Declining water quality in the United States threatens to have negative health and environmental consequences. Drinking water, recreation and wildlife require clean oceans, lakes, rivers and streams. The Clean Water Act, passed in 1972, was meant to protect all waters of the United States. It was needed back then when two-thirds of the country’s lakes, rivers and streams were too polluted for fishing or swimming. The protection of the act and the intent to restore and pro-tect all waters of the United States is needed today as the population increases dramatically and development threatens wetlands and other natural areas.

According to David Foster, Clean Water Action Texas program director, the Clean Water Act is one of the most successful acts of legislation ever passed. “When the clean water act was passed some 67 percent of all waterways in the U.S. were deemed unsafe for swimming and fishing,” Foster says. “ We even had waterways that would catch fire. The Houston Ship Channel would occasionally catch fire.” Since the Clean Water Act was passed, the number of polluted water-ways has been cut in half, according to Foster.

In 2003, the Bush Administration planned to limit federal protection to only a handful of the na-tions largest interstate waterways. When this plan was exposed by Clean Water Action and other environmentalists, people who like to fish and enjoy the outdoors visited the White House to let President Bush know that denying protection of the country’s water resources in this way was not acceptable.

The Bush Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency have persisted in weakening the interpretation of the Clean Water Act. They claim that the Clean Water Act should not apply to non-navigable, intermittent waterways or to isolated wetlands. In other words, it should not apply to any waterway that dries up at any time of the year. If this interpretation were applied consistently, thousands of waterways across the country would be left without federal protection. The EPA estimates that 59 percent of the nation’s streams and rivers, measured in miles, fall into the category of intermittent waterways. According to Clean Water Action, limiting the intended protection of the Clean Water Act to this extent puts the drinking water sources of more than 100 million Americans at risk.

In most states, federal regulation and enforcement play a major role in protecting water quality. The effect of the U.S. government’s interpretation of the Clean Water Act can be devastating for the future of water in Texas. Many miles of lakes and streams in Texas dry up during droughts, and Texas is a drought-prone state. According to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, al-most 80 percent of Texas waterways would lose federal protection under the current interpreta-tion of the act.

The Texas coast has already been affected by the weakened authority of the Clean Water Act. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Galveston District, is responsible for protecting wetlands along the entire length of the coast. The corps is allowing acres of wetlands to be drained and filled for development. Their justification is that the wetlands are “intermittent” and not “hy-drologically connected.

“Wetlands are sponges for nature -- they absorb excess water -- and the wetlands along the coast help mitigate the damage from tropical storms and hurricanes,” Foster says. “ So if we are allow-ing developers to drain and develop our wetlands, then we are increasing the damage caused by flooding, and we are doing this at a time when global warming is increasing the likelihood that we will have these heavy storms.”

This summer, the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers issued a new “guidance” directing agency staff to follow procedures that will make it even harder to protect the nation’s water resources.

The good news is that growing public concern and environmentalists efforts have kept this issue in front of the U.S. Congress with some positive results. “After years of neglect by congress and outright hostility from the White House and federal agencies, things are starting to change in Washington, DC,” says Paul Schwartz, Clean Water Action’s national water policy coordinator. Hearings and votes during the spring and summer have paved the way for progress during the current session. In March, House leaders voted to pass the Water Quality Financing Act of 2007 (H.R.720). The Bush Administration threatened to veto the bill, but Minnesota U.S. Rep. James Oberstar, who chairs the house panel overseeing new water quality investments, helped push the bill through. If approved by the senate, the bill would give Congress the authority to provide $14 billion over the next five years to assist states and communities with pollution control upgrades.

In June, bi-partisan legislation was introduced to renew the traditional scope and purpose of the Clean Water Act titled the Clean Water Restoration Act (CWARA.HR 2421). The intent of the act is to reaffirm the authority of the Clean Water Act when it originally passed in 1972: to re-store and protect all the waters of the United States. The bill has 165 House co-sponsors and needs more, including some from Texas according to Foster. You can help restore and protect the waterways of the United States by contacting your senators and representatives and asking them to support the Clean Water Restoration Act (CWARA, HR242). For information on how to contact your representative, click here.