Toxic Water Laws

The laws which seek to protect our health against dangerous contaminants in our water supplies are unfortunately not as reliable as we would like them to be. One of our main defenders is The Clean Water Act, which was passed in 1972, and intended to regulate public bodies of water such as rivers, lakes, and tributaries. But it does not necessarily guarantee the safety of these vital resources. Their health is directly linked to our own physical health, as we extract food from them, use them as locales for recreation and family getaways, and rely on them as major sources of our drinking water. Yet the Clean Water Act's loophole ridden nature almost ensures non-compliance on the part of major polluters, and the law is practically ignored by state regulators, allowing for dangerous contamination of our public water sources with very few repercussions.

In a major series related to this water contamination, The New York Times has released a study which found that in the past five years, there have been over 500,000 cases of violation of the Clean Water Act, by a total of 23,000 companies. 60% of the offenses were deemed to be "significant noncompliance," alluding to the fact that the danger levels for these violations are high, involving toxic chemicals being released into our waterways. The Federal Council on Environmental Quality reports that "up to two thirds of all cancers can be attributed to low level toxins [in water]," and that "once contaminated, our ground water will remain so for tens of thousands of years." But the most shocking aspect of this new study is that of the half a million cases of violation, only 3% were ever prosecuted or punished by state regulators. This sends the message, as do the loopholes of other laws such as the Safe Drinking Water Act, that the protection of our public water supplies is a frivolous endeavor, and that our public well-being is relatively unimportant when compared with the potential for profits by major corporations.

Besides the fact that both the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Clean Water Act are battered pieces of legislation to begin with, having been plagued by insufficient funding for enforcement and corrupt loopholes for those embedded with the Washington elite, they are practically ignored by those who are technically mandated to follow them. In an interview given to the New York Times, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said that despite some progress having been made since the passage of the Clean Water Act, water supplies in the United States do not meet public health goals and the enforcement of water pollution laws is "unacceptably low."

Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, the New York Times was also able to compile a database of information related to water contamination across the entire country that is "more comprehensive than those maintained by states or by the E.P.A." To learn more about water contamination in your area, you may access this brilliant database by clicking here.

Thank you to Charles Duhigg, the investigative reporter who carried out this study, and to the New York Times for publishing such integral information related to our water safety and our collective health.