YOU Can Be a Superhero for Clean Water!

By Jennifer Peters, National Water Campaigns Coordinator - follow Jennifer on Twitter (@EarthAvenger) Why do kids (and many grown-ups) love superheroes so much? Because superheroes remind us that when faced with danger or challenging obstacles, ordinary people can rise to do extraordinary things.  Spiderman was a nerdy orphan living in Queens before he was bitten by a radioactive spider that gave him his superhuman strength and agility. As a child Batman witnessed the brutal murder of his parents and vowed to fight criminals when he grew up. Here at Clean Water Action, our staff of superheroes have been fighting for clean water for over four decades.  Nearly 42 years after Congress enacted the Clean Water Act, our nation’s first line of defense against water pollution, we are facing an epic battle against polluters and their buddies in Congress who want to roll back decades of progress cleaning up our nations’ rivers, lakes, streams and bays.  Just last week, Congress voted to kill an important proposal by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which would better protect our water, dead in its tracks. How are we fighting back? We don’t have the millions of dollars the polluters and special interests do, but we DO have the power of people just like you. Every night our organizers knock on thousands of doors across the country and invite people to speak up for clean water.  So far we’ve collected nearly 40,000 handwritten letters from people who get that we need to do more to protect our water now and for future generations.  And their kids get it too – like the little girl who drew this picture of Wonder Woman and Batman fighting for clean water. It takes courage to speak up for what is right. But the stakes are too high to stay silent - polluters are doing everything they can to make it harder for us to protect our water.  If you care about clean water, now is the time to stand up to the special interests threatening our water. Here are FIVE easy things you can do RIGHT NOW for Clean Water:

1. Educate yourself.  Visit EPA’s webpage to learn all about its proposal to better protect streams and wetlands from polluters
2. Hold Congress accountable.  Did your U.S. Representative vote to gut the Clean Water Act?  Find out here. Don’t like how they voted? Contact his or her office and tell them so. Find your Representative by entering your zip code in the box in the top right corner.
3. Take action. Tell EPA you support its efforts to protect clean water by submitting a comment: DEADLINE TO COMMENT IS MONDAY, OCTOBER 20th.
4. Sign up for the “I Choose Clean Water” Thunderclap.  DEADLINE TO SIGN UP IS MONDAY SEPTEMBER 29th at 2PM ET.   Thunderclap is a social media tool that allows you and thousands others to share the same message at the same time through Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr.
5. Spread the word. Share this blog post on social media or email to friends and family and urge them to join our fight for clean water!  To win this fight, we all need to be superheroes for clean water.