Dear Ocean Lover:
Yesterday’s New York Times contains a chilling story about the U.S. Supreme Court declaring ambiguous the language of the Clean Water Act in terms of “navigable waters,” leaving thousands of polluters outside the law. “Companies that have spilled oil, carcinogens and dangerous bacteria into lakes, rivers and other waters are not being prosecuted according to the Environmental Protection Agency regulators working on those cases, who estimate that more than 1,500 major pollution investigations have been discontinued or shelved in the last four years,” says this news story, written by Charles Duhigg and Janet Roberts as part of the New York Times “Toxic Waters” series.
At issue is the language in CWA that limits its regulatory power “to the discharge of pollutants into the navigable waters of the United States.” The Supreme Court is now maintaining that waters entirely contained within one state, creeks that sometimes go dry, and lakes unconnected to larger water systems may not be “navigable waters” and therefore are not covered by the Clean Water Act - even though pollution from such waterways can make its way into sources of drinking water.
And then locate your representative www.house.com - and write him or her your demand that the Supreme Court honor the intent of the Clean Water Act and direct the rewriting of this language to state, “...to the discharge of pollutants into the waters of the United States.” ALL our waters are important - for the health of our planet, and for our own health.
Please stay tuned to this website, too, for Heal the Ocean’s imminent publishing of our California Ocean Wastewater Discharge Report and Inventory. This important report, the very first of its kind, is at the graphic designer now, and will be posted very soon.
Thank you for helping,
