While most Americans assume that the Clean Water Act protects all of the nation’s waters, recent court cases have thrown doubt on that longstanding certainty.
Now, some developers and polluters are arguing that the clean water act doesn’t cover the smaller streams and wetlands that feed and clean the Great Lakes. They want to throw out three decades of Clean Water Act protection, leaving polluting industries free to dump into our streams and pave over our wetlands without asking for permission.
If they get their way, more than 60 percent of Illinois’s few remaining wetlands and half of Illinois' stream miles will be at risk for unlimited pollution and development. 1.6 million Illinoisans get at least some of their drinking water from waters that could lose protection.
Comprehensive restoration of the Great Lakes will require cleaning up pollution and regulating development and water use, as well as an infusion of funding.
But no matter what we do to clean the Lakes themselves, they can still only be as healthy as the streams and wetlands that feed and clean them. With years of progress improving water quality, and with so much left to do, this backward trend — polluting formerly protected source waters — is last thing we need. To ensure Lake Michigan’s health for future generations, we must protect the streams and wetlands that feed and clean it.
The good news is that Congress is considering legislation to do just that. Environment Illinois is calling on members of Congress to pass the Clean Water Restoration Act, which declares once and for all that ALL waters, from the Great Lakes to their source water streams and wetlands, are protected by the Clean Water Act.
