The Right to Know and the Responsibility to Act: Ensuring Environmental Compliance Through Inspection, Enforcement and Citizen Science

The Right to Know and the Responsibility to Act: Ensuring Environmental Compliance through Inspection, Enforcement and Citizen Science

By Paul Gallay, Esq.1

I. Abstract Since 1988, control of the presidency and associated executive agencies has shifted between America’s two major political parties four times. In each case, policies governing compliance with environmental law have also shifted, with average levels of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) staffing, inspections and enforcement differing from one administration to the next. While such changes between administrations are to be expected, statistics show a far more sudden and precipitous decline in inspections and enforcement activities at EPA over the first two years of Donald Trump’s presidency than in any previous presidential transition since 1988.

This paper examines how the extreme declines in EPA staffing, inspections and enforcement that have occurred under President Trump, whose expressed desire is to eliminate EPA “in almost every form,” correlate with significant increases in water and air pollution control permit violations. It outlines the impact of Mr. Trump’s environmental policies on the public and argues for a return to previously accepted norms of agency behavior.

Finally, this paper demonstrates how citizen science can drive increased commitment to environmental enforcement, greater investment in wastewater treatment infrastructure, fewer instances of significant non-compliance with clean water laws and a higher level of public health and environmental quality.

II. The Extraordinary Nature of Recent Cuts to EPA Staffing, Inspections and Enforcement

In 2011, on the eve of the 40th Anniversary of the Clean Water Act, President George H. W. Bush’s EPA administrator, William K. Reilly, wrote:

If we narrow our vision of the Clean Water Act, if we buy into the misguided notion that reducing protection of our waters will somehow ignite the economy, we will shortchange our health, environment and economy.2

As we near the 50th Anniversary of the Clean Water Act, Administrator Reilly’s vision of a strong EPA, committed to advancing both environmental and economic goals, has faded from view.

1 Paul Gallay has been an environmental lawyer since 1984. He has held positions in private practice, at the Office of the New York State Attorney General and in the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation, in the land conservation movement and most recently as president of Riverkeeper, New York’s Clean Water Advocate. Paul is a graduate of Williams College and Columbia Law School and has held several teaching positions including his current appointment with Columbia University’s Undergraduate Program in Sustainable Development. 2 William K. Reilly, “Keep the Clean Water Act Strong,” The New York Times (November 29, 2011). President Donald Trump’s agenda for EPA is to eliminate it “in almost every form,” and leave behind only “tidbits.”3 President Trump’s desire to cut EPA into tidbits echoes in the proposal by Myron Ebell, as co-chair of the president’s environmental transition team, to cut EPA staffing by two-thirds,4 and in President Trump’s initial budget proposal, which sought a 31% reduction in spending at EPA (no other agency was proposed by Trump for a cut so large) and a 25% drop in total staffing.5

While congress did not go along with the extraordinary staffing cuts proposed by President Trump in 2017,6 EPA staff is already 8% smaller than when he took office and more than 20% smaller than it was under Administrator Reilly and his employer, President George H. W. Bush.7 The largest recent cuts at EPA have been those at the Office of Compliance and Enforcement, which is 16% smaller than it was just two years ago.8

Not surprisingly, in an era of declining EPA staff under a President whose stated goal is to get rid of the EPA “in almost every form”, the total number of compliance inspections by EPA has dropped by half since 2010.9 Similarly, a wide range of EPA enforcement statistics, from total actions taken to fines and penalties collected to the number of negotiated settlements, show extraordinary declines under the Trump Administration.10 For example, in 2018, total penalties collected by EPA dropped at least 55% compared with averages during the two decades before President Trump came into office. 11

3 Brady Dennis, “EPA Head Defends White House’s Plan for Massive Cuts to his Agency,” The Washington Post (June 15, 2017). 4 Joe Davidson, “Trump Transition Leader’s Goal is Two-thirds Cut in EPA Employees,” The Washington Post (January 30, 2017). 5 “EPA Head Defends White House’s Plan for Massive Cuts to his Agency,” op cit. And, Juliet Eilperin, Chris Mooney and Steven Mufson, “New EPA Documents Reveal Even Deeper Proposed Cuts to Staff and Programs.” The Washington Post (March 31, 2017). 6 Ari Natter and Jennifer Dloughy, “EPA, Clean Energy Spared Trump's Ax in $1.1 Trillion Budget Deal,” Bloomberg (May 1, 2017). 7 Brady Dennis, Juliet Eilperin and Andrew Ba Tran, “With a shrinking EPA, Trump delivers on his promise to cut government,” The Washington Post (September 8, 2018). 8 Ibid. 9 Juliet Eilperin and Brady Dennis, “Under Trump, EPA inspections fall to a 10-year low,” The Washington Post (February 8, 2019). 10 Juliet Eilperin and Brady Dennis, “Civil penalties for polluters dropped dramatically in Trump’s first two years, analysis shows,” The Washington Post (January 24, 2019). See also, Marianne Sullivan, Chris Sellers, Leif Fredrickson, Sarah Lamdan, “The EPA has backed off enforcement under Trump – here are the numbers”. TheConversation.com. And, multiple authors, “A Sheep in the Closet - The Erosion of Enforcement at the EPA,” Environmental Data & Governance Initiative at pages 26 – 30. 11 “Civil penalties for polluters dropped dramatically in Trump’s first two years, analysis shows,” The Washington Post (January 24, 2019). Op cit.

