A new beginning for Illinois's waterways

Defending Clean Water Act protections for all waters

Our rivers, lakes and streams are critical to Illinois’s economy and our quality of life. But recently, even our most iconic waterways have faced a renewed threat from polluters.

That's because into each great body of water flows a series of smaller streams and wetlands. A pair of misguided Supreme Court decisions put Illinois's waters at risk by removing Clean Water Act protections from millions of acres of wetlands and thousands of small streams.

The loss of protections for streams and wetlands harms downstream waterways, which supply water, filter out pollution, trap sediment, provide some of Illinois's most diverse habitat, and control floods.

Wetlands initially protected under the 1972 Clean Water Act have the capacity to contain 1.5 million gallons of floodwater -- an invaluable protection for communities like those along the Mississippi, which were inundated by floods in spring of 2008, and which could save the government millions in disaster recovery funds.

The U.S. EPA estimates that over half of Illinois's streams are headwater or seasonal, the types of streams most in danger. Over 60 percent of Illinois's wetlands, totaling over 150,000 acres, may also lose protection. At least 823 polluting facilities located on at-risk streams have their pollution limited by Clean Water Act permits -- permits which may no longer be required. EPA data indicate that more than 1.6 million Illinoisans receive drinking water from supplies fed at least in part by these streams.

Restoring protections

Environment Illinois is working to build support for restoring Clean Water Act protections. We won TV, print and radio
coverage of our new report, "Wasting Our Waterways," which found that industrial facilities discharged 8.8 million pounds of toxic pollutants into Illinois waters during 2007. In October, our Senior Environmental Attorney John Rumpler testified before a U.S. House Committee on the report's findings. We won our first victory in June, when a Senate committee approved the Clean Water Restoration Act, a bill to restore Clean Water Act protections for all waters, including the small waterways that feed and filter the Great Lakes.