CAMPAIGNS

Clean Water Restoration Act

With the adoption of the Clean Water Act (CWA) nearly 35 years ago, the United States Congress made a promise to protect and improve our nation’s waters for future generations.  While much remains to be done, the law has done a great deal to protect the nation’s lakes, rivers, streams and wetlands from unregulated pollution and destruction. 

Recent Supreme Court decisions (SWANCC 2001, Rapanos/Carabell 2006) and subsequent federal guidance changes, has limited and confused the scope of federal protection for our nation’s waters.  Polluters have argued that the CWA no longer protects numerous wetlands, streams, rivers, lakes, and other waters historically covered by the CWA.  Today, our waters are threatened from the lack of federal protection, and are being filled, polluted or destroyed with no legal consequence.  Congress must clarify and restore the intent and promise of the Clean Water Act.

Limiting federal protection of navigable waterways ignores the most important sources of clean water, including headwaters, wetlands, and intermittent streams that are essential for habitat, flood protection, and clean drinking water supplies.  Across the nation:

• Twenty million acres of the nation’s remaining wetlands are at risk from irreversible destruction by draining, filling or degradation.
• Nearly 2 million river miles, representing almost 60% of America’s stream miles outside of Alaska, could be compromised.
• Drinking water supplies for more than 110 million people are potentially threatened as a result of relaxed protections for small streams.
• More than 14,000 industrial facilities may be exempt from pollution permits if facilities are discharging into CWA-exempt wetlands or streams.

Examples of New York and Connecticut water bodies in danger:

• 66% of wetlands near eastern Lake Ontario;
• 22% of the wetlands in the NYC water supply watershed;
• 34% of waterways in the Croton watershed; and
• 22,400 acres of wetlands in Connecticut, and approximately 442,000 acres throughout New England.

The Clean Water Restoration Act (CWRA) of 2007 would restore the traditional definition of “waters of the United States” intended by Congress.  The law would not be giving our nation’s waters new protections; it would simply be restoring the regulatory status quo that had been used since 1972.  Americans need these safeguards to achieve the goal of restoring and maintaining the chemical, physical and biological integrity of the nation’s waters.

Specifically, CWRA would:

1. Adopt a definition of “waters of the United States” based on the longstanding definition that the US Environmental Protection Agency and the US Army Corps of Engineers have used in their regulations since 1972;
2. Clarify that the Clean Water Act is principally intended to protect the nation’s waters from pollution, and not just maintain navigability;
3. Assert that Congress has constitutional authority over the nation’s waters, as defined in the CWA, including so-called “isolated” waters, headwater streams, small rivers, ponds, lakes and wetlands.
4. Clarifies that his legislation shall not remove any current exemptions to the CWA, including agricultural exemptions.

What you can do!
Write an email to your representative in the US House, and US Senators Clinton and Schumer, and urge them to become cosponsors (or thank them if they have already become a cosponsor) of the Clean Water Restoration Act of 2007 (H.R. 2421 / S. 1870).

Email Tips:

• Include your name and address in the email.
• Stress the importance of protecting all waters in the United States.
• Urge your representatives to become a cosponsor of the Clean Water Restoration Act of 2007 (H.R. 2421/S. 1870). Please thank your representatives if they have already signed on as a cosponsor, as indicated by an asterisk (*) in the list below.
• Ask them to respond, informing you how they will address your concerns.

Please forward a copy of any response you receive to buffalo@citizenscampaign.org - it helps us track progress on the issue. Thanks!

To find out who your Representative in the US House is and write to them, please visit:
http://www.house.gov/writerep

To find out if your representative is a cosponsor, as indicated by an asterisk (*), see the list below:

Representatives:
Hon. Timothy Bishop *
Hon. Steve Israel *
Hon. Peter King
Hon. Carolyn McCarthy *
Hon. Gary Ackerman *
Hon. Gregory Meeks *
Hon. Joseph Crowley *
Hon. Jerrold Nadler *
Hon. Anthony Weiner *
Hon. Edolphus Towns *
Hon. Yvette Clarke *
Hon. Nydia Velazquez
Hon. Vito Fossella
Hon. Carolyn Maloney
Hon. Charles Rangel *
Hon. Jose Serrano *
Hon. Elliot Engel *
Hon. Nita M. Lowey *
Hon. John J Hall *
Hon. Kristen E Gillibrand
Hon. Michael F. McNulty *
Hon. Maurice Hinchey *
Hon. John McHugh *
Hon. Michael A. Arcuri *
Hon. James T. Walsh *
Hon. Thomas Reynolds
Hon. Brian Higgins *
Hon. Louise McIntosh Slaughter *
Hon. John "Randy" Kuhl Jr.

Senators:
Hon. Hillary Rodham Clinton
Hon. Charles E. Schumer *

Click here to read CCE's testimony to Congress on the status of nation's waters, including wetlands, under jurisdiction of the Clean Water Act (8/10/07)

Updated by bsmith 8/10/07