greenliving
and despoil our environments, resulting in serious effects on our planet and our bodies,” says Maya K. van Rossum, a Delaware Riverkeeper and head of the four-state Delaware Riverkeeper Network. Under van Rossum’s leadership the
TROUBLED by Linda Sechrist V
irtually all water, atmospheric water vapor and soil moisture presently gracing the Earth has
been perpetually recycled through billions of years of evaporation, condensation and precipitation. As all living things are composed of mostly water and thus a part of this cycle, we may be drinking the same water that a Tyrannosaurus Rex splashed in 68 million years ago, along with what was poured into Cleopatra’s bath. Perhaps this mythological sense of
water’s endlessness or the National Aeronautics and Space Administration images from outer space of a blue planet nearly three-quarters covered by water makes us complacent. Yet only 2.5 percent of Earth’s water is not salt water and of suffi cient quality to be consumable by humans, plants and animals. Vulnerable to the demands of humanity’s unprecedented population explosion, careless development and toxic pollution and other contamination, we must reexamine this precious resource. Sandra Postel, founder of the Global Water Policy Project, who has studied freshwater issues for more than 30 years, says, “Communities, farmers and corporations are asking what we really need the water for, whether we can
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Clean drinking water is rapidly being depleted all around the world.
meet that need with less, and how water can be better managed [through] ingenuity and ecological intelligence, rather than big pumps, pipelines, dams and canals.”
Seeking to reclaim lost ground in the protection of our water and wetland resources, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed the 2015 Clean Water Rule. The new regulations are needed to restore the strength to the 1972 Clean Water Act that has been weakened by the courts and previous administrations. Notably, within hours of activating the regulation, the EPA was served with lawsuits from corporate polluters, and within weeks, more than 20 state attorneys general fi led suit against it. Today the legal battle continues over whether the new regulation will be allowed to stay in force or not. “Every day, local, state and federal
governments are granting permission to industries to pollute, deforest, degrade
Central Florida natural awakenings
WATERS Our Precious Freshwater Supplies Are Shrinking
network has created a national initiative called For the Generations advocating for the passage of constitutional protection for environmental rights at both the state and federal levels. It was inspired by a legal victory secured by van Rossum and her organization in 2013 in a case titled Robinson Township, Delaware Riverkeeper Network, et al. vs. the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, which used Pennsylvania’s Constitutional Environmental Rights Amendment to strike down signifi cant portions of a pro-fracking piece of legislation as unconstitutional. Until this legal victory, Pennsylvania’s constitutional environmental rights amendment was dismissed as a mere statement of policy rather than a true legal protection. “Each individual process of fracking uses on the order of 5 million gallons of freshwater water mixed with chemicals for drilling and fracking operations, introducing highly contaminated wastewater into our environment,” explains van Rossum. “Every frack increases the chances of carcinogenic chemical leakage into the soil and water sources.” In the pioneering Pennsylvania case, the court’s ruling made clear that the environmental rights of citizens aren’t granted by law, but are inherent and rights that cannot be removed, annulled or overturned by government or law. “Even more signifi cant, the court stated that these environmental rights belong to present generations living on Earth today and to future generations,” enthuses van Rossum. She also cites that although America’s Declaration of Independence includes several inalienable rights, our federal constitution and those of 48 states fail to provide protection for three basic needs required to enjoy them—the right to pure water, clean air and healthy environments. Van Rossum’s audiences are shocked to learn that clean water isn’t enforced as a human right. Threatened by myriad environmental, political, economic
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