Green Options

There has been significant success in decreasing the levels of chemical contaminants in our nation’s water ways in recent years, thanks to the Clean Air and Water Acts passed by Congress. However, low levels of many contaminants (such as metals, pesticides, and synthetic molecules like PCBs) persist in many rivers and streams, home to salmon and related trout species.

When President Obama signed the American Recovery Act, he alloted 20% of the funds to be used for developing a green infrastructure, water and energy efficiency improvements and other environmentally innovative projects. And Delaware’s aging water infrastructure is smiling because of it.

A coalition of environmental groups emerged victorious today when Patriot Coal agreed to test a new way to remove selenium from coal mine run-off.

The West Virginia-based coal company agreed to the deal to settle a lawsuit filed by the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition and West Virginia Highlands Conservancy which made allegations that the company had violated the Clean Water Act.

What sort of efforts does the US Army undertake to protect and manage it impacts on the environment? Perhaps surprisingly to some, the legislative muscle behind Army programs to protect the environment is actually quite robust.

After years of appeals and court battles, an unprecedented case over the federal Clean Water Act will face the Supreme Court on Monday.

Local environmentalists organized against a plan by a gold mine nearby Juneau, Alaska to dump mining waste and rubble into a nearby lake. While the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council lost the original lawsuit to stop the plan in 2006, they later won the appeal with the federal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Supreme Court now must decide whether mines should be prevented from storing their waste in water bodies, as specified in the Clean Water Act. Alaska issued a permit to the mine allowing it to dump waste in the lake, but environmentalists pointed out the discrepancy.

The Puget Soundkeeper Alliance has been suing companies under the 1972 Clean Water Act when they do not meet these minimal federal regulations. The law empowers citizens to bring lawsuits against individual polluters, and the Soundkeeper Alliance has been aggressively focusing on the biggest culprits with big results.

While defendants argue that companies are negligible polluters and that the suits slow the efforts of businesses to comply with regulations, Washington’s Department of Ecology supports the Alliance.

“Congress recognized that given limited resources, states would have to set priorities … and there may be enforcement cases [the government] could not pursue,” said Ron Lavigne, a senior member of the Department of Ecology. “That’s the role citizens should be fulfilling, and generally that is the role these Soundkeeper suits are playing.”

A high profile Congressional committee investigation has revealed that, since 2006, the outgoing Bush administration has dropped or stalled enforcement actions on more than 500 cases of severe water pollution.

Earlier this week two members of Congress sent a letter citing “grave concerns” over the implementation of the Clean Water Act to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen L. Johnson.
While the Act protects wetlands from urban development for water conservation, the court ruling challenges water protection provisions and upholds individual’s rights to build over wetlands.

What do mercury, cyanide, lead, ammonia, and benzo(a)pyrene have in common? These make up the 1.7 million pounds of pollutants that were dumped by U.S. Steel into Lake Michigan (via the Grand Calumet River) in 2005. A water discharge permit was recently proposed that may reduce or eliminate limits on heavy metals and toxic chemicals discharged by U.S. Steel into the Grand Calumet River, which flows into Lake Michigan.

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