Vote Like You Care About Drinking Water!

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By Lynn Thorp, National Campaigns Director The election is tomorrow. Clean Water Staff across the country will be blogging about what it means nationally and locally. Check back for more. Given that we always choose clean drinking water as an issue of great importance in polls and surveys, perhaps we ought to think about it more when voting. Tomorrow we will pick a President and Representatives in the U.S. Congress. One-third of the U.S. Senate is also up for re-election.  What these officeholders do impacts our drinking water and many other life support systems, which are protected by our federal environmental laws including the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Clean Air Current U.S. House Republican leadership proposed a federal budget for 2013 which cut the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by 17%, to 1997 levels.  EPA programs not only set limits for contaminants in drinking water, but also provide technical assistance to small drinking water systems to help ensure that they can treat and distribute clean drinking water.    EPA programs make sure that pollution doesn’t foul our drinking water sources.  EPA also conducts critical research into the health effects of chemicals and pathogens so that we can be ahead of the curve in protecting people’s health from dangerous  contaminants in drinking water. If we cut critical clean drinking water and health protection spending we will get less clean drinking water and more threats to people’s health. Clean Water Action has endorsed President Barack Obama for re-election for many reasons, including a solid record of positive achievement in implementing our nation’s clean water and clean air laws.  His opponent, Mitt Romney, focuses only on the need to cut EPA spending; I can’t find anything about clean water on that campaign’s website.  Mr. Romney now leads the party that wants to be known for “reining in” EPA.  The end result of that policy will be to rein in the progress we have made in cleaning up our rivers, lakes and streams and in ensuring that what comes out of the tap is some of the cleanest drinking water in the world. Vote as if you care about clean drinking water on Tuesday, November 6.