Green | March 05, 2010 | 3 comments

Clean Water Act Leaves Waterways Vulnerable to Pollution

source: http://www.circleofblue.org/waternews/2010/world/clean-water-act-leaves-waterways-vulnerable...

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JanforGore
Vague language in Clean Water Act allows thousands of nation’s largest polluters to avoid Environmental Protection Agency regulations. As many as half of the nation’s largest water polluters might be exempt from the Clean Water Act’s requirements because Supreme Court decisions never clarified what waterways the act protects, The New York Times reports.

Vague language has allowed certain companies to not be prosecuted, which could be contributing to rising pollution rates in the U.S. Thousands of known polluters have contaminated waterways by spilling oil, carcinogens and dangerous bacteria, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials.

“We are, in essence, shutting down our Clean Water programs in some states,” Douglas F. Mundrick, an EPA lawyer in Atlanta, told the Times. “This is a huge step backward. When companies figure out the cops can’t operate, they start remembering how much cheaper it is to just dump stuff in a nearby creek.”

The Clean Water Act is supposed to end dangerous water pollution by regulating every major polluter. But thousands of known polluters have skirted punishment because regulators lack or have difficulty obtaining jurisdiction, according to officials.

The EPA estimated that in the past four years more than 1,500 major pollution investigations have not reached fruition.

Regulatory ambiguity comes from language that limits the Clean Water Act’s jurisdiction to “the discharge of pollutants into the navigable waters” of the United States. The Supreme Court has interpreted that language broadly to mean large wetlands and streams that are connected to major rivers.

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As legislators and EPA officials pursue alternative regulations, state and federal regulators told the Times they cannot protect important waterways.

EPA reports state that about 117 million Americans get their drinking water from sources fed by waters that are in danger of exclusion from the Clean Water Act.
  1. groups:
    Green,   Earth and Science,   Earth Care,   Water Is Life,   2 more
  2. tags:
    Environment,  Earth,  Toxic,  EPA,  3 more
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3 comments // Clean Water Act Leaves Waterways Vulnerable to Pollution

  • JanforGore
    • +1
      JanforGore  

    • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-XpUacV-TE

      So at what point should I just throw up my hands and lose total faith in humanity? I heard this song for the first time when I was TWELVE years old and it is STILL relevant. That speaks volumes about the FAILURE of humans to understand what is truly important. We can write all the articles we want about our "progress" and our techonological advances, and all the stuff we have, and going to the moon, and to space, and making the best weapons etc,. but let's face facts, evolution has not seemed to effected our moral code one bit. This will be the shame of a legacy we leave our children.

    • 2 years ago
  • treewolf39
  • JanforGore
    • 0
      JanforGore  

    • Thirty eight years after the Clean Water Act was passed, and here we still sit not having the ability to protect our waterways. And the excuse is, "ambiguous language." Shouldn't we know better as humans with or without the language?

    • 2 years ago
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