Rural Coalition Joins Latinx Organizations in Denouncing Administration’s Decision to Dismantle Clean Water Rule

Sourced from http://www.greenlatinos.org/clean_water_rule_repeal

Washington, D.C. --- In response to the release of the Trump Administration’s final rule repealing the Clean Water Rule, eight organizations representing and serving Latinx communities across the nation stand together in rejecting this change, which is just one in a long line of proposals which weaken the regulatory protections currently in place that safeguard our water, health, and livelihoods.

The Clean Water Act was enacted to provide every American, without exception, with fishable and swimmable waters. While our waterways have come a long way since passage of the Clean Water Act, millions of Americans and a disproportionately high number of Latinx communities are still regularly threatened by water pollution. The Clean Water Rule, implemented in 2015, was an important step in the right direction, helping ensure that all communities would be included in the ultimate goal of the Clean Water Act. The Clean Water Rule, supported by over one million public comments, strengthened safeguards against water pollution from industry, and other polluters. The Trump Administration’s decision to dismantle it is placing the interests of polluting industries above American families, and will place the water of millions of latinx community members at risk. 

Lorette Picciano, Executive Director of The Rural Coalition, issues the following statement: 

"As producers, farmworkers, tribal and rural people of the land we see water as our lifeblood and know how it is cared for upstream affects river systems downstream. We don’t want to return to the day when two-thirds of our waterways were too polluted – by mining operations that leaked the arsenic that killed all the fish in the Alamosa River in Colorado; by the coal ash, dumped for years into the Dan River by Duke Energy; or by the tides of phosphorus washed from fertilized farms and feedlots upstream that pollute the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico.  Our Coalition stands with the hundreds of thousands of Americans and organizations who supported restoring the full protection of the Clean Water Act to the countless miles of tributary and seasonal streams, wetlands and rivers that sustain our communities and against giant corporate agriculture and real estate industry who, with this rule, are sacrificing ecologically valuable wetlands and streams across the nation.”