Cleaning up the Clean Water Act

Congress is “this close” to passing a bill to restore the Clean Water Act to its pristine glory, cleaning up the mess made by the Bush administration. You see, to please the coal industry, the Bushites passed a rule that it was OK to blast the tops off mountains and dump the resulting millions of tons of coal waste into streams—-even to cover up and block streams entirely.

The result was literally coal black tap water for many residents of Appalachia. And even when it was not black, some of that water was toxic. Oh, and incidentally the destruction of over 1200 miles of streams in (formerly beautiful) Appalachia.

The rule-change was made so that it would be cheaper for coal companies to blow the tops off ancient, forested mountains in Appalachia (hundreds of mountains so far!) and bulldoze the leftover, dirt, stones, trees, and toxic waste into the valleys and streams below.

The problem with that is that it polluted the drinking water (coal black tapwater!) for millions of people downstream.

Never mind the millions of people who got their drinking water from those destroyed streams, one way or another. And certainly never mind the destruction of the environment.

You see, the streams of Appalachia not only feed the wells and water supplies of local people, they also are the headwaters of the rivers that supply drinking water to much of the East Coast. Uh-oh

So now we finally have a Congress that is trying to go back and fix that—and a President who is a friend instead of an enemy of the environment. It’s about time!

Related articles by Zemanta

• Is That Rocket Fuel Contaminating Your Water? (scientificamerican.com)
• Contaminated Wells Lead to Tap Water Catching on Fire (takepart.com)
• Rob Perks: Appalachia’s Own ‘Resource Curse’? (huffingtonpost.com)

Related posts

• No related posts.