"Americans for Clean Water"

Greetings!  

NPDES Training Institute always strives to fill our newsletters with relevant content and current news that will help you as you make important decisions for your business, but more than just that, we also work hard to educate and unify Americans around the often-polarizing issue of water quality. Enforcing the Clean Water Act is a finely calibrated scale that can easily be thrown out of balance. Over-enforcement places an imbalanced financial burden on industry - industry that creates a strong economy needed to pay for clean water - while poor enforcement means little or no accountability, which encourages industries to contaminate our water.  

Ideally, states and industries would voluntarily take measures and make investments necessary to protect citizens and the environment, but history has shown that we all need some accountability. My home state of Georgia is a great example of what can happen when we all work together to restore balance.   

Cuyahoga River, Cleveland, Ohio "River of Fire"

 Harold Brown, University of Georgia Professor Emeritus of Crop and Soil Sciences, in his book, The Greening of Georgia (2002), uses public records to describe the dire situation of Georgia's water in the decades immediately before the Clean Water Act. In the late 1960s, because of sewage and industrial waste, the Chattahoochee was considered to be "grossly polluted for about 100 miles below Atlanta," and, "for at least 40 miles, the river was considered 'dead' because of oxygen robbing-wastes in the water that made it difficult or impossible for fish to survive." Today, the story has drastically changed, and Brown reports that just a decade later, in the late 1970s, the EPA used Georgia as an example of progress, crediting the cooperation and combined effort of "the state, communities, industry, and the EPA." There are always a few bad apples, but over all, silvicultural, agricultural, and industrial operations do a much better job of protecting our water resources today than 40 years ago.

 Because of our diverse interests and conflicting needs, the debate around clean water - how to get it, keep it, and protect it - will continue, and for good reason. Both sides need to be reminded that this is not a simple issue, and the pressure to keep our water clean must be balanced with the need to maintain a healthy, growing economy, which encourages innovation and responsible growth. No matter what side of this debate you stand on, though, it's impossible to deny the drastic improvement of America's struggling water resources since the Clean Water Act was past just 40 years ago. If you are a cattleman, forester, or lan developer, there's no doubt you've felt the financial burden of the environmental enforcement laws; If you work for the EPD, you feel the pressure to enforce the laws that provide accountability and maintain healthy water; and if you're an environmentalist, you feel the burden of holding industries and governments accountable to the laws that  protect our environment. Together we keep the balance.

We all celebrated the 4th of July this year, regardless of our profession. This is our country, our water, and our economy. America needs to continue to hear all of your voices. So keep speaking up! Just remember to listen to the voices and experiences from the other side. We're all in this together. America is the greatest country in the world, and it takes a diverse community of people to keep it that way.  Hope you enjoy the attached video. I did! 

 CLICK HERE FOR THE VIDEO