Environmental Issues: Water

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All Documents in Water Tagged Clean Water Act

The Scariest Things in the Water
Overview

The lakes, rivers, and beaches where we swim, fish, and boat depend on healthy streams and wetlands upstream. But right now, many of them are threatened with unregulated pollution or outright destruction. Bush administration policies plus court decisions undermined Clean Water Act protection for millions of miles of streams, millions of acres of wetlands, and other waters.

Brewers for Clean Water
Overview

Clean water is essential to great-tasting beer. Even more, it's critical for public health and the health of a wide range of industries. That's why the Natural Resources Defense Council is teaming up with craft brewing companies to stand up for clean water and to enforce the Clean Water Act.

Hydraulic Fracturing Can Potentially Contaminate Drinking Water Sources
Fact Sheet

Communities across the country are concerned about the risks that oil and gas production using fracking poses to drinking water sources, and scientists and environmentalists are increasingly concerned about groundwater and surface water contamination that may be associated directly or indirectly with fracking. NRDC opposes expanded fracking until effective safeguards are in place.

Clearing the Waters
From the Chesapeake to California, NRDC is fighting to restore America’s threatened waterways
Overview

The United States has made significant progress cleaning up the nation's waterways since Congress passed the Clean Water Act in 1972, but much more remains to be done. Although some of the most obvious signs of contamination have disappeared, other sources of pollution persist, and water resources are frequently overtaxed, particularly in the West.

The 35th Anniversary of the Clean Water Act: Successes and Future Challenges
Testimony

Testimony of Peter Lehner, Executive Director, Natural Resources Defense Council, before the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, House of Representatives on October 18, 2007.

Missing Protection
Polluting the Mississippi River Basin's Small Streams and Wetlands
Report

Our nation's rivers, streams, and small bodies of water are in danger because of recent interpretations of the Clean Water Act that suggest that many waters historically protected from pollution can now be polluted or destroyed without a permitting process to limit the environmental impact of discharges into the waters. This October 2008 issue paper discusses the changes in relation to the problem of nutrient pollution in the Mississippi River Basin.

Swimming in Sewage
The Growing Problem of Sewage Pollution and How the Bush Administration Is Putting Our Health and Environment at Risk
Report

This February 2004 report from NRDC and the Environmental Integrity Project describes the emerging environmental and public health crisis resulting from our nation's failure to effectively treat sewage, presents seven case studies from around the country that illustrate how exposure to sewage pollution has killed or seriously injured people and harmed local economies, and recommends solutions to America's sewage problem.

Clean Water at Risk: An Assessment of Bush Administration Water Protection Rollbacks
Report

An October 2002 NRDC report -- issued on the 30th anniversary of the passage of the Clean Water Act -- that assesses the impact this landmark environmental law has had on the safety and environmental health of the nation’s waterways and documents the Bush administration's sustained attack on clean water protections.

For additional policy documents, see the NRDC Document Bank.
For older publications available only in print, click here.