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The EPA and Army Corps’ Clean Water Rule

For many people, no experience is as evocative of carefree childhood memories as long summer days. Cannonballing into your local swimming hole. Water balloon fights with your friends. Homemade lemonade on a hot day. Or just running through a sprinkler with the kids on your street. With the start of summer vacation, this is exactly the kind of fun most of us can’t wait to provide for our children and grandchildren.

All of these activities are built around a fundamental assumption: the water that comes out of our faucets, hoses, and sprinklers is safe. Unfortunately, this assumption may be incorrect. Currently, Clean Water Act jurisdiction is unclear, leaving the smaller streams and wetlands that feed our drinking water supply vulnerable to pollution and toxic dumping.

{mosads}Thankfully, there is good news coming for the clean water our families depend on. This week, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Army Corps of Engineers released their final Clean Water Rule, which restores protections for these important waterways. This is great news for our kids and grandkids, and the 117 million Americans whose drinking water is at risk today.

Put simply, the Army Corps of Engineers and EPA’s Clean Water Rule fights pollution and protects the drinking water of one in three Americans.

Last week, LCV released a new poll, which found that the public overwhelmingly supports the Clean Water Rule and the agencies’ actions to protect our clean water. The results were pretty remarkable: nearly 80 percent of respondents want the rule to move forward, including a majority of Republicans, Independents, and Democrats all in agreement, while 61 percent of respondents felt that water pollution is a big concern for them personally.

This public support is not surprising, given the stakes. Without this new rule, the drinking water of one in three Americans is at risk for contamination. We all read the headlines last summer about the toxic algae contamination of Lake Erie, which left more than 500,000 people in Toledo without drinking water for three days. The Clean Water Rule will help prevent situations like these while also protecting the waterways our children and grandchildren use to drink, swim, and play in.

The Republican leadership in Congress, however, has yet to get the message about how much we want the Clean Water Rule—it seems they are only listening to big polluters. Already this year we have seen a raft of legislation in both the Senate and the House seeking to undermine these science-based protections. Through needless delay, arbitrary guidelines, and outright attempts to block the rule, many Members of Congress seem intent on defending polluters rather than fighting for the health and safety of our families’ drinking water.

Time and again, Americans have stated that they trust our federal agencies, like the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers, over Congress to decide the best way protect our health and environment. Instead of trying to gut the Clean Water Act, Congress should step aside and let the EPA do its job.

The EPA and Army Corps’ important Clean Water Rule will restore critical protections to our nation’s waterways, and with summer right around the corner, we can’t think of a better way to celebrate than to provide clean, healthy water for our children and grandchildren.

Karpinski is president of the League of Conservation Voters.

 

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