Our goal is to reduce water pollution that damages waterways and threatens human health.
The Clean Water Act was designed to make our waterways fishable and swimmable, but decades later our nation has not realized these promises. One of the most effective means for achieving these goals is simply for EPA to fulfill its existing legal obligation to require industrial operations to use modern pollution controls. Another is for EPA and state agencies to exercise the political will to issue permits that in fact protect water quality, and then to make polluters follow the law by enforcing it. Other persistent challenges like runoff from industrial agriculture and developed land must also be addressed.
EIP puts our existing laws to work to improve the health of our rivers, streams, and lakes and protect ground and drinking water through legal advocacy, data and technical analysis, investigative reporting, and community outreach. EIP is working to reduce discharges of nutrient and toxic pollution from key industrial sectors; protect water resources from coal ash dumps and other major sources of contamination; and improve the health of the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries.
Industrial Water Pollution
The Clean Water Act aims to eliminate pollution to keep waterways safe for communities and aquatic life. The EPA is required to set and update pollution limits, called effluent limitation guidelines (ELGs), based on the best treatment technologies. However, most guidelines are decades old, allowing excessive pollution into rivers and streams.
Chesapeake Bay
More than 100,000 streams, creeks and rivers drain into the Chesapeake Bay, a 64,000 square mile watershed covering parts of Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, New York, and Washington, D.C.
The Chesapeake Bay is the nation’s largest estuary and a key to the region’s identity and economy.
Shenandoah Valley Bacteria
Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, while famous for its cultural heritage and natural beauty, also hosts a thriving livestock and poultry industry. The runoff from all this livestock and poultry manure ends up in Shenandoah waters, adding to pollution that threatens to disrupt fishing, swimming, rafting, and other recreational uses that valley residents and visitors have long enjoyed.
