Crystal clean water? Not if Trump can help it
When asked about climate change and the environment in the first presidential debate, President Trump stated, "I want crystal clean water and air." As we mark the 48th anniversary of the 1972 Clean Water Act on Oct. 18, the president's words ring hollow.
For most of the past 48 years, the Clean Water Act produced dramatic improvements in the quality of our nation's rivers, lakes and coastal waters. But problems persist: In 2017, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reported that 46 percent of rivers and streams were in poor condition, contaminated with pollutants. That was also true of 21 percent of lakes and 14 percent of coastal waters.
Unfortunately, the Trump administration's unrelenting rollback of clean water protections is stalling progress toward fixing these problems and endangering a half-century's worth of gains.
Let's start with the budget. One core element of our nation's commitment to clean water is federal funding to states to construct sewage treatment plants. For FY 2021, the president proposed to cut this funding by 32 percent. This cut would come at a time when the need for clean water infrastructure is estimated to be $271 billion. Worse, this reduction is in the context of a potentially devastating overall cut to the EPA budget in FY 2021 of 27 percent.
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