One Step Forward, Two Steps Back - The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty-First Century - page 82

CHAPTER 9
One Step Forward, Two Steps Back
WHO IS MINDING THE WELL?
In December 2009, after a series of blistering news reports—in the NewYorkTimes,the
WashingtonPost,and the Associated Press—about the rise of water pollution in recent
years, the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure held hearings on wa-
ter quality, which revealed a deepening rift between federal and state lawmakers.
“States are doing a good job of enforcing provisions of the Clean Water Act and should
be commended given the many constraints such as small budgets and an expanding
number of polluters,” said Tom Porta , an environmental official from Nevada. CWA viol-
ations, he said, “represent a small part of the compliance picture.”
But many congressmen were unconvinced by this and said they were shocked to learn
that water pollution was such a big problem thirty-seven years after the CWA was signed.
“I don't think anyone realized how bad things have become,” said Representative James
Oberstar , a Minnesota Democrat. “The EPA and states have completely dropped the
ball.”
The question of what role the Environmental Protection Agency and its leader, called an
administrator, should play has been a sore point in Washington for years.
Since its heyday in the seventies, the EPA has suffered a long, slow decline. Under-
funded, overly politicized , and widely dismissed as toothless, the agency shed water-pol-
lution experts and became increasingly ineffective during the administration of George
W. Bush. During his presidency EPA regulators took a hands-off approach to municipal
water systems and tried to nudge repeat polluters to comply with the Clean Water Act
and Safe Drinking Water Act rather than punish them with fines. This approach proved
ineffective at stemming pollution, and agency employees grew cynical and demoralized.
Part of the problem was (and is) that EPA regulators lack jurisdiction to prosecute
many major pollution cases. This is the result of rulings that have left it unclear which
waterways are protected. An estimated iteen hundred major pollution cases were not
prosecuted in recent years because of confusion over jurisdiction, according to the New
YorkTimes. Most notorious was the muddying of the Clean Water Act by the US Su-
preme Court.