Protection for our waters
Promising to restore protections stripped from small streams and wetlands in Texas, 172 members of Congress have endorsed the Clean Water Restoration Act in recent months.
Over the past five years, the Bush administration and the U.S. Supreme Court have chipped away at protections for our waterways, especially smaller streams and wetlands, by defying years of precedent and narrowly defining the Clean Water Act to apply to only “navigable waterways.”
In Texas, U.S. Reps. Lloyd Doggett, Charles Gonzalez, Al Green, Sheila Jackson-Lee, Eddie Bernice Johnson and Silvestre Reyes have co-sponsored legislation that would overturn what we call the Bush administration’s “No Protection” policy.
“Failing to protect the small streams, ponds and wetlands that feed the Colorado, the Brazos and other great Texas rivers is simply foolhardy,” said Environment Texas’ J. J. Karabias. “Whatever goes in the stream ends up in the river. Pave over the wetlands and you lose the wetlands’ ability to filter pollutants before they reach larger waterways.”
Troubled waters
On the 35th anniversary of the Clean Water Act’s passage, we released our “Troubled Waters” report. The report exposes facilities that exceeded their Clean Water Act permits during 2005 (the most recent year for which data is available).
By revealing the type of pollutants that industrial facilities are discharging into our waterways and the extent to which these facilities are exceeding their permit levels, we wanted to shine a spotlight on the troubled state of our waterways.
The goals of the 1972 Clean Water Act were to eliminate the discharge of pollutants into waterways and make all U.S. waters swimmable and fishable. But the report showed that 318 facilities statewide violated Clean Water Act permits 1,340 times in 2005.
Facilities in Texas and across the country continue to dump more pollution into our waterways than is allowed by law, said Karabias.
Karabias also noted that the findings are likely just the tip of the iceberg, since the data that Environment Texas analyzed includes only major facilities and does not include pollution discharged into waters by the many minor facilities across the state.
Revitalizing the Clean Water Act
Environment Texas is calling on the Bush administration to end its efforts to weaken federal clean water safeguards and for Congress to pass the Clean Water Restoration Act, legislation that would ensure that all U.S. waterways are protected by the Clean Water Act.
State Rep. Mike Villareal joined us at the San Antonio release of the report and promised to sponsor legislation next session to “take away the incentive for these worst polluters to make a profit at the expense of the rest of us.”
