Putting the Yuk Into the Clean Water Act Policy Debate

By Lynn Thorp, National Campaigns Director - Follow Lynn on Twitter - @LTCWA I’m pretty sure that anyone who read today’s news about three teenagers urinating into a finished water reservoir in Portland OR thought “…. Yuk, I don’t want that in my drinking water!” We need a similar but overwhelming public reaction of disgust and outrage about polluters’ effort to block one of the most important pieces of clean water policy in decades. According to news reports, cameras caught three teenagers urinating into a reservoir used to store drinking water which has already passed through the treatment plant. The Portland Water Bureau was forced to flush millions of gallons of water out of the system to avoid any unintended contamination issues. Uncovered finished water reservoirs are the subject of interesting drinking water policy discussions, but that’s not the subject of this post. This post is about another threat to drinking water – it doesn’t sound as gross but it’s really a much more dramatic threat. Current policies leave the Clean Water Act broken. Water bodies which feed the drinking water for over 117 million people do not clearly receive the protection under the law which they need and which people presume they have. The Obama Administration has proposed common sense science- based policy to close this gap and restore protections that were in place for decades. Powerful interests are working overtime to defeat this proposal and Clean Water Action is working to make sure that the American people and water drinkers everywhere weigh in. You don’t want anyone peeing in your drinking water. And you don’t want contaminants in streams which feed your drinking water source. Yuk. Take action here.