With everything else that's going on in Washington these days, you'd be forgiven if you didn't pay much attention to a vote in the House this past week to end EPA enforcement of the Clean Water Act at the state level. Needless to say, the bill passed. 16 Democrats even joined "their good friends on the other side of the aisle" to vote for this turd. Nick Rahall (D-WV) even cosponsored the bill, because mountain top removal is so vital to the economy of West Virginia, and the EPA has been a real pest on the issue. Rahall isn't alone in his state when it comes to disdain for the Environmental Protection Agency...it's practically mandatory there to bad mouth the EPA regardless of party affiliation.
Luckily, this bill will die a well deserved death in the Senate. Yet, it's worth remembering what precipitated the passage of the Clean Water Act of 1972 and, subsequently the EPA. As an Ohioan, I remember it well. Our state was the butt of endless jokes on late night TV when one of our rivers, the Cuyahoga, caught fire in 1969. Randy Newman even wrote a song about it. That a river could be so polluted that it would actually catch fire is hard to believe. Harder still is the fact that it wasn't the first time. The Cuyahoga River caught fire some 13 times over the past 150 years.
It's easy to forget just how bad water pollution was in the years leading up the passage of the Clean Water Act. Times have changed, and as a country we have by and large adopted and embraced much stricter environmental ethic. That's not to say we still don't have some serious water quality issues around the country. We do. Today, the Ohio River is still the single most polluted river in the country. It's been referred to as the worst toxic water dump in the entire country.
But in 1970 things were even worse. Time Magazine, in that year, described it this way:
ALMOST every great city has a river. The poetic notion is that flowing water brings commerce, delights the eye, and cools the summer heat. But there is a more prosaic reason for the close affinity of cities and rivers. They serve as convenient, free sewers.
The Potomac reaches the nation's capital as a pleasant stream, and leaves it stinking from the 240 million gallons of wastes that are flushed into it daily. Among other horrors, while Omaha's meat packers fill the Missouri River with animal grease balls as big as oranges, St. Louis takes its drinking water from the muddy lower Missouri because the Mississippi is far filthier. Scores of U.S. rivers are severely polluted—the swift Chattahoochee, majestic Hudson and quiet Milwaukee, plus the Buffalo, Merrimack, Monongahela, Niagara, Delaware, Rouge, Escambia and Havasupi. Among the worst of them all is the 80-mile-long Cuyahoga, which splits Cleveland as it reaches the shores of Lake Erie.
The fire along the Cuyahoga merely provided the country with an appropriately horrific Kodak Moment, which created the necessary political will in Congress to do something about it. Legislators realized that something had to be done at the federal level to address the issue, because the states were turning a blind eye to the problem. Everyone at the state level knew that cities were dumping raw sewage into the rivers, because in many cases the sewer systems had been designed to do just that. It was likewise common knowledge that factories and businesses were dumping chemicals, waste products and petroleum into the rivers. What more cost effective waste disposal is there? And those business owners and factory managers were pillars of the community. Civic boosters. Campaign donors.
When you think about it, they still are. The only thing that has changed is the law, and the enforcement mechanism to make sure it is followed. That's why the House passed this POS legislation this past week. They hate the EPA. They have for years. They hate the Clean Water Act. They hate the Endangered Species Act. The fact that Richard Nixon signed all three of these into law is just so much salt in the wound, but over the years these bills have always been in their crosshairs. The current crop of Republican Representatives finally pulled the trigger because, well...because they can, and there seems to be an orgy-like atmosphere in DC among them.
Nominally, HR 2018, called the "Clean Water Cooperative Federalism Act of 2011", was a response to objections by Nick Rahall and his GOP cosponsor John Mica to EPA efforts to protect water quality and rivers/streams in West Virginia and Florida. In the case of W. Virginia, as I mentioned, it was Rahall's concern over impediments to mountain top removal by the Coal Industry. Rep. Mica is concerned about water quality standards, in general, that limit Florida's agricultural sector's ability to ignore the impact of fertilizer and herbicide runoff on the watershed. They, along with 237 others in the House, wish to return to the good old days when the states were in charge of protecting their inhabitants from pollution. Cuz, you know, they did it so well before the feds horned in.
Has the EPA been too vigorous in its efforts to enforce the Clean Water Act? Have they engaged in strong arm tactics with states who are trying to act in good faith on their own? Not really. According to the Ohio River Foundation:
In 2007, polluters dumped 31 million pounds of toxic chemicals into the Ohio River making it the most toxic river in the country
Violations of the Clean Water Act are going unprosecuted
49% of lakes and reservoirs are contaminated above EPA safe levels
Amazingly, in some cases this is permitted pollution; however, the number of permit violations appears to be growing. Unfortunately, the political will to enforce water pollution laws has waned and is now further stressed by economic recession and shrinking government budgets.
No...the only thing going on here is just the most recent manifestation of a long held contempt for the EPA. Nick Rahall endorses the GOP meme of a "Job Killing EPA." In the US Senate, Joe Manchin of WV is planning to introduce a similar bill. Is anyone surprised by the fact that Joe Manchin is the only Democrat in Congress to receive money from the Koch brothers? That, according to the Charleston Gazette:
http://wvgazette.com/...
The relentless succession of odious, retrograde legislation coming out of this House of Representatives is alarming and depressing at the same time. How can there be this many Luddites holding elective office? I mean, if they aren't apologizing to BP, they are railing against energy efficient light bulbs. If they aren't hating the EPA, they are hating the Consumer Protection Agency, or the FDA, or the SEC.
The vision of America that these people advocate for is one of toxic rivers, polluted skies, clear cut forests, impoverished National Parks with mining and oil extraction going on, and consumers who are at the mercy of unscrupulous lenders, a predatory banking system, unaffordable health care and uninspected food products.
It's nightmarish in its breadth and depth.