The latest from Charles Duhigg’s “Toxic Waters” series in the New York Times shows that, while Clean Water Act violations are rapidly rising, enforcement actions are declining at the same quick pace. Part of the problem comes from recent US Supreme Court decisions that have exempted many of the nation’s waterways from protection under the Clean Water Act.
Not many are getting the message. A recent editorial in the Minneapolis Star Tribune supporting PolyMet’s controversial NorthMet project claims that environmental laws are strong and are vigorously enforced. Only four days after the Tribune’s confident editorial, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a strong critique of the environmental review of PolyMet’s project, giving it the lowest possible rating, “environmentally unsatisfactory-inadequate,” and recommending the mine “must not proceed as proposed.” According to the EPA, PolyMet would destroy hundreds of acres of “high quality” wetlands, pollute ground and surface water of “national importance” with acidic mine drainage and dump mercury into Lake Superior.
From Duhigg’s, “Rulings Restrict Clean Water Act, Foiling E.P.A.”:
Thousands of the nation’s largest water polluters are outside the Clean Water Act’s reach because the Supreme Court has left uncertain which waterways are protected by that law, according to interviews with regulators.
As a result, some businesses are declaring that the law no longer applies to them. And pollution rates are rising.
Companies that have spilled oil, carcinogens and dangerous bacteria into lakes, rivers and other waters are not being prosecuted, according to regulators working on those cases, who estimate that more than 1,500 major pollution investigations have been discontinued or shelved in the last four years.
The Clean Water Act was intended to end dangerous water pollution by regulating every major polluter. But today, regulators may be unable to prosecute as many as half of the nation’s largest known polluters because officials lack jurisdiction or because proving jurisdiction would be overwhelmingly difficult or time consuming, according to midlevel officials.
“We are, in essence, shutting down our Clean Water programs in some states,” said Douglas F. Mundrick, an E.P.A. lawyer in Atlanta. “This is a huge step backward. When companies figure out the cops can’t operate, they start remembering how much cheaper it is to just dump stuff in a nearby creek.”
To read more, please visit the New York Times. Read the rest of Duhigg’s articles on this subject by clicking HERE.
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Eve Divine
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