More on the Clean Water Act at 50

Legal Planet's Richard Frank posted today on the US Clean Water Act's 50th birthday. An excerpt:

The CWA as enacted a half-century ago was enormously ambitious and, with the benefit of hindsight, quite naive: in the law’s legislative findings, Congress declared that “it is the national goal that the discharge of pollutants into the navigable waters be eliminated by 1985.”  That obviously did not, and will not, happen.

Nevertheless, and with the possible exception of the Clean Air Act, no law enacted as part of the outpouring of federal environmental legislation in the 1970’s has proven more successful and transformational than the CWA.  The nation’s rivers, streams, lakes and ocean waters are dramatically cleaner and healthier than they were a half-century ago.

That’s primarily due to two key features of the CWA: first, a nationwide permit system designed to mandate aggressive application of pollution control technology to limit pollution from “point sources” such as factories and power plants.  The second feature is a massive infusion of federal funding to state and local governments to upgrade sewage treatment plants across America.

Another key element of the CWA is its incorporation of “environmental federalism” principles.  Subject to federal review and approval (and incentivized by generous federal funding), willing states were allowed to assume responsibility for administering and enforcing the CWA’s federal permit systems.  California was the first state to seek and obtain this delegation of federal CWA authority in 1972, and most–but not all–states have since done so as well.

Yet another important element of the CWA has been its incorporation of the principle of private enforcement.  In virtually all other nations, enforcement of water pollution control and other environmental laws is the sole responsibility of government regulators.  But the CWA authorizes and incentivizes private citizens and organizations to enforce the statute as well.  Today, the private enforcement model is replicated in many of the nation’s environmental laws.  But far more private enforcement actions are brought under the CWA than any other federal environmental statute.  And the number of private CWA enforcement lawsuits far exceeds those brought by federal and state regulators.

More on the history of the Clean Water Act here and here.