Those of you who read
this blog with any regularity may tire of my cynicism. I don’t blame you. I
tire of it myself.
Today,
however, is a reason for celebration. The Clean Water Act is 40 years old
today. While there is still work to be done and reason for concern, the change
that this legislation brought about is striking. Today, because of the Nixon
administration legislation, the number of Americans who have access to clean drinking water has risen from 79 percent in 1993 to 92 percent in 2008. More than
2000 bodies of water identified as impaired ten years ago now meet water
quality standards.
The
big thing, though, is that the Clean Water Act has us thinking differently now.
Until the early seventies many of us thought that it was OK to use our waterways
as open sewers. Industry dumped waste into streams and rivers without a thought
to the consequences that lay downstream.
That
is no longer the case today. As Martin Luther King, other civil
rights leaders, and the civil rights legislation of the early sixties enabled us to vote for
a presidential candidate because of the content of his character, not the color
of his skin, the Clean Water Act now has us look at our waterways not as dumping grounds, but as ecosystems and parts of our
communities to be preserved and enjoyed.
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