CONCLUSION - The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty-First Century - page 303

formed, thoughtful decisions for the future. There are no universal answers to the plan-
et's water problems. But we can take concrete steps on the personal, local, national, and
global level to use water more wisely and sustainably.
Water quality is declining around the world and is stealthily becoming a major health,
economic, and environmental issue. In 2010, a billion people lacked access to clean, safe
drinking supplies, and over 2.6 billion (mostly children) lacked proper sanitation, a cru-
cial health indicator.
In the United States, the volume and complexity of pollutants flowing into waterways
is on the rise. As water quality worsens, it has become glaringly obvious that federal en-
vironmental laws such as the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, and the
Endangered Species Act, as well as many state regulations, require updating. Just as im-
portant, the agencies in charge of enforcing these laws must be reinvigorated and given
the backing to do their job properly.
With little oversight, industrial polluters such as BP, ExxonMobil, and GE have al-
lowed toxins and suspected carcinogens such as benzene or PCBs to linger in the en-
vironment for decades. Stocks of salmon, smelt, oysters, and other aquatic species have
been decimated by agricultural runoff, dams, mines, and other human interference.
Ineffective federal laws, combined with an inability of state governments to work col-
lectively against water pollution, have allowed rich fisheries and commercially import-
ant waterways, such as the Chesapeake Bay or the Mississippi River, to become severely
impaired.
If the nation's “worst environmental disaster,” the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mex-
ico, has taught any lasting lesson, it is that the desire for corporate profits combined
with lax oversight will result in environmental catastrophes that neither man nor the
environment can afford. Society relies on fossil fuels and minerals: it is not realistic to
expect resource exploration to stop in the near future, but it can be limited, monitored,
and made safer with better regulation and oversight.
Certain glaring omissions—notably the Halliburton Loophole, which exempts nat-
ural gas drillers from major environmental laws or having to disclose what chemicals
are used to hydrofrack shale—court environmental disaster. It is pure hubris to allow
the injection of toxic chemicals into the ground, at explosive pressure, with no real idea
of the effects. If a resource as valuable as the New York City watershed, which provides
drinking water to over 9 million people and adjoins the heavily fracked Marcellus Shale
deposit, is polluted for the sake of profit, there will be no way to undo the damage.
Regulators must be given the political and financial backing to curb such practices;
industry and individuals should be incentivized to participate in slowing the tide of
poisons leaching into waterways; and the nation should make the cleansing of toxic wa-