A Midterm Lay of the Land: Water

The 2014 election has come and gone. New state legislators, governors and members of Congress are waking up to the fact that they are now in charge of running the country and are planning their transition to power.

There’s no better time to take a step back and take stock of where we are as a country on the issues that will shape our future. Over the coming weeks, Frontier Group analysts will be providing their take on the lay of the land on the issues on which they work in 1,000 words or less. Earlier, Senior Policy Analyst Tony Dutzik provided his take on transportation and Policy Associate Lindsey Hallock addressed food policy. Today, Policy Analyst Jeff Inglis looks at water.

America’s water resources are precious, and in grave danger. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says 40 percent of American waterways that have been assessed are too polluted to support intended uses such as fishing or swimming. Pollution threats come from factory farms, industrial facilities and a variety of other sources. Meanwhile, inefficient use of water, along with recent drought, has left less water available for Americans to use and enjoy.

New threats are also on the horizon, including the spread of fracking and a Congress threatening to roll back the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to do its job.

Americans care deeply about clean water. But special interest pressure to weaken clean water laws and stand in the way of proper enforcement of those laws is strong.

Pollution from farms is the largest contaminant of American waterways. Sewage and other waste from concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), as well as runoff from fields treated with fertilizers and pesticides, carry nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus into our waters, contributing to the formation of oxygen-free “dead zones” such as the seasonal dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico that is the size of Connecticut. This pollution also threatens drinking water supplies, as 500,000 people in and around Toledo, Ohio, learned in August.

Industrial facilities report pouring more than 200 million pounds of toxic chemicals into our lakes, rivers and streams each year – and that doesn’t include the damage done by the oil and gas industry, including water-intensive fracking, because those companies don’t have to make public the chemicals they dump into the environment [PDF].

The acts of drilling and fracking endanger underground water supplies. Fracking companies produce large quantities of wastewater contaminated with hazardous chemicals that can survive wastewater treatment processes. Leaks and spills of fracking chemicals damage ecosystems further.

At the same time that we are fouling many of our water supplies, America also increasingly faces water shortages, exacerbated by waste and inefficiency in our use of water. In a warming world, water availability could become a regular problem, with more droughts like the ones that currently plague almost one-third of the country.

Fortunately, there are ways to save water. Increasing the use of renewable energy can reduce the amount of water we waste in fossil fuel and nuclear power plants. Switching from wasteful irrigation done by sprinkler system or flooding the land to more efficient methods such as microirrigation would reduce water demand and permit less evaporation. Meanwhile, public water supplies suffer as many as 240,000 water main breaks each year, losing hundreds of millions of gallons of potable water [PDF]. Fixing the broken pipes, and improving maintenance so that there are fewer breaks, should be a top priority for water suppliers.

When it comes to stopping pollution of our waterways, the Clean Water Act can be a powerful tool for both protecting and improving the country’s water. But the law has some critical weaknesses and state and federal officials have long failed to enforce it to the hilt.

Even the EPA’s current ability to protect the country’s water is under threat. Supreme Court rulings in recent years have eroded the EPA’s jurisdiction over American waterways – including drinking water supplies for 117 million Americans. Exemptions from environmental laws, such as the oil and gas industry’s exemption from critical provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act, further erode the agency’s ability to protect our waterways [PDF].

Thankfully, a major EPA effort to restore protections to most U.S. waters has significant public support, and is on the verge of success. In addition, the EPA has also begun the process of determining what fracking chemicals must be disclosed to the public [PDF].

The new Congress will undoubtedly assail these and other actions to clean up our waterways; indeed, Republicans in the House of Representatives have restricted EPA jurisdiction, tried to defund the EPA more generally, and may try again.

Our research has demonstrated just what a mistake that would be. Our November report, Waterways Restored, told the stories of 15 waterways across the country that have been restored to health or are making a comeback thanks to the Clean Water Act. To build on that legacy of success, America must work to:

• Protect the EPA and its authority to stop water polluters
• Boost the ability of the EPA and state regulators to enforce current clean water laws
• Demand more disclosure of toxic chemical discharges, particularly those used in fracking
• Expand water efficiency efforts

While federal action on all these efforts remains important, it’s vital to build momentum from communities and states. They are often responsible for enforcing the Clean Water Act, a role made all the more important if federal efforts are imperiled. And they are places where lawmakers are weighing the public’s right to know about pollution against companies’ interests in keeping secret the chemicals they use.

The next two years will be a crucial time for the fate of America’s waterways. Let’s ensure that future Americans will be able to look back at this time as one in which we took critical steps forward to protect our waterways, and not as a time in which America returned to the “bad old days” of unchecked industrial pollution and increasingly degraded rivers, lakes and streams.