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.

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When President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, he allotted 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.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced today that $19,239,100 will be awarded to the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control in order to upgrade its out-of-date water infrastructure.

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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.

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Environmental Management

To begin with, the Army Strategy for the Environment, was developed to serve as a policy guidance document leading the Army to “establish a long-range vision that enables the Army to meet its mission today and into the future.” Their motto? “Sustain the Mission - Secure the Future.” Some may find it trite, but without a vision and goals, it’s hard to get anywhere.

There is also the Army Environmental Policy Institute, which ”assists the Army Secretariat in developing policies and strategies to improve or resolve environmental policy issues that may have significant short or long-term impacts on the Army.” It works towards the Army’s triple bottom line of Mission, Environment, and Community.

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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.

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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.”

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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.

According to the Committee chairmen, the situation is now so bad that, “the federal government’s Clean Water Act enforcement program has been decimated over the past two years, imperiling the health and safety of the nation’s waters.”

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In the July 7th letter to Johnson, chairmen Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) of the House Government Oversight and Reform Committee and James L. Oberstar (D-Minn.) of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee credit an internal EPA memo, which was given to them by activist group Greenpeace, for leading them to explore the EPA’s inadequate enforcement of the Clean Water Act.

The memorandum, which was sent on Mar. 4, 2008 from Granta Y. Nakayama, EPA’s Assistant Administrator for Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, to Benjamin Grumbles, EPA’s Assistant Administrator for Water, points out the conflicting ideals of the 1972 Clean Water Act and the 2006 U.S. Supremem Court decision Rapanos v. United States.

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.

According to Nakayama’s memo, the fundamental discord between the federal law and Supreme Court decision has led to confusion about federal wetlands protections which has resulted in the agency’s “conscious decision not to pursue enforcement of 300 Clean Water Act violations because of the jurisdictional uncertainty.”

In a Washington Post article printed Tuesday, EPA spokesman Jonathan Shradar responded to the congressional inquiry. “We will be reviewing the new request and will work with the chairmen to provide information on our enforcement program,” Shradar was quoted.

Part of a series of pivitol environmental laws passed in the 1970s, the Clean Water Act was a monumental step forward for the environmental movement and surface water protection in the United States. The recent Rapanos v. United States ruling, however, overturned earlier decisions that stopped two seperate developers from building on their wetland properties due to environmental regulations connected to the CWA.

In the end, the court ruled 5 to 4 in favor of development and left the CWA in limbo.

Photo: EPA

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has raised numerous objections to the permit, which was blocked on October 1. One concern is that the permit may not sufficiently limit chromium, cadmium, silver, cyanide and other chemicals to meet water quality standards for Indiana.

This is the second uproar in recent months about pollutants in Lake Michigan after BP was issued a permit for its $3 billion expansion of the Whitting, IN refinery. This expansion would allow the refinery to handle large quantities of Alberta Tar Sands crude, and comes with a high environmental price tag for Lake Michigan, such as a 54% increase in ammonia and 35% increase in sludge particles being released. This permit was the first to be issued in years that would increase the amount of pollution that a company is allowed to emit into Lake Michigan by finding a loophole in the Clean Water Act.

Chicagoans were particularly alarmed by these plans because their drinking water intake is located just a few miles from the Whiting refinery discharge. Many area residents responded by signing petitions, participating in demonstrations and a boycotting BP products. The message was heard loud and clear. The company later announced that it would not increase discharge into the lake, and would investigate pollution control technologies.

Despite this announcement, the permit remains on the books and could set a lower standard for future discharge permits. This series of events does, however, demonstrate the influence that private citizens and politicians can have over the actions of corporations when government standards seem to be satisfactory. Recent threats to the water quality of Lake Michigan serve as a reminder of the importance of the lake, which is the largest freshwater lake in the United States.

Chicago Tribune: Indiana Giving Lake Polluter a Break

Also on GO:

Eco-Effective Decisions: Stick to the Claims in Your Ad Campaign. Who’s Not? British Petroleum & the EPA.