Clean Water Action

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Clean Water Action organizes grassroots groups and coalitions to solve environmental and community pollution problems, and campaigns to elect progressive and pro-environment candidates at every level.

Clean Water Action has more than 1.2 million members.

[edit] CLEAN WATER ACTION AND THE U.S. CLEAN WATER ACT

In October 1972, a bipartisan majority of the U.S. Congress passed the Clean Water Act over a veto by President Richard M. Nixon. The first sentences of the new law set forth an ambitious goal: “The objective of this chapter is to restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Nation’s waters.” This historic law represented a revolution in thinking and a national commitment to water protection and stewardship after more than 100 years of pollution and degradation. Clean Water Action was a big part of this achievement – and still is.

David Zwick and the Clean Water Act

David Zwick had been a young law school student when Ralph Nader recruited him to a task force researching water pollution problems in 1969. The task force visited many of the most polluted sites in America, including the Cuyahoga River at Cleveland, which had burst into flames due to pollution that June, and Lake Erie, which had been declared biologically “dead.” As a result of that tour and subsequent research, Zwick wrote Water Wasteland, a study of the causes and effects of water pollution. The public and the press were outraged by the findings in Water Wasteland. Zwick started a new organization – then called the Fishermen’s Clean Water Action Project (now Clean Water Action) – to turn this outrage into better laws.

Zwick and others began to lobby for new federal water laws but found the polluter lobbyists an entrenched and powerful force in Washington, D.C. Zwick turned Clean Water Action into a grassroots power machine while continuing to drive the lobbying work forward in Washington, where he was influential in the clean water debates. He contributed to key sections of the Act, such as the citizen suit provisions, which allow members of the public to enforce the law when the government fails to, and the requirement for watershed cleanup plans known as Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDLs).

What the Law Does

The 1972 act was both visionary and pragmatic. Its vision included the elimination of water pollution by 1985 (zero discharge) and ensuring that surface waters (lakes, rivers, streams) would meet standards necessary for human sports and recreation by 1983. Although these goals have not been achieved, significant progress has been made that would not have been possible without the Clean Water Act. For example, levels of phosphorus, a key factor in algae outbreaks that make swimming and fishing unsuitable, have fallen by 70% or more in many watersheds. In a 2000 assessment of the benefits of water pollution control programs since 1972, the EPA reported that such programs can be largely credited with reversing the centuries-long degradation of the nation’s waters. Comparing then-current U.S. water quality to what it would have been without the act and related laws, the report estimated that the law has had annual financial benefits of at least $11 billion — and stressed that this was a very conservative estimate.

• National Leadership – Clean Water Action's leading role in the drafting, passage and ongoing defense of the nation's major water and toxics laws, as well as their state-level counterparts.
• Local Innovation – Clean Water Action's innovative and winning people-based strategies that approach environmental problems and solutions from the community level.
• Helping People – Clean Water Action's emphasis on helping people acting individually and collectively to make a difference for communities' health and environment.

The 1972 Act was also pragmatic in that it established the basic structure for regulating the dumping of pollutants into the waters of the United States. It gave EPA the authority to implement pollution control programs, such as setting wastewater standards for industry. The Clean Water Act also required EPA to set water quality standards for all contaminants in surface waters. The Act made it illegal to discharge any pollutant from a point source (such as a sewer plant or factory) into navigable waters, unless a permit was obtained under its provisions. It also funded the construction of $8 billion worth of new or improved sewage treatment plants and recognized the need for planning to address the critical problems posed by nonpoint source pollution (such as polluted runoff from city streets and fields).

Changes in 1987 phased out the construction grants program, replacing it with the State Water Pollution Control Revolving Fund, more commonly known as the Clean Water State Revolving Fund (CWSRF). Instead of granting money to communities directly, the law now provided funds to states, which could in turn issue loans to municipalities, which would then fund new loans with their repayments.

Protecting and Building on the Clean Water Act

Although the public has remained steadfastly committed to clean water for the last 35 years, some members of Congress and Presidential administrations have tried to undermine the protections of the act to benefit powerful polluters and other special interests. When they have, Clean Water Action has worked to stop them. Now they are working to assure the Clean Water Act remains the cornerstone of water quality protection in America. In 2003, the Bush EPA proposed to open up the Act with a rule that could have resulted in a backdoor gutting of the law’s coverage of the nation’s waters. EPA left open the possibility that up to 60% of the waters of the US could be stripped of CWA protection – and that more than 90% of the waters in the arid West and Southwest might be considered beyond the scope of federal protections. Clean Water Action and our allies generated over 100,000 letters and calls, forcing EPA to withdraw from the rulemaking process. In the summer of 2006, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling left room for the Bush administration and its polluter friends to claim that the law’s protection should be narrower. So now, special interests are working with EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers to issue a new “guidance” that will restrict coverage of the Clean Water Act by misinterpreting the Supreme Court ruling.

The Clean Water Authority Restoration Act (CWARA)

The Clean Water Authority Restoration Actg was introduced again in 2007, this simple bill will once again make it clear that Congress means protection for all waters of the United States – stopping once and for all the back-door attacks on the scope of the law. Clean Water Action seeks Congressional action on CWARA to secure the law and our waters for now and future generations. The Clean Water Act has been a powerful instrument for rescuing and protecting one of America’s most precious water resources. Clean Water Action will continue to devote its energies to winning funding for the programs called for by the Act, and to support use of the Act to deal with America’s emerging water challenges. The original 1972 vision of the Act is a national treasure still.