Learn More About the Dirty Water Rule—Call Your Representative to Cosponsor the Clean Water for All Act

From PennEnvironment (http://www.pennenvironment.org):

Scroll down for action.

Over the past three years, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has launched a series of regulatory rollbacks to the Clean Water Act — a bedrock environmental law that protects our nation’s waterways.¹

Under the administration, the EPA has moved to allow power plants to dump more toxic pollution into our rivers and to delay the closure of coal ash ponds.² But the worst of these rollbacks is what we call the Dirty Water Rule.

What’s the Dirty Water Rule?

The Dirty Water Rule leaves thousands of streams and more than half of our nation’s remaining wetlands without the federal protection of the Clean Water Act. From the Great Lakes to the Chesapeake Bay, our nation’s waterways depend on streams to feed them and wetlands to filter out pollutants. Wetlands also protect communities from flooding and provide wildlife habitat.

Yet under the Dirty Water Rule, if polluters dump into these streams or developers pave over these wetlands, there’s nothing the federal government can do to stop them.

For nearly a decade, PennEnvironment and our national network have worked to restore protections to streams and wetlands. The result of this effort was the 2015 Clean Water Rule, which helped protect the drinking water sources for 117 million Americans.

Now the Trump administration has not only repealed the Clean Water Rule, but replaced it with a dirty one. It is, quite simply, the worst rollback in the entire history of the Clean Water Act.

What does the Dirty Water Rule mean for our drinking water?

The streams stripped of protection by the Dirty Water Rule also help provide drinking water to millions of Americans. For example, intermittent and ephemeral streams and headwaters help provide drinking water for virtually the entire population of New Mexico.³

What are we doing?

Right now, we’re building support in Congress for legislation repealing the Dirty Water Rule. The Clean Water for All Act (H.R. 6745) already has 30 cosponsors and we are campaigning to double that number by the end of this month. NOTE: Rep. Matt Cartwright is the only member of the PA delegation that has signed on as a cosponsor—please call your representative and urge him/her to sign on as a cosponsor; find contact information at http://www.house.gov.

1. John Rumpler, “Making waves to protect America’s waters,” The Hill, January 15, 2020.
2. John Rumpler, “Making waves to protect America’s waters,” The Hill, January 15, 2020.
3. “Analysis of Surface Drinking Water Provided by Intermittent, Ephemeral, and Headwater Streams in the U.S.,” Environmental Protection Agency, July 2009.