Fifty years ago this week the Clean Water Act was enacted. The Vermont Natural Resources Council held a webinar on Wednesday to review the impact of what was then a landmark law.
The federal legislation made it illegal to flush raw sewage and industrial pollutants into waterways and gave the Environmental Protection Agency, which had been created in December 1970, the power to regulate and implement pollution controls and set water quality standards.
Vermont Natural Resources Council Policy and Water Program Director Jon Groveman provided an overview of the Clean Water Act, saying he wanted to bring a different perspective to the history that resulted in the legislation.
“The temptation was just to start with the Clean Water Act enacted in 1972. But I thought it was important to just do an acknowledgement that we as a society have not always been here, that the Abenaki native community was here before Vermont was colonized. And the water pollution that we’re grappling with today really is a result of the industrialization following the European conquest and it resulted ultimately in problems so serious that it led to the Clean Water Act.”
Groveman was intrigued as he read about water quality before the act was implemented.
“I found this quote from The Valley News ‘...as with most municipal systems raw sewage was flushed into nearby waterways. In the 1950’s the Connecticut River was being described as the world’s best landscaped sewer.’ And then on the bottom it says: ‘In 1903 the Vermont Board of Health report contained the following description of the situation in Ryegate: several sewers running, one down Main Street and the others empty into the bed of the river.’ And that just jumped out at me that there was a lot of raw sewage going into our waterways before the Clean Water Act.”
Groveman found that incidents such as the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland Ohio catching fire in 1969, Love Canal and other pollution issues spurred action. While the law did help enhance water quality and identifies impaired waters, he said wastewater discharges and other issues remain a challenge.
“There are still 219 of Vermont’s 335 villages that do not have public wastewater. They were required under the Clean Water Act to abate any discharges. Other wastewater challenges that have emerged as problems that weren’t seen as clearly when the Clean Water Act was passed was toxic pollution in our waters, PFAS. The Clean Water Act and water quality standards don’t effectively deal with these chemicals and nor do our Clean Water Act discharge permits. So that’s something that we’re grappling with. That was something that the Clean Water Act really was not set up to deal with effectively.”
Friends of the Mad River member Richard Czaplinski is curious about the future role of local watershed organizations.
“I’m wondering if you have any suggestions what local watershed groups can help in keeping water quality where we want it in the coming climate changes. You know the increased erosion, increased intensity of storms. It’s going to be a big impact.
"We have really failed in protecting the higher quality waters," replied Groveman."So I think on the local level, through the basin planning process, through your town planning process, identify those higher quality waters. Collect data. So monitoring and data collection so we can get ANR (Vermont Agency of Natural Resources) to designate them or we can petition to do it. You know that’s how we’re going to get these waters classified and protected.”
