A couple days after working hard with the Laguna de Santa Rosa Foundation, I was reading the New York Times and my delightful mood was a bit shattered. The heading read, “Rulings Restrict Clean Water Act, Foiling E.P.A.” I couldn’t help but wonder who is pissed off at the Environmental Protection Agency now?
The Clean Water Act is intended to put a stop to water pollution by regulating every major polluter. But apparently not all bodies of water are covered by the Clean Water Act. Pollution rates are rising yet again because thousands of the country’s largest water polluters are claiming that the law no longer applies to them. The Environmental Protection Agency has to start pulling out of certain areas and even states because companies are realizing that cops are not operating on their grounds and so they go back to what is cheapest; polluting natural bodies of water. The New York state commissioner, James M Tierney describes this as a huge problem because unprotected watersheds lead directly into New York’s drinking water.
As if this is not bad enough, the funniest part is that the Clean Water Act has one word in its written law that companies have completely warped in order to satisfy their own needs, and that word is “navigable”. “Navigable waters” has been used for decades to include many large wetlands and streams that connect to major rivers. So now companies are using creeks that occasionally dry up and streams that do not lead to larger water systems saying that those are not “navigable waters”. Interesting. It seems like a body of water to me. The new court decisions do not define which waterways are regulated which makes the E.P.A’s job a lot more difficult. A good statistic from the E.P.A. that helps support them; about 117 million Americans get their drinking water from sources fed by waters that are vulnerable to exclusion from the Clean Water Act.
The Clean Water Restoration Act is trying to take out the word “navigable” from the language of the law so that the act applies to ALL bodies of water. The federal government would not have to limit how far they go to regulate waters. The problem used to be pollution in large bodies of water and now it is pollution into smaller streams that lead to larger bodies of water. That is where the case is being lost.
The reason I bring this article to light is because the work I have been doing with Cotati Creek Critters and the Santa Rosa De Laguna Foundation work around small streams and creeks. The streams and creeks are home to a handful of native plant and animal species as well as being a great element to Sonoma County and its residents. These waters feed into the Russian River, a great body of water for Northern California. Could you imagine if large companies were dumping their pollutants into the unprotected streams and creeks flowing into the Russian River that people drink out of and swim in? I could not! Clean water and open space are so important for this country and it is crucial to not let the protection laws for these parts of nature dissipate.
Go help, Go Volunteer, Go GREEN
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/01/us/01water.html?ref=todayspaper">
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