The Clean Water Act turns 42 on Saturday. To celebrate we'll be sharing reflections on the Act, talking about the fight to protect clean water, and discussing what we can all do to put drinking water first.
Four More Clean Water Act Facts (part 2 of 2) -- Learn these and you’ll be an expert
by Jonathan A. Scott, a member of Clean Water Action's development and communications teams, @jscottnh
FACT #9: Some of the main
Clean Water Act tools responsible for most of the progress cleaning up and protecting water include:
- A national permitting system, administered by the states, to regulate discharges into waterways called the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES)
- Special protections requiring review and permitting for development projects that disturb or destroy wetlands, the “Section 404” program which provides citizens a critical point of access to decisions affecting their water.
- Funding – initially a mix of grants and loans, now primarily loans – for state and community investments in modern sewage treatment plants and other water cleanup infrastructure.
- More federal funding comes to states, mainly as grants, to implement and enforce various Clean Water Act programs.
- Citizen suit provisions in the law specifically designed to allow citizens and nonprofits to intervene and make sure the law is properly implemented and enforced.
Clean Water Action played significant roles drafting and winning adoption of these provisions.
FACT #10: After Congress overrode President Nixon's Clean Water Act veto, the
Nixon Administration launched the major first assault on the new law, attempting to impound funding earmarked for states and communities.
Clean Water Action’s national Campaign Clean Water fought all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, winning a 1975 decision that forced release of the impounded funds.
FACT #11: A second
major assault on the Clean Water Act came in 1977 during debate on renewing the Clean Water Act (“reauthorization”) when developer interests and big agriculture attempted to eliminate the law’s “section 404” wetland protections. Clean Water Action again mounted a national defense of the law, partnering with recreational and commercial fishing interests in a successful campaign that featured
“No Wetlands, No Seafood” messages. Clean Water Action also partnered with fiscal conservatives to win changes allowing Clean Water Act funding to be steered preferentially to
“innovative and alternative” sewage treatment projects with the potential to deliver cleaner water at lower cost, receiving accolades for Clean Water Action from several conservative Republican politicians in the process.
FACT #12: From the beginning, most
agricultural activities have been explicitly exempted from the Clean Water Act: water that flows off of irrigated fields (and carries pesticide and fertilizer pollution) is not required to have the same permits as other kinds of point source pollution and the law also defines most agricultural runoff as “nonpoint” pollution, even if it flows through a ditch or pipe; and, most activities to convert wetlands to farmlands are also exempt from the law’s section 404 permit requirements. Because neither EPA nor the states have done much to regulate “nonpoint” pollution so far (despite 1987 amendments requiring EPA to develop a permitting program for stormwater ruoff – again, exempting agriculture), most farming activities remain exempt from the Clean Water Act.
EPA’s proposed “waters of the U.S.” rule does nothing to change these exemptions.
BONUS FACT: It is obvious that after decades of water quality improvements, progress has begun to stall. Toxic algae problems in the once-"dead" Lake Erie, which temporarily left hundreds of thousands of Toledo, Ohio residents without clean drinking water, are only the most recent example. Closing all those exemptions and loopholes in the law, which were never meant to become permanent, would be one obvious place to start. The last thing our water needs is more giveaways for polluters. But the first thing needed to get cleanup progress back on track and restore our nation's historic commitment to clean water is the simple, common-sense, science-based clean water rule proposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. This rule would fix the Clean Water Act by restoring protections for small streams, wetlands and drinking water sources -- protections that have been in place since the 1970s, through the Nixon, Reagan and first Bush presidencies.
The referenced media source is missing and needs to be re-embedded.
Now is the time to get this fundamental clean water job done. Especially today, on the eve of the Clean Water Act's birthday,
we can't allow the voices of the majority of Americans who care about their water and want to see it protected be drowned out by the narrow interests of polluters and their allies in Congress.
Make your voice heard now, at www.ProtectCleanWater.org
