ACT50 — Help restore WOTUS
Big corporations have been working for decades to undermine the Clean Water Act—the federal law that requires reduction or elimination of water pollution from industrial waste and sewage in the nation’s waters. As a result, while the Clean Water Act has been very effective in controlling and cleaning up water pollution in many respects, due to deregulation and lack of government enforcement, many of our waterways remain severely polluted and pollution appears to be increasing. For example, data from EPA shows water pollution is impairing 588,173 miles of rivers and streams, 13,208,917 acres of lakes and reservoirs, and 39,230 square miles of open waters of the Great Lakes.
As we approach the 50th Anniversary of the Clean Water Act on October 18, 2022, there is finally an opportunity to undo deregulatory actions that have weakened the Clean Water Act and fully restore clean water protections for the nation’s waters. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Army Corps of Engineers (Army Corps) are in the process of defining which types of waters will be protected against pollution, degradation, and destruction by pollution discharges, dredging, and filling—i.e. what kinds of rivers, streams, lakes, and rivers are “water of the United States” that are protected from pollution by the Clean Water Act.
If a stream, river, lake, or wetland is not included in the Clean Water Act definition of “waters of the United States,” then industrial waste and municipal sewage (e.g. toxins, pathogens, carcinogens, and radioactive materials) can be dumped into those waters without any treatment or pollution controls—contaminating drinking water supplies, killing fish in rivers and lakes, or making children sick when they go swimming as was commonplace before the 1972 Clean Water Act.
EPA and the Army Corps need to hear from you that fully protecting and restoring clean water in all of our nation’s interconnected waters is an urgent priority of national and local importance. You have an opportunity to tell the agencies how you use and depend upon rivers, streams, lakes, and rivers and why clean water is important to you.