Rivers running through the U.S. are cleaner than they were sixty years ago. We often hear about environmental decline – and that’s a real concern, too. But our society has made some big improvements in the ways we treat our water bodies. And much of that is thanks to something that often generates more complaints than praise: regulation.
In the 1960s, rivers across the country were suffocating in the raw sewage, industrial wastewater, and chemical fertilizers dumped by companies and individuals. One posterchild of abuse, the Cuyahoga River in Ohio, had become such “an unregulated sewer” that its oil-slicked water periodically caught fire.
Through activism, political organizing, and bipartisan cooperation in Congress, the Clean Water Act was passed in 1972. It set limits on pollution and had strong teeth to enforce these rules, as well as funding to push clean-up projects forward. Today, bald eagles feast on sturgeon scooped from the Cuyahoga, and people enjoy canoeing in it. Rivers, streams, and ponds all across Illinois are cleaner, too, including our own Kishwaukee.
Despite all this progress, in the name of removing red tape, some in government are gutting these regulations. Just in the past year, that has meant excluding wetlands and headwaters from the Act’s purview, preventing states and tribes from blocking polluting projects, and reducing mandatory groundwater protections.
Pollution limits are not an imposition; they are life-giving. I, for one, don’t want to slip back into burning rivers, fish kills, and bacteria outbreaks. I don’t want our kids to encounter more contaminated water in their lifetime than I have in mine. In honor of World Water Day, I thank those former Congress members who passed the Act and the bureaucrats who’ve enforced it all these years. And I hope we’ll let them continue the work.
I’m Emily McKee, and that’s my perspective.
