What’s Controversial? Absolutely Nothing (about the Clean Water Rule)

by Jonathan A. Scott, Director of Corporate Relations, on Twitter, @jscottnh There's no real controversy here... Capping more than a decade of campaigning by Clean Water Action and allies, the Obama Administration released its final Clean Water Rule on May 27. Although the protracted battle has received little news coverage, most of the time, when it has been reported at all, the news has focused on “the controversy” or “the controversial Clean Water Rule.”

The referenced media source is missing and needs to be re-embedded.

We can’t really complain when the news media keep on doing what they seem to do best --seize on a perceived conflict and then report on it. We’ve seen this time and again with news coverage of the climate crisis, which magnifies industry-backed anti-science climate denial and portrays deniers’ fringe views as legitimate, mainstream ones. That’s just the way much of the news business works these days. In fact, the Clean Water Rule is a relatively straightforward, common-sense fix to a growing problem within the Clean Water Act. Weakening changes first adopted during the Bush Administration (George W.) at the behest of polluter interests were made even worse by polluter-friendly court decisions. In the years since, fundamental protections were muddied to the extent that it was no longer clear what water resources were supposed to be protected. Enforcement suffered. Small streams (60 percent of small streams nationwide), 20 million wetlands acres, and drinking water sources for 1 in 3 Americans were left vulnerable to pollution, depletion and development. There is nothing remotely controversial about protecting these water resources. Otherwise the law doing so would never have gotten passed in the first place. The 1972 Clean Water Act became law with overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress. Strip away the overheated rhetoric and the policy details, and the entire debate comes down to one thing: clean water vs dirty water. For this reason, only a narrow spectrum of interests has embraced the “dirty water” side as its cause, sort of a “Who’s Who” of polluters:

• Corporate champions of the old energy economy (big oil and coal),
• Industrial agriculture (even though the law largely exempts their pollution),
• Some big commercial developers and their associations,
• A few big chemical and manufacturing companies.

Unless you measure them in terms of dollars spent on lobbying and elections, the interests driving this Dirty Water train form a distinct minority at the margins of our democracy. The public and most other businesses have always strongly supported the Clean Water Act and other laws to protect clean water. So to create the illusion of “controversy” the Dirty Water folks do a lot of what they seem to do best: making stuff up (as we say in polite company) or lying (as we say in polite company when we want to make things absolutely clear). Sadly, an emerging Dirty Water Caucus in the U.S. House and Senate and front groups like the American Farm Bureau Federation have seen fit to amplify and repeat the falsehoods. Hence the “controversy.” In the closing stages of the fight, the politically unpopular American Petroleum Institute and their ilk, who had been visible and active on the issue from the beginning, suddenly stepped aside, allowing others to carry their (dirty) water. That’s why all those myths/lies about “farmers” championing the Dirty Water side have been getting so much airplay. But really, what’s controversial about acknowledging that water flows downhill? That if you want to protect your river, lake or drinking water you also need to protect everything upstream of you? Otherwise that upstream pollution could harm the water you love (and/or drink). What’s controversial about a Clean Water Rule based on the most solid of up-to-date science, which confirms – surprise – that water flows downhill and most of those smaller streams and wetlands are connected to larger water bodies located downstream of them? What’s controversial about the idea that people care about their water and want to see it protected, now and for future generations – so much so that more than 820,000 people weighed in supporting EPA’s Clean Water Rule during the public comment period? That’s more than on any other clean water issue before the agency.

The referenced media source is missing and needs to be re-embedded.

What’s controversial about the hundreds of children who drew pictures and wrote letters urging Congress, EPA and the White House to protect clean water? To us, the only thing controversial is that significant numbers of our elected U.S. Representatives and Senators would ignore these children in favor of the handful of big companies and polluters’ associations opposing the Rule. That’s worse than controversial; it’s a disgrace.   So now that the rule is out, it’s up to us to make sure Congress keeps its hands off. And those Dirty Water Caucus members in Congress? Maybe we should encourage them to seek employment elsewhere, in the 2016 elections, if not sooner.