What's New
The Great Lakes are only as healthy as the streams and wetlands that feed them, but those waters are under attack. Developers and other polluters are pushing to fill in important wetlands and pollute these source waters, and the Bush administration is letting them get away with it.
To ensure a healthy Lake Michigan for future generations, we must protect the streams and wetlands that feed and clean the Great Lakes. Environment Illinois is calling on Congress to pass the Clean Water Restoration Act which restores three decades of protection and declares once and for all that ALL waters, from the Great Lakes to their source streams and wetlands, are protected under the Clean Water Act.
Background
While most Americans assume that the Clean Water Act protects all of the nation’s waters, recent court cases have thrown that longstanding certainty into doubt.
Developers and other polluters are pushing to fill in wetlands and pollute the streams that feed and clean the great lakes. The Bush administration has helped them by adopting its “no protection policy,” ending three decades of Clean Water Act protections for these waters.
Under the policy, 60 percent of Illinois’s few remaining wetlands and many miles of streams have lost protection and are threatened by development, pollution and destruction.
Comprehensive restoration of the Great Lakes will require cleaning up pollution, regulating of development and water use, as well as an infusion of funding, but the Lakes can still only be as healthy as the streams and wetlands that feed and clean them. With years of progress improving water quality, and with so much left to do, this backward trend—polluting formerly protected source waters—is last thing we need.
To ensure Lake Michigan’s health for future generations, we must protect the streams and wetlands that feed and clean it. The good news is that Congress is considering legislation to do just that.
Environment Illinois is calling on members of Congress to pass the Clean Water Restoration Act, which declare once and for all that ALL waters, from the Great Lakes to their source water streams and wetlands, are protected by the Clean Water Act.
