Worst Congress Ever?

Most Americans assume that our nation’s established environmental laws are permanent watchdogs to protect our air, water, earth and wildlife. The last 40 years have seen hard-won advances supported by both sides of the aisle, and today the EPA plays an essential role in our everyday lives. But while threats to environmental legislation and funding are not unusual, this year’s have been unprecedented. Congress attempted this year to pass 170 pieces of anti-environmental legislation.

These latest attempts to undermine environmental protections and cornerstones of American environmental law, such as the Clean Water Act, have many asking “Is this the Worst Environmental Congress Ever?” Could the assaults on environmental regulations get any worse?

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) stated that in all his 36 years in Congress, he’d “never been in a Congress where there was such an overwhelming disconnect between science and public policy.”

His colleague Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) has been quoted as saying, “This is the most anti-science body since the Catholic Church ostracized Galileo for determining that the earth revolves around the sun.”

“The new Republican majority has a lot of leeway to rewrite laws,” he said, “but they don’t have the ability to rewrite the laws of nature.” And therein lies the problem. When lawmakers continue to behave as if their actions have no consequence in the balance of the natural world, and particularly on life sustaining systems such as air and water, the ultimate result could be nothing short of catastrophic. This is what we’re seeing now on a global scale, with unprecendeted extreme weather events wrecking havok all over the world, combined with unprecendented man- made ecological disasters, such as the Gulf Oil spill last year.

Lisa Jackson, current administrator of the EPA, wrote about last year’s elections: “[They] were not a vote for dirtier air or more pollution in our water. No one was sent to Congress with a mandate to increase health threats to our children or return us to the era before the EPA’s existence when, for example, nearly every meal in America contained elements of pesticides linked to nerve damage, cancer and sometimes death. In Los Angeles, smog-thick air was a daily fact of life, while in New York 21,000 tons of toxic waste awaited discovery beneath the small community of Love Canal, and flames erupted from pollution coating the surface of  Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River.”

In 1969, when the Cuyahoga caught fire in Ohio, the country’s unregulated industries and water quality problems were just beginning to garner serious public attention. Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” had done much to raise America’s awareness of how one thing designed for a specific use, like a pesticide, can have far reaching devestating effects in the broader ecosystem. But it took disasters like the Cuyahoga fire, and the time-period’s largest oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara, to catalyze support for the creation of what became known as the Clean Water Act and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

 “Clean air, clean water, open spaces— these should once again be the birthright of every American.” President Richard Nixon, 1970 State of the Union Address.

The Clean Water Act (CWA) provides a yardstick by which to measure impacts to water quality and has resulted in significant progress towards improvement. In 1972, when the CWA was passed, only 30-40% of assessed US waters met water quality goals. By 2004, 56 percent of streams and rivers, and 70 percent of bays and estuaries were in good condition and met federal water quality standards.

This year the 112th Congress, however, launched the “Most Significant Attack on the Clean Water Act in at Least 15 Years”, according to Steve Fleischli, Senior Attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, D.C.

House Resolution  (H.R.)  2018—sponsored by Rep. John Mica (R-FL)—is a prime example of these destructive bills.  Passed in the House, the Bill would effectively strip the EPA of its ability to adequately protect national water quality. Thankfully, the Bill is  currently stalled in the Senate, largely due to public outcry.

A landmark 2006 case by the Northwest Environmental Defense Center, forcing the State of Oregon to include logging road impacts in CWA violations, is just one of many examples of a case that would have had no legal standing without the CWA. Without the regulatory framework and legal “teeth” of the CWA, our ability to protect our rivers, lakes, bays, and even drinking water could be severely  limited. Much of the progress made regarding logging operations and fish habitat protection could be undone.

Now is a particularly bad time time to abandon clean water safeguards, as concerns about the links between fracking chemicals and water  quality on the rise. Just days ago, in fact, the EPA released a report  linking tainted water to fracking in Wyoming. The legal means by which fracking contamination will be tackled is housed within the framework of the CWA. Without it, then what?

Members of President Obama’s Administration including the EPA director, Lisa Jackson and Secretary of Interior, Ken Salazar, have opposed these bills and have said they will recommend veto if necessary.

However, in spite of strong public support of environmental laws, members of Congress have means  to force unpopular anti-environment measures by attaching them as “riders” to other, often unrelated legislation. Placing a rider to limit the effectiveness of  the EPA, for example, onto a bill that has strong public support such as a tax or budget bill, is a common way to circumvent the typical legislative process.

This was the case with the Barrasso-Heller Amendment to the Energy and Water Appropriations Act (H.R. 2354) this summer, another bill which would have tied the hands of states and the EPA to protect water quality. The Amendment has so far failed, thanks largely to the efforts of organizations such as Waterkeeper Alliance and Natural Resources Defense Council.

If you are concerned about the strength of landmark environmental policies and laws such as the Clean Water Act and other environmental regulations, let your congressional representatives know how you feel about keeping these laws strong so water quality and biological habitat can be protected for future generations. For Congressional contact information, please visit www.yournec.org/representatives.