‘Last Chapter’ in Water Cleanup

The Cuyahoga River, so polluted in 1969 that it caught fire, became a symbol of the deplorable condition of too many of our nation’s waterways and sparked passage of the Clean bWater Act in 1972. Great progress has been made over the 27 years since, for the Cuyahoga and many other once dangerously polluted rivers and other bodies of water. Now, says Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Carol Browner, the “last chapter” in water cleanup needs to be written.

More than 40% of America’s lakes, rivers and coastal areas, including parts of the Santa Monica Bay, remain unsafe for swimmers or fish. An initiative announced last week by President Clinton should help clean up these 20,000 sites. Clinton has directed the EPA to help states measure water quality in the dirtiest waterways, inventory specific pollutants and implement cleanup plans.

The proposed new rules are based on a largely unenforced portion of the 1972 law requiring pollution regulators to analyze water conditions and limit discharges where required. State and federal agencies have monitored factories and waste water treatment facilities, but even with rigorous enforcement of discharge limits on those polluters, many rivers, lakes and bays remain unacceptably dirty. The initiative that Clinton announced, always envisioned as the second phase of Clean Water Act enforcement, will for the first time require states to focus on entire bodies of water rather than individual polluters.

This should give attention to so-called non-point sources: water pollution caused by farm and roadway runoff and logging operations. Nationally, 60% of polluted rivers and lakes have been fouled solely by these hard-to-control non-point sources. Cleanup will depend both on technological changes, like improved catch basins or ditches, and greater public awareness of the need to avoid hosing debris and polluting fluids into storm drains. Cleanup of the Santa Monica Bay is further along than work on some other waterways. Local efforts to curb the flow of storm water and other pollutants into the bay are models that could be copied nationally.