The Clean Water Act has been a success in many ways. The discharge of pollutants from both industrial and municipal point sources has plummeted, the loss of wetlands has been cut decisively, and water quality has improved broadly across the entire nation. Despite all of that progress, many of our waters remain impaired. The primary reason for this lies in the failure of the Clean Water Act to effectively tackle two significant sources of water pollution: nonpoint source pollution (diffuse runoff from, for example, fields and logging operations) and hydrologic modifications (such as water withdrawals and dams).
In contrast to the Act’s approach to point source discharges and the loss of wetlands, Congress left control of both nonpoint source pollution and hydrological modifications primarily in state hands. While some states have responded well to the challenge, most have not been up to the task. New approaches are needed to deal more effectively and more comprehensively with both problems, the magnitude of which is staggering: over 40,000 nonpoint source-impaired waters and thousands of flow-impaired water bodies.
Climate change will exacerbate both problems. Heavier rainfall events have been increasingly common all across the nation, and this trend will likely intensify in the future. In places like the Northeast and Midwest, where this effect is expected to be most pronounced, the effect on water quality will be profound. More intense storms will produce greater erosion and stormwater runoff, resulting in more nonpoint source pollution. In addition, hotter and drier conditions in a number of other regions, especially the Southwest, will place greater strains on stream flows, wreaking increasing damage to aquatic ecosystems as well as threatening the adequacy of water resources for human use.
Crafting a more effective federal-state partnership to combat both problems has proven impossible for over 40 years. Many states and their allies in Congress have resisted such efforts, citing traditional state interests over land use and water allocations. The problems, however, are serious and will only grow worse as the climate changes. Reform is becoming imperative.
You can read more about these problems and some possible reforms in William L. Andreen, “No Virtue Like Necessity: Dealing with Nonpoint Source Pollution and Environmental Flows in the Face of Climate Change," 34 Virginia Environmental Law Journal 255-296 (2016), available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=2743981.
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William Andreen | April 29, 2016
The Clean Water Act has been a success in many ways. The discharge of pollutants from both industrial and municipal point sources has plummeted, the loss of wetlands has been cut decisively, and water quality has improved broadly across the entire nation. Despite all of that progress, many of our waters remain impaired. The primary […]
James Goodwin | April 28, 2016
Center for Progressive Reform Member Scholar Joel Mintz submitted written testimony to the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform, Commercial, and Antitrust Law ahead of its hearing this morning on yet another ill-advised bill, the misleadingly named “Stop Settlement Funds Slush Funds Act of 2016.” The bill would place arbitrary limits on how the […]
Matt Shudtz | April 28, 2016
Today, a lot of numbers will be thrown around – the staggering number of workers who died gruesome deaths on the job last year, the paltry fines that employers responsible for those deaths paid, the months and years we’ve waited for Congress to revisit the Occupational Safety and Health Act to make it more relevant […]
Mollie Rosenzweig | April 22, 2016
Just as we predicted back in December, foods created with CRISPR technology (short for clustered regularly-interspaced short palindromic repeats) are entering the food supply beyond the reach of federal regulators. Last week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced that it would not regulate white button mushrooms that scientists altered to stop them from browning. […]
Brian Gumm | April 21, 2016
Lisa Heinzerling, a Center for Progressive Reform Member Scholar and Georgetown University Professor of Law, published a piece this week on The Conversation that explores the ongoing political debate over environmental regulations. In particular, Heinzerling calls out the often misleading claims about the costs of safeguards that protect our air, water, health, and wild places: […]
Robert L. Glicksman | April 21, 2016
Yesterday, I joined four other witnesses in testifying about the Endangered Species Act (ESA) at a House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee hearing. Most of the witnesses and House members who attended focused on a variety of complaints about the ESA’s provisions governing listing and delisting of species and called for changes to the law […]
Matthew Freeman | April 20, 2016
Center for Progressive Reform Member Scholar (and board member) Rob Glicksman is on Capitol Hill testifying before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s subcommittee on the Interior this afternoon at 2 pm ET. The hearing will focus on “barriers to delisting” of species under the Endangered Species Act. He’ll cover four major points in his testimony, which he […]
James Goodwin | April 19, 2016
Several weeks ago, Sen. Elizabeth Warren delivered perhaps the most important speech on the U.S. regulatory system in recent memory at a forum on regulatory capture organized by the Administrative Conference of the United States. In it, she described how the regulatory system was not working for the people as it should be – or […]
Evan Isaacson | April 19, 2016
Yesterday, the Chesapeake Bay Program released its latest estimate of nutrient and sediment pollution in the Bay watershed. The annual model run of the program's Watershed Model shows that the estimated nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment loads decreased by three percent, three percent, and four percent, respectively, compared to 2014 levels. These are important improvements, but […]