EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson Weighs In

In an editorial published in last Friday’s Los Angeles Times, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Lisa Jackson called on U.S. Representatives to stop their unrelenting assault on our nation’s landmark environmental laws, including “an unprecedented rollback of the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and our nation’s waste-disposal laws, all of which have successfully protected our families for decades.” (Read this excellent article, “‘Too Dirty to Fail’?” here).

Jackson lambastes the myth that protecting the environment and public health hurts the economy, calling it “a choice that’s been proved wrong for the four decades that the EPA has been in existence. No credible economist links our current economic crisis — or any economic crisis — to tough clean-air and clean-water standards.”

In today’s anti-environment climate in Washington and here in Illinois, clean air and clean water have become more politicized than ever. That’s why we need YOU to participate in the public process. In the next days and weeks you’ll hear more from us about how to get in touch with agency officials and your legislators to let them know that you support strong protections for clean water, including:

• Ask Illinois EPA to deny permits that would allow a coal fired power plant to dump more mercury into the Illinois River,  and that would allow a strip mine to open upstream of  Canton Lake, a drinking water and recreational resource for over 20,000 residents of Fulton County.

• Urge your Senators to vote against legislation that would strip EPA of its ability to protect clean water from toxic coal ash. Less than a week after the U.S. House passed H.R. 2377, an identical bill was introduced in the Senate.  Like H.R. 2273, the Senate bill seeks to eliminate the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to ensure that storage and disposal of coal ash waste protects the health of our rivers and communities. Not yet numbered, leading champions for the bill are U.S. Senators John Hoeven (R-N.D.), Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), Michael Enzi (R-Wyo.), Rob Portman (R-Ohio), Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), and John Boozman (R-Ark.). Like the House version, the Senate bill lacks common sense safeguards that would protect communities from irresponsible coal ash dumping, and leave regulations up to the states. As the bill moves through the Senate, we will need your help to block or defeat it, and will let you know how best to make your concerns loud and clear.

• Let your legislators know that you support their efforts to defend Farm Bill conservation programs, our nation’s primary defense against agricultural pollution, which is not covered by the Clean Water Act. See Prairie Rivers Network Farm Bill priorities here.

Update Aug 2: Congress is now adjourning for their summer break until September 6. Many of the dirty water bills and riders that are listed below are now on hold. However, many representatives and senators go back to their districts/states to talk to their constituents, if you have the opportunity, tell them to oppose all the “dirty water” bills.

Thank you for all of your calls and actions.
We will keep you updated as new developments arise.

We lost a battle, but we can still win the war.

The War on Water, as we’ve discussed here, is a coordinated group of attacks on our nation’s water laws that would destroy the Clean Water Act, gut the Environmental Protection Agency and set our nation back 40 years in clean water protection. This “war” is being waged with an arsenal of bills and riders (attachments to bills) that force us to coordinate our response on several different fronts. {Continue Reading »}

Assault on Clean Water Act Under Way in Congress

Forty years ago, the Clean Water Act was established to protect our nation’s waters and wetlands from pollution and destruction. Recently, two Supreme Court decisions have made it difficult for the Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers to fully safeguard our waters.

Oil spills, mine waste, sewage, animal waste from factory farms, and polluted runoff foul Illinois waters. We all depend on these waters for drinking, for irrigation, and for recreation. They also provide essential habitat for fish and wildlife.

Keep reading to see how you can help…

New Clean Water Act Guidance – GOOD NEWS

The EPA and the Corps recently took an important and necessary step to restore essential protections in the Clean Water Act by creating draft guidance that defines which waters are protected by the Act. The guidance is the beginning of a process to restore vital safeguards for rivers, lakes, streams, and wetlands that are essential for sustaining healthy communities. Unfortunately, polluters are mustering opposition to the proposed guidance; the agencies and lawmakers need to hear from those of us who want to protect clean water.

Dirty Water Bills – BAD NEWS

We are alarmed and deeply saddened that members of the United States Congress are willing to sacrifice our health and well-being by taking away legal protections that safeguard our water. There are three dirty water bills that must be stopped:

• HR 2018 (Clean Water Cooperative Federalism Act of 2011) guts some of the most important protections in the Clean Water Act by severely weakening EPA’s authority.
• S 718 (Pesticide Clean Water Act Exemption) eliminates all Clean Water Act protections against pesticide pollution.
• Water & Energy Appropriations Spending bill 26-20, section 109 is a rider that kills the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers guidance designed to restore Clean Water Act protections.

ACTION ALERT

We can protect the Clean Water Act with your help.

1. First, stand up for clean water by thanking EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers for proposing guidance that protects our water (EPA and the Corps are seeking public comment by July 1st, 2011). Prairie Rivers Network encourages you to tell EPA that you support the guidance, and that the guidance should be followed by a formal rulemaking that creates binding law.
2. Second, call your Congressional representatives and tell them that you want them to support clean water:

Call your Representative and tell her or him (click here to find number):

I care about clean water.

I support EPA and Corps of Engineers guidance and regulations defining “waters of the US.”

Votes in favor of HR 2018 and Water & Energy Appropriations Spending bill 26-20,  section 109 are votes for dirty water and completely unacceptable!

Call Senator Durbin  at (202) 224-2152 and Senator Kirk at (202) 224-2854 and tell them:

I care about clean water.

I support EPA and Corps of Engineers guidance and regulations defining “waters of the US.”

A vote in favor of S718 is a vote for dirty water and completely unacceptable!

