EPA is Dismantling the Clean Water Act.
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Right before Labor Day weekend, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced yet another attack on the Clean Water Act. And this time, it is even more devastating than the last.
Now, EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers are considering new options that would remove protections from most streams and wetlands. The new approach would only protect streams that have water virtually year-round and wetlands that have near year-round surface water connections to protected waters. EPA itself expects most intermittent streams and the majority of currently protected adjacent wetlands would fail these new tests.
Analyses by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) estimate that at least 94% of wetlands and 79% of the streams in the U.S. would be at risk of losing federal protections under the proposal.
Those numbers are staggering. Wetlands and streams play a vital role in protecting our drinking water. They absorb runoff, prevent flooding, and filter harmful pollution.
The Clean Water Act only works if there are waters left to protect. Removing protections from so many wetlands and streams is a fundamental attack on the Clean Water Act itself and would mean it is virtually impossible for the Act to meet its goal to restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the nation's waters.
We must urge EPA not to move ahead with this proposal.
TAKE ACTION TODAY!
EPA is harming the Clean Water Act in even more subtle ways too.
In August, EPA seems to have quietly rescinded a memo from 2022 that provided guidance to states for addressing PFAS (per-and poly-fluoroalkyl substances) pollution through Clean Water Act permitting. The December 2022 memo was entitled “Addressing PFAS Discharges in NPDES [National Pollution Discharge Elimination System] Permits and Through the Pretreatment Program and Monitoring Programs.”
The guidance memo, which advocates have pointed to for years to improve PFAS-related permitting controls, was simply removed from EPA's website. No clear public announcement was made and we couldn't find any information why the memo was missing until we posed the question directly to staff at EPA.
EPA claims the guidance memo was rescinded because it "caused confusion for states and permittees and resulted in inconsistent application across the country." But to the contrary, the memo made it clear that states can use their existing authority to make their own permit conditions to help control PFAS pollution.
Holding industrial polluters accountable for the PFAS pollution, especially through the Clean Water Act permitting process, ensures the burden of cleanup is not passed to downstream communities or wastewater utilities to treat. While rescinding the memo doesn't change state authorities, it will certainly cause confusion for states.
Overall, EPA continues to undermine the fundamentals of the Clean Water Act and whittles away at specific protections. Both of these actions are a clear indication that EPA is turning its back on its role to protect water quality, drinking water, and the health of our communities.
