Copyright 2009, John Cronin
The failed Clean Water Act, emperor of American environmental laws, lost another piece of imaginary clothing today when The New York Times went front page with the scandal of the nation's overflowing sewage treatment plants.
In other ways too, this is an old story made new. Sewage overflows from municipal treatment plants have been ruining drinking water, contaminating fisheries and habitat, and attacking swimming beaches for decades. Raw human waste was the stuff of mockery in the lead-up to Earth Day 1970. 39 years later, our own excrement is still chasing us from our waters.
Signed into law in 1972, the Clean Water Act was supposed to end the discharge of pollutants by 1985. The law also directed the president through the secretary of state to assist other nations in accomplishing the same. Yet each year, 19.5 million Americans are made ill by water. 1.2 billion people on the planet do not have safe water. As many as 4 people per minute, mostly children, die in the developing world from diseases caused by water pollution.
Like President Bush's declaration of "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq, aboard the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln on May 1, 2003, American environmentalists have for two decades proclaimed the victory of the Clean Water Act's mission "to restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Nation's waters." Unlike President Bush, most have not admitted their mistake.
Have there been successes? Yes. But many an ambitious initiative has had successes on its way to ultimate failure. As we learned in Southeast Asia, and now in Iraq, it takes more than victorious battles to end a war. It requires strategy and tactics, innovative thinking, diplomacy and negotiation, and a plan. Most importantly, it requires a clearly articulated goal. The war on water pollution is no different. America lost its goal when the Clean Water Act failed to end pollution discharges by 1985, and failed to offer a new date.
Universal clean water is the most important domestic and global mission of our lifetime. But it is on a directionless path. We need a new a new goal, and a plan to reach it. To get there we must return to first principles. The 1972 Clean Water Act set out to introduce a new generation of innovation that would end water pollution in our lifetime. In the intervening years, however, the law's emphasis shifted to regulatory and punitive approaches. Federally sponsored research and development fell to the wayside. Incentives to perform beyond the law's immediate requirements, or innovate new technologies, never emerged. At a time when pollution treatment and management systems should be more effective, cheaper, easier to operate, maintain and upgrade, they are, for many, the opposite.
It will require the combined genius of the nation's best minds to get the law back on track. All the violations environmental officials could investigate and all the fines they could levy levy would not remotely compare in value to breakthrough, affordable innovations that end pollution in our children's lifetime.
There is no shortage of American engineering and scientific genius, especially in the nation's universities and technology companies. President Obama and Congress should call upon it. They should revitalize the Clean Water Act with new, updated goals and incentives aimed at ending pollution and creating new industries to do so. Secretary of State Clinton should add clean water to her portfolio of global priorities, as the law requires.
Prior to the 1972 Clean Water Act, the operating principle of sanitary engineering was "Dilution is the solution to pollution." What a luxury that concept seems now when 37 Americans per hour are being made ill by viruses, bacteria and parasites in their drinking water.
Hans Christian Andersen's The Emperor's New Clothes is a story of collective denial in the face of mythological power. In the case of the Clean Water Act, however, one shout alone will not awaken Washington DC. A collective voice will. It is too soon to declare a new date to end pollution, that will take the convening of our best minds. It is not too soon to admit the law's failure, and recommit America to a mission of clean water here and around the world.
