CLEAN WATER ACT AT 30

A compelling story often is a more effective motivator of public action than the slow accumulation of evidence, and it is fair to say that the sight in 1968 of the Cuyahoga River in Ohio bursting into flames from the toxic stew that smothered it did more to awaken the nation to the awful state of its waterways than the decades of environmental reports that preceded it. As state and federal agencies mark today as the 30th anniversary of the Clean Water Act they need not another compelling disaster, but a story of what continued clean-water progress could mean to the environment and to human health.

Rivers in Maine didn’t ignite back then but they had problems nearly as severe. The common disposal method of raw sewage for Maine towns and cities was to dump the waste directly into the rivers. Toxic discharges from industry were similarly dumped. Massive fish kills were common from the lack of oxygen in the rivers, fishing was unlikely in many places and swimming out of the question.

The Maine Department of Environmental Protection has a picture of the Little Androscoggin River from the early 1970s. At first glance it appears the river and its banks are covered in snow, which seems unlikely given the green leaves and grass nearby. A closer look reveals that the snow is really a whitish sludge, an industrial effluent that has so thoroughly overwhelmed the river that no water is visible and the chances of life thriving beneath it difficult to imagine.

Maine’s record of achievement since then, both at home and in Washington, is considerably better. Sen. Edmund Muskie was among the leading lawmakers who looked at water regulation going back to the 1899 Rivers and Harbors Act and found a dismal regulatory environment that matched its effects on the state’s water bodies. The 1972 legislation for the Clean Water Act completely rewrote the original 1948 version, providing regulations on industries and cities designed to reach a goal of zero discharge of pollutants and federal assistance to build wastewater treatment facilities. The effect has been enormous, and was further improved in 1987 when another Maine senator, George Mitchell, made further substantial improvements to the act. Neither Maine nor any other state has hit the zero discharge goal, and none is likely to. And though Maine has improved its rivers remarkably over 30 years, it can do better.

The Maine DEP has cause to make a big deal out of the 30th anniversary of the Clean Water Act, but it also has plenty of work to do – David VanWie of the department lists stormwater runoff, the failing experiment in dioxin testing and nonpoint source pollution as three major areas. Members of the public, however, need not become experts on water quality to monitor progress. The state has a class system for rivers that the public can watch. Currently, only 5 percent of the state’s rivers qualify in the top Class AA; 45 percent are in each of the middle A and B classes and a final 5 percent in the industrial Class C. An intermediate legislative goal of, say, decreasing the percent of Class B rivers by 5 percent and increasing Class AA by that amount would represent a measurable achievement.

The story is what those numbers yield – fishermen who can eat their catch without also eating toxic soup, children playing in waters where warnings used to be posted, wildlife thriving – is the result of a stronger Clean Water Act during the last 30 years and how it will continue to be improved in the future.