Thank you for an amazing year of fighting for clean water!
For the last Dive into Democracy for 2018, we wanted to thank all of our engaged readers for the vital role you played in standing up for environmental protection. This year, we collectively helped stop over 20 bad bills and legislative riders aimed at weakening public health and environmental protections. Just last week, Congress passed a 2018 Farm Bill, free from the bad riders that you all helped us to oppose! We also spoke out loudly against 15 agency proposals to gut environmental regulations or construct dangerous projects.
With the new Congress coming in next month, we expect a diminished threat from dangerous bills seeking to roll back environmental protections. Therefore, we plan to shift our focus from defending against an onslaught of legislative threats to supporting good bills. In light of the diminishing threat of anti-environmental legislation, we are switching Dive into Democracy to an every-other-week schedule. This will allow us more capacity to keep crafting timely, impactful opportunities to take action in support of our environment.
But, the fight is far from over. The Trump administration still controls federal executive agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of the Interior. We expect many of the proposals we reported on this year to move forward, and anticipate further proposals seeking to further gut environmental regulations.
We are currently gearing up to fight back against the single greatest threat we have seen to the Clean Water Act—our most fundamental tool for protecting waterways and communities. Last week, the Trump administration proposed to dramatically limit the types and scope of waters protected under the Act. This will lead to dramatic injuries to water quality around the country and would leave the public helpless to do anything about these dangerous threats, as many states do not allow for citizen enforcement of environmental laws like the Clean Water Act does.
This will be a fight to protect the heart of the Clean Water Act. We will need all of you to speak up too! So please rest up this holiday season, and get ready to join us in 2019 to stand up for drinkable, fishable, and swimmable water everywhere!
Dive Into Democracy is Waterkeeper Alliance’s biweekly roundup of current attacks on America’s clean water protections and how to take action. Want to get them in your email? Sign up here.