Every year, hundreds of thousands of acres of natural land are paved over with concrete, asphalt and other impervious materials. Too often, the full extent of the threat this poses for us and our environment is ignored. It's time to start taking it seriously.
Ten years ago, one million tons of toxic waste spilled into the Clinch and Emory Rivers in Tennessee, forcing evacuations, devastating a river and a community, and, as alleged by a recently-filed lawsuit, causing the eventual deaths of at least 30 cleanup workers. The waste came not from an oil pipeline or a fracking site, but from a coal plant.
For the Clean Water Act to successfully protect our waterways, facilities must follow the law … and face accountability if they don’t. Our recent report, Troubled Waters: Industrial Pollution Still Threatens American Waterways, finds that both compliance with and enforcement of the Clean Water Act have been lackluster at best.
Agriculture in the U.S. is dominated by large, specialized crop and animal farms. These industrial farms focus on short-term productivity, often at the cost of creating environmental and public health problems.
Public lands are critical environmental resources. They help to preserve ecosystems that may not find protection otherwise, and serve as field laboratories for scientists, vacation sites for families hoping to hook their children on nature, and sanctuaries for wildlife. But, public lands have also historically been the site of resource extraction and other activities that leave lasting marks on the landscape.
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.
Associate Director and Senior Policy Analyst, Frontier Group
