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Confronted by an outraged public, Congress passed the Clean Water Act in 1972. The law funded thousands of new sewage treatment plants, established protections to reduce wetlands' destruction, and placed restrictions on industrial waste discharges. Although much remains to be done, an estimated 61 percent of rivers, 55 percent of lakes and 49 percent of estuaries met safety standards by 2003. Over the last years, the federal government has systematically and routinely bowed to the pressures of corporate polluters and crippled the nation's clean water programs by changing longstanding safeguards, blocking needed cleanup initiatives, failing to enforce existing laws and cutting budgets. Thirty years later, our leaders are betraying the nation's commitment to cleaning up our waters.
On June 19, 2006, a sharply divided U.S. Supreme Court issued its highly anticipated decision regarding the scope of jurisdiction under federal Clean Water Act governing the filling in of wetlands and other discharges of dredged or fill material into "waters of the United States." In the two cases, Rapanos v. United States and United States v. Carabell, the justices did not uphold Clean Water Act protections over these waters that have been in place for the last 35 years, the Supreme Court issued a split 4-1-4 opinion that lacks any single majority opinion and muddies the waters surrounding the question of the Act's jurisdiction.
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By the 1960's, many lakes and rivers throughout America were little more than open sewers. Many cities discharged raw, untreated sewage directly into waters, and there were no effective limits on toxic industrial discharges. In addition, hundreds of thousands of acres of wetlands were destroyed each year and about 70 percent of the nation's waters were unsafe for fishing and swimming.
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On January 15, 2003, the federal government instructed its agencies not to enforce Clean Water Act protections for many wetlands and small stream without first obtaining permission from headquarters. As a result, many waters are at risk of losing longstanding protections. According to EPA's own analysis, at least 20 million acres of wetlands (20 percent of U.S. wetlands) could become vulnerable. The policy has had the effect of denying safeguards for wetlands, ponds and small streams that the law has previously protected from unregulated pollution and filling.
Growing public concern that uncontrolled pollution was making our waters unsafe led to the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972. Thanks largely to the Act, we have made considerable progress in cleaning up our nation's waterways over the past three decades.