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| Troubled Waters: St. Joe Valley Green Delegate Dave Vollrath Participated in an INPIRG News Conference. |
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Indiana Green Party / St. Joe Valley Greens April 4, 2004 St. Joe Valley Green delegate Dave Vollrath participated in an INPIRG news conference Tuesday Mar. 30 at the Mishawaka Botanical Garden. The Midwest chapter of PIRG (Public Interest Research Group) publicly released their report 'Troubled Waters' and discussed water quality issues and violations in the region. Local Fox, CBS and NBC affiliates reported the conference on their nightly news and local newspapers ran interviews, see links. LINKS: When drafting the Clean Water Act in 1972, legislators set the goals of making all waterways fishable and swimmable by 1983 and eliminating the discharge of pollutants into the nation's waterways by 1985. More than 30 years later, we are far from realizing the Clean Water Act's original vision. Using information provided by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, this report analyzes all major facilities violating their Clean Water Act permits between January 1, 2002 and June 30, 2003, reveals the type of pollutants they are discharging into our waterways, and details the extent to which these facilities are exceeding their permit levels. Two decades after the drafters of the Clean Water Act hoped that all waterways would be fishable and swimmable, we find that facilities across the country continue to violate the letter of the law, at times egregiously. Key findings include: Thousands of facilities continue to exceed their Clean Water Act permits. Nationally, more than 3,700 major facilities (60%) exceeded their Clean Water Act permit limits at least once between January 1, 2002 and June 30, 2003. The ten U.S. states that allowed the highest percentage of major facilities to exceed their Clean Water Act permit limits at least once are Rhode Island, New Hampshire, North Carolina,West Virginia, Massachusetts, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Ohio, Iowa, and Nevada. a Facilities are designated as "major" based on an EPA scoring system that considers a combination of factors, including toxic pollutant potential, streamflow volume, public health impacts, and proximity to coastal waters. These facilities often exceed their permits more than once and for more than one pollutant. Nationally, 437 major facilities exceeded their Clean Water Act permit limits for at least 10 of the 18 reporting periods between January 1, 2002 and June 30, 2003. Thirty-five (35) facilities exceeded their Clean Water Act permits during every reporting period between January 1, 2002 and June 30, 2003. Nationally, major facilities reported more than 32,000 instances of exceeding their Clean Water Act permit limits between January 1, 2002 and June 30, 2003. The ten U.S. states that allowed the most exceedances
of Clean Water Act permit limits between January 1, 2002 and June 30,
2003 are Ohio, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas,
Massachusetts, Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee, and Indiana. |
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