The United States will celebrate the 40th Anniversary of the Clean Water Act this Thursday, October 18, 2012. The Clean Water Act of 1972 is perhaps the most important piece of environmental legislation ever passed.
Prior to the passage of the Clean Water Act, untreated sewage, industrial and toxic discharges, destruction of wetlands and contaminated runoff were serious problems in the majority of our country’s waterways. The Clean Water Act of 1972 was actually a complete revision of the Federal Water Control Amendments of 1948. The CWA set a new national goal “to restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Nation’s waters”, with interim goals that all waters be fishable and swimmable where possible.
The CWA protects and restores our nation’s waters by
• Establishing the Standards to Measure Success
• Identifying Polluted Waters and Developing Plans to Restore Them
• Permitting Discharges of Pollutants from Point Sources
• Addressing diffuse, nonpoint sources of pollution
• Protecting Wetlands
• Protecting Coastal Waters through the National Estuary Program
• Protecting Large Aquatic Ecosystems
Many people never knew or do not remember what state our waterways were in 40 years ago. The Clean Water Act celebrates immense success on its 40th Anniversary.
This is especially true in my home state of Georgia, where raw sewage once flowed down the Chattahoochee. Sally Bethea, Director of the Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, wrote a great article about the impact of the Clean Water Act on the Chattahoochee in the summer issue of the Waterkeeper Alliance Magazine.
In celebration, AmericanRivers.org is running a series of blog posts by staff, of different generations on what the CWA has meant to them. I loved what Ryan Lauer says about the impact Captain Planet and the CWA has had on him -
Growing up in the 1990s I took for granted that Captain Planet was looking out for the environment. The muscular blue guy with green hair reminded me to recycle and pick up litter. The bad guys, the real polluters, Captain Planet would handle. I later learned that the only way Captain Planet could actually “bring pollution down to zero” was through major legislative acts like 1972’s Clean Water Act.
The ideal Captain Planet instilled in my generation was to do our small part to help the environment: cut up those plastic 6-pack holders, have your second grade class “adopt” a manatee, plant a tree, and don’t dump anything down the storm drain. Telling elementary age children that these small acts were all they needed to do inferred that the adults had taken care of the big things to protect our environment.
Now that I am an adult I want to continue to take care of the big things—making sure the Clean Water Act is around another 40 years is the least we can do.
For many it is easy to take for granted canoeing down their local river, going for a swim in a lake, or just enjoying the beautiful blue of our waterways. But without help from our government passing legislation like The Clean Water Act and individuals doing their part these pastimes would not be a reality. We now have 40 years of proof the success legislation like this brings, the CWA pushes me harder to fight for another 40 years of environmental legislation. How has the Clean Water Act affected you?