After what is likely to become an award winning series on the failure of the Clean Water Act to meet its goals, the New York Times produced an editorial calling for some significant changes to the nearly 40-year-old act.
The editorial calls on the Environmental Protection Agency to better police the states. The states have the primary role to issue permits and enforce the law, but many appear to fail to take their job seriously. For instance, as one commenter writes, cities and towns are rarely held accountable for dumping tons of sewage into the Great Lakes and their tributaries. “Milwaukee for instance, dumps billions of gallons of sewer (sic) annually into Lake Michigan. Why? Because only private individuals and businesses are pursued by the EPA. Municipalities nearly always get a warning to do “something”, but are never in any danger of being forced to change. So the biggest water pollution problem facing our nation will continue while we crush the guy who accidentally dumps 100 gallons of pollution from his farm into a nearby river,” writes Guy Thompto, of Cedarburg, Wisc.
The Editorial then proposes that lawmakers close the loopholes that allow pollution from large animal feeding operations and power plants. “What utilities put into the air is regulated. Not so the toxics — arsenic, lead, cadmium — they discharge into the water. The agency was supposed to have set limits on these pollutants in the 1980s, and never has. That’s disgraceful,” the New York Times states.
Another reader points out that willing polluters are much more likely to spend money on lawyers and lobbyists to avoid complying with the law arguing that compliance will ruin their business. Jack Teague of Alabama argues that we need a paradigm shift and perhaps this NYT series will begin to create a new mindset, he writes: “Until the American mindset changes to value public health above, or at least equal to, unfettered capitalism, any reinvigorated efforts at the Clean Water Act will be short-lived.” Another thing we old Rust Belters know a thing or two about – how quickly profits subsume any care for public health.
The New York Times editorial recommends fixing the Clean Water Act to include direct discharges from large point sources. The law should be rewritten to give higher priority to toxins that flow into our waters via farms, suburban lawns and city streets.
Paul Freedman of the Water Environment Federation writes on his blog that the majority of our dirty damaged waters is caused by nonpoint sources of pollution but our regulatory system fails to address these problems. As we well know in the Great Lakes region the ancient state of our infrastructure needs not just repair but in many places wholesale replacement.
The point is that the Clean Water Act is getting old and may need a bit more of a facelift to deal with more modern issues that are vexing our waters. Such a review would also allow us to include green innovations as solutions that didn’t exist in the early ‘70s. Freedman writes, “Basically today we have a regulatory tool kit that is designed to address problems that no longer exist and doesn’t give us the tools to address our new problems and potential solutions. And we don’t have integrated water programs that allow us to focus on high-priority needs and practical effective solutions. These problems will become even more challenging with population growth and climate change.”
Finally, the New York Times editorial calls for more funding for understaffed state agencies and better data collection across the board, but increasing enforcement efforts, improving the law and increasing financial aid is a lot to think about – seems some are asking if the Clean Water Restoration Act will be enough?
Related posts:
- The Failure of the Guardians and Enforcers of the Clean Water Act
- Rep. Jim Oberstar’s Panel Investigates the Diminishing Clean Water Act
- Clean Up the Murky Waters with the Clean Water Restoration Act
- Stand Up for Clean Water Today!
- Good and Evil in the Great Lakes Clean Water Debate