Robert Redford: Don't let Trump pollute our lakes and streams

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

The real star of my 1992 movie, “A River Runs Through It,” was not supposed to be Brad Pitt. It was supposed to be Montana’s iconic Big Blackfoot River, which starts as a watery thread up near the Continental Divide and runs down to its confluence with the Clark Fork near Missoula, about 75 miles west. The Blackfoot was so badly degraded by decades of gold mining and logging waste, though, we shot the film instead mostly on the Gallatin River 200 miles away.

Today, the Blackfoot is on the mend, thanks to state and local action grounded in common-sense federal protections for clean water in our rivers, lakes, estuaries and bays.

If there’s one thing, in fact, we should all be able to agree on as Americans, it’s that clean water is life itself. Any threat to that imperils us all.

That’s why we need to stand up to President Trump’s attempt to replace the clean water rule with a flimsy substitute that would leave half the nation’s wetlands and millions of miles of streams without the protection they need. That’s what Trump plans to do by December, unless enough of us speak out before then.

On Sept. 12, the administration announced plans to formally repeal the regulation, also called the Waters of the United States rule, the most important measure we’ve taken in decades to protect water quality across the country. The rule clarified protections, under the Clean Water Act, for the wetlands, ponds and small streams that feed the drinking water sources for 117 million Americans while also providing flood protection, valuable recreational opportunities and vital habitat for birds, fish and other wildlife.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/09/26/robert-redford-dont-let-trump-pollute-our-lakes-streams/?wpisrc=nl_opinions&wpmm=1

As I keep saying, if Donald Trump likes dirty water so much I'll send him some the next time I get my septic tank pumped.

[SCVDem]

1. We're working on it!

Any day now.

[Igel]

2. Here's more info.

The rule was proposed in 2015. So revoking it would put us back to the horrible state of affairs in early 2015.

It's only in effect in 22 states. So repealing the rule would have no effect at all in 28 states (except for waters that cross or border two states, one in each category).

As for the rules themselves, the 2015 rule or the 2019 rule, I haven't read them. It's just whenever I heard how the world will end if X is undone, I'm curious as to how the world ever existed before X was done in the first place. It's like other squabbles--"this is rolling back regulations that determine our long-standing and traditional ways of life" ... Since 2016 or 2012.



I'd also point out that some of the people I've known were in fairly reasonable rural areas when a subdivision was built adjacent to them, a subdivision with septic tanks and drinking water from a water treatment plant. It was only a matter of a few years before the old timers were forced to connect to "city water" because the septic tanks contaminated the aquifer. In a good court case, the old timers would manage to get the city or county to pick up connect fees to their house in exchange for the right to pay a monthly water bill for as long as they lived there. Then they'd have to decide to pay to have their water systems reworked so that the barn (etc.) wasn't on pump water and pay for city water for those purposes, or decide to keep feeding and watering things with sewerage-tainted water.