As the new home of Arizona PIRG's environmental work, Environment Arizona can be contacted with any questions regarding this news release.
More
than 44 percent of industrial and municipal facilities across Arizona
discharged more pollution into our waterways than their Clean Water Act
permits allow between July 2003 and December 2004, according to "Troubled Waters: An Analysis of Clean Water Act Compliance", a new report released today by the Arizona PIRG Education Fund.
“In
Arizona, we cannot afford to pollute our limited water supplies. We
need better enforcement of the Clean Water Act to ensure that Arizona
has an adequate supply of local and clean water,” said Lela Prashad,
Public Interest Advocate for the Arizona PIRG Education Fund.
While
the 1972 Clean Water Act has made significant strides in cleaning up
U.S. waterways, the law’s goals of eliminating the discharge of
pollutants into waterways by 1985 and making all U.S. waters safe for
fishing, swimming and other uses by 1983 have not been reached. Today,
more than 40 percent of U.S. waterways are unsafe for swimming and
fishing. In Arizona, more than 22 percent of rivers and 10 percent of
lakes are impaired.
Using
the Freedom of Information Act, the Arizona PIRG Education Fund
obtained data on facilities’ compliance with the Clean Water Act
between July 1, 2003 and December 31, 2004. The Arizona PIRG Education
Fund researchers found that polluters repeatedly exceeded their permit
limits, often by egregious amounts.
Additional findings include:
•
More than 44% of Arizona’s industrial and municipal facilities exceeded
their Clean Water Act permits at least once between July 1, 2003 and
December 31, 2004.
• On average, Arizona facilities exceeding their Clean Water Act permits did so by 136%, or by over twice the legal limit.
• 24 facilities in Arizona reported more than 210 total exceedances of their Clean Water Act permits during the 18-month period
•
Polluters in Arizona reported 12 instances in which they exceeded their
Clean Water Act permit by at least 500 percent over the legal limit.
“All
Arizonans deserve clean water to drink and safe places to swim and
fish. To clean up our waterways, we must stop this pollution,” said
Prashad.
Prashad
noted that the findings are likely conservative, since the data that
the Arizona PIRG Education Fund analyzed includes only “major”
facilities and does not include pollution discharged into waters by the
hundreds of thousands of minor facilities across the country.
In order to achieve the goals of the Clean Water Act, the Arizona PIRG
Education Fund recommended federal and state officials do the following:
• Increase EPA Funding
to put more environmental cops on the beat to identify and punish
polluters violating their Clean Water Act permits, and to fully fund
the Clean Water State Revolving Fund to help communities upgrade their
sewer systems.
• Protect all U.S. waters by
withdrawing the Bush administration’s 2003 “No Protection” policy that
eliminates Clean Water Act protections for many small streams and
wetlands that feed and clean great waters, and supporting passage of
the Clean Water Authority Restoration Act.
• Strengthen the Clean Water Act
by preventing polluters from profiting from pollution, tightening
permitted pollution limits, revoking the permits of repeat violators,
and ensuring citizens full access to the courts.
“To
protect public health and the environment, the Bush administration and
state officials must hold polluters accountable for their contamination
of America’s waterways,” concluded Prashad.
