Jeff Inglis
Policy Analyst
When Congress passed the Clean Water Act in 1972, it wrote into the law the expectation that toxic chemical releases from industry would cease entirely by 1985. Nearly 30 years later, that has not happened.
Policy Analyst
In 2012, industrial facilities released 206 million pounds of toxic chemicals to American waterways, telling the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency how much of which chemicals they put into streams, lakes, rivers and ponds through the EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) system.
Our new analysis of that data, Wasting Our Waterways, shows which watersheds were most affected by chemicals that have negative impacts on both the environment and human health, and suggests a great deal remains to be done to fulfill the promise of the Clean Water Act.
When Congress passed the act (over a Nixon veto) in 1972, it wrote into the law the expectation that toxic chemical releases from industry would cease entirely by 1985. Nearly 30 years later, that has not happened.
But we can address these and other related problems, including harmful repercussions for wildlife and people, if policymakers:
Policy Analyst