of these commonsense policies is
new guidelines proposed by the Obama Administration to clarify which streams, wetlands and other water bodies are protected under the Clean Water Act. You might be thinking to yourself, aren’t all streams, wetlands and water bodies already protected by the Clean Water Act? For nearly three decades after the Clean Water Act passed most of them were, but because of
two confusing Supreme Court decisions in 2001 and 2006it has become more difficult for federal agencies to enforce clean water regulations for certain streams and wetlands. These streams include headwaters that provide source water for municipal drinking water supplies.
Yesterday and today hundreds of people are participating in a clean water “tweet-a-thon” to remind the White House that they support the Administration’s proposal to better protect streams and wetlands from pollution. Over a year has passed since these protections were proposed and the Administration needs to act swiftly to finish them. Go to twitter.com and follow the hashtag #protectcleanwater to join in the conversation! The clean water “tweet-a-thon” ends on Friday, May 25
th at 11 a.m. ET. Don’t have a twitter account or missed the “tweet-a-thon”?
You can also tell the President you support his proposed clean water policies here.
