What is the vitality and necessity of clean water? Ask the man who is ill, who is lifting his lips to the cup. Ask the Forest. — Mary Oliver, poet
Turning the age of 40 often inspires human reflection, change, or reinvention. Although not a person, the Clean Water Act had its milestone birthday last year, and is about to face some midlife challenges.
Arguably one of the nation’s most powerful environmental laws ever enacted, it has provided Americans with 41 years of laws and regulations that empowered the federal government to safeguard an environmental resource.
The act mandated that all waterways be “fishable and swimmable.”
With those words, it served fisherman, boaters, swimmers and beach-goers; homeowners along water courses; municipal water suppliers; and also the biodiversity that depends on fresh water.
With the stroke of a pen, it switched the burden of responsibility for fresh water from the citizen to the industries that were polluting water (technically called “point source polluters”). It further defined the rights for all Americans to enjoy public waterways without health hazards.
Have all American waterways achieved the standards of the Clean Water Act?
While Ohio’s Cuyahoga River no longer catches fire, other waterways still fall short. But when water is compromised, such as resulted from the British Petroleum spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the Clean Water Act allows the federal government to take swift action against the perpetrators.
Future challenges are many. What about “non-point source” polluters such as households whose septic systems are insidiously adding sewage to our water table, or urban stormwater after storm surges that overtax the drainage pipes of coastal cities and wash toxins into the water column?
What about the growing percentage of substances entering our water column that are not easily filtered by conventional means, such as caffeine and Viagra and estrogen?
The Clean Water Act may just face a midlife crisis, whereby an updated version will be required to address new challenges to our fresh water supplies.
Each American uses approximately 2,000 gallons of water per day. Our water footprint is at least twice as high as the global average, yet two out of five women in the world still walk long distances every day to obtain a few gallons of water for household use. Access to water, and specifically access to clean water, is still out of reach for the majority of people on planet Earth.
At its ripe old age of 41, the Clean Water Act continues to set high standards of social equity throughout America with regard to fresh water. It serves as a global model of how economics and environment can work together to safeguard human health. From all of us water lovers, thank you, Clean Water Act!
Meg Lowman, a longtime Sarasota-based scientist and educator, is chief of science and sustainability at the California Academy of Sciences.
Originally posted in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.