Clean Water Act

History

From the late 19th century, the U.S. federal government recognized the necessity of regulating national waterways, but it was not until the mid-20th century that the U.S. government really faced the threat that polluted water posed to public health. The pollution of U.S. waterways steadily increased because of the growth of cities and the expansion of heavy industries. In 1948, the first major U.S. law that addressed issues of water pollution was drafted by Congress. The Federal Water Pollution Control Act of 1948 (FWPCA) set out the legal authority of the federal government to regulate water quality. Under the FWPCA, the Office of the Surgeon General as well as other federal, state, and local entities were authorized to create programs to eliminate and reduce the pollution of interstate waters. The FWPCA provided funding to state and local programs limited to interstate waters. In 1956, the FWPCA underwent amendments that increased the power of the federal government to intervene when public safety was in question. In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson pledged that the nation's dirtiest rivers would be cleaned up by 1975. These powers were expanded further with the introduction of the Water Quality Act of 1965.

The main issue was that because of a lack of technology to monitor water quality, it was difficult for authorities to prove that a violator had caused a specific violation. The Federal Water Pollution Control Act and its many amendments were not effective enough in stopping water pollution; it was necessary to overhaul this hodgepodge of laws and create a unified program of regulations and fines that would cut water pollution off at the source. The fight against water pollution lagged behind the war on air pollution—the Clean Air Act was passed in 1970.

By the 1970s water pollution had reached a crisis level in the United States. On June 22, 1969, the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio, burst into flames; oil and fuel from industrial waste that had been dumped into the waters was the cause. [Page 126]This was not the first time—that particular body of water had suffered fire over the previous three decades—but it was the first time such a fire generated national outrage. What had changed by 1969 was the nation's diminished tolerance for environmental pollution, not only because of concerns raised by Rachel Carson in her 1962 book Silent Spring, but also because of a growing environmental movement in middle-class communities across the United States.

President Richard Nixon stated that the 1970s would have to be the era in which Americans would pay for their past debts by reclaiming the purity of air, water, and environment. Nixon's pledge gave Americans great hope that the federal government would take environmental issues more seriously. Nixon ended up vetoing the proposed Clean Water Act on economic grounds, but Congress was quick to overturn the veto. This political exchange between Congress and President Nixon begged the question of who was going to pay the hefty short-term price for the long-term improvement of America's waters?

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