One year ago Waterkeeper Alliance launched “Dive Into Democracy,” a weekly roundup of current attacks on America’s clean water protections. We realized shortly after the 2017 inauguration that our democracy is becoming increasingly corrupted by industrial polluters that use their power and wealth to sway elected officials in their favor. We hoped that Dive Into Democracy could help readers fight back by highlighting how government decisions impact our right to clean water and giving them the tools to take effective action.
Over the past year, we covered 24 federal bills that threatened our environmental safeguards. Exercising your First Amendment rights by speaking to your members of Congress and their staff members about your concerns has real results — not a single one of the dangerous bills we highlighted have become law. We also asked readers to submit comments on six bad regulatory proposals by agencies. In all, the public submitted over 3 million comments on these bad proposals, with a vast majority opposing rollbacks to environmental safeguards. Our engaged readers played a vital role in building a clear record of public opposition to cutting public safeguards to benefit the coffers of polluters.
Our readers fought for a well-funded, effective U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, helping demonstrate powerful opposition to the extreme budget cuts proposed by President Trump. We helped defeat a disastrous nominee for a key Environmental Protection Agency position — after widespread outcry, Monsanto shill Michael Dourson withdrew his nomination to serve as head of the EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention.
There is still a lot of work to be done — industrial polluters have a seemingly endless wishlist and will keep pushing for federal legislative and regulatory decisions in their favor. Unless we continue to be vigilant, the bills we covered could still be passed into law, and members of Congress continue to introduce more bad bills.
Congress has yet to agree on a federal budget for fiscal year 2018 — without constant pressure, we could see serious cuts to agency budgets and dangerous riders appended to spending bills.
Scott Pruitt’s EPA continues to unveil new plans to weaken the Clean Water Act and other protections for human health and our environment. Only with widespread public engagement and your help can we defeat this profit-driven agenda and protect ourselves, our children, and future generations from the enormous, externalized costs of pollution.
Thank you for a year of fighting for clean water. Together can we hold the government accountable and make sure the many voices speaking out for clean water are heard.