Inauguration Day always reminds me of my dad. A World War II veteran born in 1921, he could not vote in Presidential elections until after 1961, when the 23rd Amendment gave Washington DC residents that right. He took voting in Presidential elections seriously, insisting on driving me to the polls when I cast my first vote. He also watched the inaugurations without fail because we needed to watch “our President” be sworn in, regardless of how he cast his vote. I always admired this, though I admit that I approach this year’s ceremony with more concern when it comes to my work on environmental and health policy issues.
The incoming President has professed an unprecedented hostility to the safeguards put in place by our landmark environmental laws, including the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. While on occasion noting that we will have “clean water and clean air,” the incoming administration, and the new Congressional leadership, have committed to gutting federal agency budgets and dramatically reducing staff. Complex laws like the Clean Water Act are just piles of paper without federal and state programs implementing their goals.
Gutting regulations, slashing budgets, and eliminating Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) staff will lead to a polluter free-for-all wasting critical time to combat the climate crisis that endangers Earth's life support systems. Much of our work is grounded in pushing EPA to do better – such as modernizing water pollution limits for industries discharging wastewater into our rivers, lakes, and bays. That is a tall order, even with current staffing and funding levels. Absent updates, permits will allow industries to dump pollutants into water, endangering our drinking water at risk and threatening activities like fishing and swimming.
This is a bleak assessment, and the promises and predictions are indeed troubling. But I am reminded of another thing about my dad, the habitual voter and Inauguration watcher. He did not spend much time brooding. He would rather figure out how to tackle a problem. As it turns out, our work at Clean Water Action offers just such a solution. We have decades of experience, not only pushing for progress but pushing back on efforts to weaken environmental and health protections. We know the issues and we can mobilize people to speak out on issues from drinking water protection to reducing toxic exposures to promoting clean energy. Our state offices are poised to shore up protections at the local and state levels and to mobilize our members to speak out for effective and commonsense protections.
We know the solution in the face of these challenges. You can be sure that we will be on the job to defend critical safeguards and to keep pushing the federal government to do better at protecting our water resources and tackling pollution.
