1 in 5 Facilities Pollutes Water, Group Reports

Of the 7,000 “major facilities” that the government monitors for discharges into the nation’s waterways, nearly one in five violated federal water pollution laws, an environmental group said Tuesday.

A review of Environmental Protection Agency data disclosed that 18% of the nation’s industrial, municipal and federal facilities repeatedly violated the Clean Water Act, according to the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, a Washington-based nonprofit consumer and environmental organization. Among the offenders were 27 federally owned facilities.

The law is supposed to keep the nation’s waterways pollution free.

But Carolyn Hartmann, an environmental attorney for the group, said lax government enforcement has made the nation’s waterways “easy, cheap, toxic dumps for environmental lawbreakers.”

“These are significant violations and we’re trying hard to stop them,” said EPA’s water enforcement director, Rich Kozlowski, who did not disagree with the group’s findings.