Waterkeeper Alliance
Contact: Blair FitzGibbon 202-503-6141
New York, NY – Today a broad coalition of environmental groups challenged the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) refusal to address a critical nationwide pollution problem – a problem that EPA has acknowledged for decades. Environmental Groups including members of the Mississippi River Collaborative and Waterkeeper Alliance, represented by the Natural Resources Defense Council, are challenging EPA’s denial of a 2008 petition asking the EPA to establish clear standards for pollutants that cause devastating public health, economic and aquatic health impacts across the country and to implement cleanup plans for the Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico. Separately, the same groups are seeking to compel EPA to finally respond to an even older petition – a 2007 request that EPA modernize its decades-old pollution standards for sewage treatment plants and include nitrogen and phosphorus limits on discharges from the plants.
The two legal actions call on the EPA to address nitrogen and phosphorus pollution, which stimulates excessive growth of algae, kick-starting a biological process that severely depletes oxygen levels in aquatic ecosystems and chokes aquatic life. Nitrogen and phosphorus discharges from sewage treatment plants, industrialized animal feeding operations and other regulated pollution sources impair drinking water supplies, fisheries and recreational waters on a national scale. Rivers, streams, lakes, and other surface waterbodies in forty-nine states are impaired by nitrogen and phosphorus pollution.
“EPA’s failure to implement the Clean Water Act’s protections against nutrient pollution has allowed water quality impairments and public health risks to increase dramatically over the last several decades” said Kelly Foster of Waterkeeper Alliance, “Every person has a right to clean water and the EPA has a duty to ensure that our nation’s waters are safe for swimming, drinking and fishing.”
This largely unaddressed nitrogen and phosphorus pollution results in toxic algae blooms that can cause respiratory distress and neurological problems in swimmers. Excessive nitrates in drinking water can cause blue baby syndrome and conventional treatment of algae-laden water at public water supplies can result in the formation of compounds, like trihalomethanes, that can cause liver, kidney or central nervous system problems and an increased risk of cancer.
An enormous example of this problem is the “Dead Zone” that forms in the Gulf of Mexico in the summer. When independent scientists from the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium completed their annual measurement of the 2011 Gulf Dead Zone, it measured 6,765 square miles – larger than the state of Connecticut–and it is growing, having doubled in size since 1985. In the Gulf, this pollution harms the $2.8 billion fishing industry.
Addressing nitrogen and phosphorus pollution is essential to restoring the health of the nation’s waters including the Gulf of Mexico, Chesapeake Bay, Albemarle-Pamlico Sound, and other rivers, lakes and coastal waters across the United States.
The EPA called on states in 1998 to adopt specific limits on nitrogen and phosphorus pollution, and promised to enact its own limits if states had not complied by 2003. However, EPA reports that only three states have adopted state-wide numeric limits on nitrogen and only five states have adopted state-wide numeric limits for phosphorus. Every state along the Mississippi River ignored the 2003 deadline, and so far, only Wisconsin and Minnesota have taken effective action on their state’s contributions to the problem in that basin.
EPA’s continued lack of leadership at a federal level is also a serious problem because many rivers flow through or form the border of multiple states and no one can act independently to fully protect our these waters. Only meaningful federal action by the EPA can unify states behind solutions that match the size of the problem at hand.
While the public continues to wait for EPA to take responsible action to respond to this national crisis, inland water pollution problems have multiplied and the Dead Zone has continued to expand.
“The ecology and economy of the Gulf of Mexico have paid the price for EPA’s endless dithering about Dead Zone pollution,” said Matt Rota, Director of Science and Water Policy with the non-profit Gulf Restoration Network. “The most meaningful action the EPA can take is to set limits on the amount of these pollutants allowed in the Mississippi River watershed so that the fish and the fisheries can recover.”
Waterkeeper Alliance is on the front lines protecting these resources and unites Waterkeepers who patrol and protect rivers, bays, lakes and streams on six continents–more than 1.6 million square feet of waterways–in boats ranging in size from kayaks to research vessels. Waterkeeper Alliance is the leading voice for the world’s waters with roots dating back to 1966, when a concerned group of commercial and recreation fishermen mobilized to reclaim the Hudson River from polluters. Their tough, hands on, community oriented brand of environmental activism and miraculous recovery of the Hudson inspired 200 other individuals and organizations to launch Waterkeepers from the Mississippi to the Amazon to the Tigris to the Ganges and across the globe to fight in their communities for the right to have swimmable, drinkable and fishable water.
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The Natural Resources Defense Council is the nation’s most effective environmental action group, combining the grassroots power of 1.3 million members and online activists with the courtroom clout and expertise of more than 350 lawyers, scientists and other professionals. www.nrdc.org
The Mississippi River Collaborative is a partnership of environmental organizations and legal centers from states bordering the Mississippi River as well as regional and national groups working on issues affecting the Mississippi River and its tributaries. The Collaborative harnesses the resources and expertise of its diverse organizations to comprehensively reduce pollution entering the Mississippi River as well as the Gulf of Mexico. www.msrivercollab.org
Communications Consultant Lola Dvorak supports CCKA’s strategic communications by helping waterkeepers tell their stories.