We cannot over-emphasize the very real danger presented by these bills.

Please make your calls today. Let us know how it goes.

 Your call matters.

Thank you for joining with us in this important battle for Clean Water!

(Special Thanks to National Wildlife Federation for its  invaluable support on this issue.)

New pollution standards will mean Chicago sewage gets disinfected

On May 11th, the USEPA told Illinois EPA that if they don’t insist on tougher pollution standards for the Chicago River, the Cal-Sag Channel and the Little Calumet River “promptly,” then USEPA will do it for them. This news was greeted with agreement from various environmental groups who have long argued for the river to be made cleaner, as was covered on Chicago’s ABC- TV station, WLS. Read the letter from USEPA here.

This is great news for the growing numbers of people who are using these waters for boating, fishing, and swimming.  Right now, the treated sewage that makes up a large amount of the water in the Chicago River, the Cal-Sag Channel and the Little Calumet River is not disinfected. This puts people at risk of contracting illnesses when they are in and on the water. Chicago is the only major city in America (and the industrialized world) that does not disinfect its sewage (yuck!). In fact, this daily discharge of 1.2 billion gallons of undisinfected sewage into the Chicago River system has earned the river a place on the annual list of America’s Most Endangered Rivers. People are talking, as no city (especially with a new mayor!), would want to be in the headlines for such a designation.

With new standards in place, the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, which operates Cook County’s sewage treatment plants, will likely have to disinfect sewage at the massive Calumet and Northside Wastewater Treatment Plants that dump to the Chicago River, the Cal-Sag Channel and the Little Calumet River.

The Chicago waterways were little more than an open sewer for nearly a hundred years. The 1972 Clean Water Act slowly resulted in cleaner water, so that we now have the opportunity for much more – for an asset and amenity running through the heart of the city to complement the gem that is Lake Michigan. USEPA’s action is yet another development, like the Asian carp crisis and our lawsuit against the Water District for illegal pollution, that point towards the need to re-think how we live with the waterways. Now is the time to re-invent the Chicago River and canals to provide upgraded wastewater and transportation infrastructure, world-class recreational and tourism opportunities, and healthy waters and people.

This post was updated on May 19, 2011 to reflect new press coverage.

The Chicago Tribune and many other news outlets covered our recent lawsuit against the Chicago Metropolitan Water Reclamation District (MWRD) to stop the routine dumping of raw sewage and under-treated wastewater into the Chicago River and Lake Michigan. During heavy rains (anything more than 2/3 of an inch), the pipes that would normally send a combination of wastewater and stormwater to Chicago sewage treatment plants cannot cope with the sheer amount of water and sewage and instead overflow, releasing that bacteria-laden water directly into nearby waters. The regular discharge of water from these treatment plants contains too much phosphorus which causes excessive growth of algae, blocking sunlight and using up oxygen that fish and other aquatic animals need to survive. The release of raw sewage and excessive phosphorous are both in violation of the federal Clean Water Act. The MWRD has actually been under investigation by federal regulators for nearly a decade, but no action has been taken.

A draft agreement on April 21 calls for more specific deadlines to finish the Deep Tunnel project, a labyrinth of large tunnels and reservoirs underground that serve as a holding area for excess water. The MWRD would also pay $670,000 in fines and spend $325,000 on “green infrastructure” that allows rainwater to better absorb into the ground rather than running off into sewers. This pales in comparison to the city of Cleveland, OH, which recently agreed to spend $42 million on green infrastructure and pay fines of $1.2 million.

The lawsuit was brought by Prairie Rivers Network, the Sierra Club, and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Read the Chicago Tribune article here.

See these additional resources about reducing stormwater pollution:

Prairie Rivers Network’s Stormwater Management Guidebook, a guide to green infrastructure with examples throughout Illinois.

Rooftops to Rivers and Re-Envisioning the Chicago River (published by the Natural Resources Defense Council).  The first is a guide to green strategies for controlling stormwater and combined sewer overflows, and the second includes the benefits of green infrastructure specifically for the Chicago region, with a summary of how everything relates to invasive species such as the Asian Carp.

The lawsuit was also covered in these news outlets:

Huffington Post

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The Pantagraph (Bloomington-Normal)

Park Forest ENews (Chicago area)

Mother Nature Network

Northwest Indiana Times

Serial Spillers: Groups Sue to Stop Chicago Water Regulators from Polluting the Chicago River

MWRD’s illegal sewage discharges mucking waterways from Chicago to Gulf of Mexico

CHICAGO (May 3, 2011) – A coalition of conservation groups have sued to stop the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District (MWRD) from dumping raw sewage mixed with stormwater, as well as algae-fueling pollution, into the Chicago River system. Effluent from MWRD’s sewage treatment plants and combined sewer overflow pipes regularly violate Clean Water Act standards in the River, impacting downstream waters from Chicago all the way to the Gulf of Mexico according to the suit.

“Keeping raw sewage out of our waters is the District’s core responsibility,” said Ann Alexander, Senior Attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Yet the problem continues unabated, even after three decades and billions of taxpayer dollars. Chicagoland shouldn’t have to wait any longer for the District to do its job right.”

NRDC, Sierra Club and Prairie Rivers Network filed a federal lawsuit today in the Northern District of Illinois over the regional water treater’s pollution problem. The suit points to discharges of pollution from treatment plants that regularly violate federal standards requiring that discharges not cause or contribute to low levels of oxygen, which fish need to breathe; and unnatural sludge or growth of algae, which harms other forms of life in the water.

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