SEPTEMBER 2013 Blue Ridge Press


Let’s Kill The EPA And Let Our Rivers Burn by David Lillard


It’s September and I’ve been


getting on the river as much as possible before cold weather arrives. For my kids the high- lights included joining friends to float a couple miles on the Potomac in their


life vests


while another dad and I pad- dled nearby in canoes. Another afternoon found us with other friends plunging into the water from a rope swing. For kids, it’s just a fun day on the river. For


me—and other adult paddlers, swimmers, and anglers—it’s a miracle. We know that not long ago the Potomac was so pollut- ed that few people dared touch the water, let alone swim in it. We remember when the Po- tomac, the Great Lakes, and most U.S. waterways were so polluted that as Sen. Robert Kennedy said of the Hudson River, “You didn’t drown in it; you decayed.”


The backdrop of our good times on the river this fall is the current drive by some in Con- gress to drastically restrict—or abolish—the


Environmental


Protection Agency (EPA), which enforces the laws Congress en- acts to protect water, air, and public health. Imagine


that. Imagine an


America without the environ- mental protections that have improved our lives over the last 43 years.


Cue music for dream se- quence: Scene One opens at a C&O Canal National Park camp- site in Maryland. Ah, supper- time. No need to light a fire to cook those weenies! Just hold them over the open flame of the burning river. Though it might sound crazy to young people today, Ohio’s Cuyahoga River caught fire in 1969, burn- ing off industrial waste piped legally into it. Yes, legally. That changed for the good


when President Nixon created the EPA in 1970. But now back to our dream sequence. Scene Two:


After


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enjoying our flame-broiled weenies, we drive next day to the Chesapeake Bay for some seafood. Sadly, there’s no lo- cal catch at the fish shacks. But we’re in luck! There’s tons of rotting fish floating belly-up in


the bay. Dig in kids! In the 1970s, dead zones ar- rived on the Chesapeake, at the mouth of the Mississippi, and on river bays everywhere. Pol- luted waters were so oxygen depleted they couldn’t sup- port life. There were massive fish kills. Today, after decades of EPA action, the agency es- timates


that bottom-dwelling


75,000 tons clams


of and


oysters still die in Chesapeake dead zones annually. But how much worse would it be with- out EPA?


Scene three: Deciding we’d like to swim, we drive to the mouth of the Bay. At the beach, the kids pick the least conve- nient time to—using a nauti- cal term—hit the head. But no worries. The foul-smelling sand (without 43 years of EPA regu- lation) is a litter box covered in filth and TP. Before EPA, America’s cities


and towns discharged human waste straight out the pipe into waterways. The Clean Water Act enforced by EPA strived for sewage-free rivers and lakes by 1985. Though we’re still short of the goal, there are thousands of beaches across the U.S. today where you can safely swim to- day—that’s the honest poop! Leaving our fantasy trip be- hind, my family hightails home


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to West Virginia, where EPA has stopped coal-fired power plants from dumping mercury into the air—just by enforcing existing federal law. Mercury, after all, is one of the world’s most toxic elements—causing cancer and stunted mental de- velopment in kids. But wait. This is the real fan-


tasy! EPA has not protected air and water in West Virginia. Big Coal and its friends in Congress have blocked all attempts to en- force the law. They claim EPA has declared “a war on coal,” a myth that denies the real rea- son coal plants are shutting— reduced demand due to cheap natural gas. There is no war on coal; only a war on America’s health, water, and air led by people who don’t have the pub- lic’s interest in mind. Sure, EPA is a big bureaucra- cy. And like every public agen- cy, it warrants oversight. But before EPA, most of our waters weren’t fishable or swimmable. They were open trenches reek- ing of sewage and industrial waste. And industry legally pumped poison into the air. EPA, like American democra- cy, isn’t perfect. But if you need proof that we’re better off now than before EPA, all you need to do is take your kids down to the Shenandoah to swim.


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