Happy Birthday to the Clean Water Act

by Bob Wendelgass, Clean Water Action President & CEO, follow on Twitter @BWendelgass The Clean Water Act turns forty-two this weekend!

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When Congress overwhelmingly passed the landmark Clean Water Act in 1972, we set an incredibly ambitious goal: eliminate all water pollution. Before the Act, the Cuyahoga River caught fire, Lake Erie was declared "dead," untreated waste was routinely dumped in rivers and streams, and wetlands were thought to be useless swamps that needed to be drained for development or agriculture. The Clean Water Act changed all of that. Over the past forty-two years we have seen amazing progress for our water. The Act is visionary - it changed how we think about our nation's relationship with our water resources, after more than a century of pollution and degradation.

• We realized that we needed "to restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Nation's waters."
• It seeks to eliminate water pollution completely and to make all rivers, lakes and streams "fishable and swimmable."
• It includes a revolutionary "citizen suit” provision that empowers concerned citizen to be effective watchdogs to protect the water resources they use, especially when government fails to do so.
• The Act established the basic structure to regulate the dumping of pollutants into water and gave the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) authority to set standards to provide a solid baseline to support states’ pollution control programs.

We have made significant progress that would not have been possible without the Clean Water Act:

• Nearly 2/3 of all rivers, lakes, and streams are now "swimmable and fishable" - that's twice as many as met those water quality standards in 1972.
• Wetland losses have fallen below 60,000 acres per year (in 1972 the country was losing 500,000 acres per year).
• Discharges of organic wastes from publically-owned waste treatment facilities have decreased by over 45% and decreased by 98% from industrial facilities.

We still have a long way to go. We have a responsibility to renew our commitment to restore and protect our nation's greatest natural resource - water - for current and future generations. Seeing the Obama Administration’s “clean water rule” across the finish line is a great place to start. Proposed earlier this year, the EPA and U.S. Army Corps rule would restore protections for small streams, wetlands and drinking water sources by clarifying what water resources are covered under the Clean Water Act. Clean Water Action has led a national campaign to fix the Clean Water Act, restoring these protections for more than ten years. Clean Water Action members alone have contributed more than one million actions on this issue during that time – letters, calls, e-mails, petitions and more – which have all brought us to this point. Now Clean Water Action and allies are on track to deliver more than 750,000 comments supporting EPA’s action, more than on any other water issue. Some of the nation’s biggest polluters – fossil fuel companies, corporate agriculture, big developers, mining and chemical interests -- are doing everything they can to keep the rule from being finalized. It’s up to us to stop them and make sure the voices of everyone who cares about our water and wants to see it protected are not drowned out in the process. Celebrate the Clean Water Act’s birthday by taking action today to fix the Clean Water Act to restore protections for our streams and drinking water: www.ProtectCleanWater.org