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Dear Clearwater Friends and Supporters,
Senator Barrasso (R-WY) is asking your senators to vote for a "Dirty Water" amendment that would wipe out pollution limits for America's waters, threatening the health and safety of America's water supply.The U.S. Senate is poised to vote on the Barrasso-Heller Amendment to the Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2012 (H. R. 2354), perhaps as soon as the week after Thanksgiving holidays.
For decades, the Clean Water Act has protected our nation's lakes, rivers, streams, and wetlands from unregulated pollution and destruction. But now these vital protections are seriously threatened.
As one of the first and most influential environmental groups in the nation, Clearwater has played an important role in the passage of laws to clean up the nation's waters. In 1972, Pete Seeger and crew sailed the sloop Clearwater to Washington, DC while Congress was debating the Clean Water Act. Seeger personally delivered a petition with hundreds of thousands of signatures to Congress and then proceeded to hold a spontaneous concert in the halls of Congress. This was the turning point that led to the passage of the Clean Water Act.
Thanks to the Clean Water Act, our nation's waters are far cleaner today than when the law was passed and are now more fishable, swimmable and drinkable. The Clean Water Act has protected wetlands, so critical to helping filter pollutants and limit flooding and is a landmark piece of legislation for our nation.
But the Senate is considering a proposal to permanently block protections ensured by the Clean Water Act. This rider to the fiscal year 2012 Energy and Water Appropriations Bill would permanently block efforts to protect the nation's most fragile waters. The amendment would prevent the Army Corps of Engineers from clarifying the extent to which wetlands and intermittent streams are protected under the Clean Water Act.
This pro-polluter amendment could jeopardize many headwater and other critical streams; those kinds of streams benefit more than 117 million Americans, who get at least some of their drinking water from public systems that rely on such streams for all or part of their water supply.
Americans across the political spectrum care deeply about clean water. They want more safeguards for their rivers, their beaches and their drinking water, and they know that clean water supports jobs in recreation, tourism and commercial fishing.
Unfortunately, various associations representing virtually every industrial source of pollution - including the oil and gas industry, the mining industry, corporate agribusiness, and mega-developers - have vigorously opposed efforts to restore Clean Water Act jurisdiction to these waters. We urge every Senator to stand for the American people and the clean water they deserve, not with big polluters.
Please take action today!
Call your senators and tell them to VOTE NO
on the Barrasso-Heller Dirty Water Amendment to H.R. 2354.
Call the Capitol Hill directory at 202-224-3121
and ask to be connected.
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