EPA officials have argued that individual states and territories can pick up the slack left by these steep cuts in the number of inspections and enforcement actions now undertaken by EPA.12 However, because of budget constraints brought on in part by declining levels of federal funding for state enforcement programs, state agency staffing is in decline and so are state inspection totals.13 The combined total number of state and federal inspections of large Clean Water Act permit holders declined by 8% between Fiscal Year (FY) 2015 (4,149 total inspections) and FY2018 (3,823 total inspections).14 The burden of current cuts to EPA inspection and enforcement programs falls particularly hard on Americans living in states with lax environmental enforcement programs, where EPA could, formerly, be counted on to act as the “enforcer of last resort.”

The recent significant drop in federal and state compliance inspections documented above will almost certainly lead to increased pollution emissions, for several reasons. Firstly, when inspectors find emissions violations at a particular facility, the facility operator will then generally reduce those illegal emissions. For example, a 2010 study by researchers at Harvard University and the University of California at Santa Barbara found that facility managers reduced air emissions by fifteen percent, on average, following inspections to check for compliance with Clean Air Act permits.15

Secondly, a robust inspection and enforcement program can also prevent violations at facilities even before they are inspected, because facility owners who know that the risk of penalties is real are more likely to eliminate problems before they are discovered during inspections. Such self- correcting behavior is illustrated by the finding, in a 2005 study commissioned by EPA and the University of California at Berkeley, that 63% of the companies examined took additional compliance-related actions after learning that penalties had been imposed against other companies for violations of environmental laws which they were also subject to, either because of fear of being penalized themselves, concern about reputational risk or simply having been reminded to take action by the other companies’ fines.16

Indeed, the recent drop in the number of Clean Water Act permit inspections cited above correlates with a significant increase in major violations of that law over the past several years. Between FY2015 and FY2018 - a period in which, as shown above, inspections of large water pollution discharge permit holders dropped 8% and the EPA’s Office of Compliance and Enforcement saw a disproportionate 16% cut in staffing levels - serious incidents of water pollution increased by

12 “Irreplaceable: Why States Can’t and Won’t Make Up for Inadequate Federal Enforcement of Environmental Laws,” Institute for Policy Integrity New York University School of Law (June 2017). 13 Ibid at page 3. See also, Marie Cusick, “EPA cuts would leave states with more work, less money,” NPR (Apr. 7, 2017). 14 Environmental Protection Agency, “Enforcement and Compliance History Online: State Water Dashboard.“ See chart: “Inspections - Facilities Inspected by State or EPA – Majors (All)” 15 Rema Nadeem Hanna and Paulina Oliva (2010) “The Impact of Inspections on Plant-Level Air Emissions,” The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy: Vol. 10: Issue 1 (Contributions), Article 19. See page 21. 16 Dorothy Thornton, Neil A. Gunningham and Robert A. Kagan “General Deterrence and Corporate Environmental Behavior,” 27 Law & Pol'y 262, at 282-283 (Berkeley Law Scholarship Repository, 2005).

10% (rising from 1,507 in FY2015 to 1,659 in FY2018).17 Similarly, inspections at facilities regulated under the Clean Air Act dropped between FY2015 and FY2018 (falling from 14,421 to 14,128)18 correlating with a striking 28% increase in high profile violations at such facilities during the same time period (rising from 362 to 462).19

These increases in significant non-compliance with clean water and air laws were not only contemporaneous with significant cuts in inspection programs; they also took place simultaneously with previously cited declines in enforcement actions taken and penalties collected.20 It is particularly concerning that criminal referrals by EPA, which are designed to safeguard communities from the most serious and intentional violations of anti-pollution statutes, dropped by a over a third, from roughly 250 in FY2015 to 166 in FY2018. 21

And, while EPA leadership has argued that informal compliance efforts will make up for the decrease in their enforcement numbers, such claims are belied by the fact that overall spending to come into compliance with federal environmental laws efforts in FY2018 was only $5.6 billion - 28% below the $7.8 billion in average annual compliance spending over the two decades before President Trump took office. 22

These stark declines in EPA staffing, inspection, enforcement and compliance spending, and the correlative increase in significant water pollution incidents and other environmental violations since President Trump took office, all have extremely troubling implications for the health and welfare of America’s communities. Whether due to the abandonment of efforts to control methane flaring in North Dakota,23 the loosening of selenium and sulfur dioxide restrictions at power plants

17 Environmental Protection Agency, “Enforcement and Compliance History Online: State Water Dashboard.“ See chart: “Violations - Facilities in Significant Non-compliance - Majors (Individual).” 18 Environmental Protection Agency, “Enforcement and Compliance History Online: State Air Dashboard.” See chart: “Compliance Evaluations - Facilities Evaluated by State or EPA”. 19 Environmental Protection Agency, “Enforcement and Compliance History Online: State Air Dashboard.” See chart: “High Profile Violations”. 20 “The EPA has backed off enforcement under Trump – here are the numbers.” Op cit. TheConversation.com. See also, “A Sheep In the Closet - The Erosion of Enforcement at the EPA.” Op cit. at pages 26 – 30. 21 Umair Irfan, “How Trump’s EPA is letting environmental criminals off the hook, in one chart,” Vox (January 18, 2019). 22 “Civil penalties for polluters dropped dramatically in Trump’s first two years, analysis shows,” The Washington Post (January 24, 2019). Op cit. 23 Eric Lipton, “Profiting At A Cost,” The New York Times (December 27, 2018).

The Right to Know and the Responsibility to Act: Ensuring Environmental Compliance Through Inspection, Enforcement and Citizen Science. [ABA Section on Environment, Energy, and Resources, March 2019]. Page 4 in West Virginia24 and Texas,25 or the failure to regulate chlorpyrifos in California farm fields,26 countless Americans are less safe due to the increases in pollution associated with President Trump’s desire to eliminate EPA “in almost every form”.27

While most if not all Americans are affected by the increases in major water and air pollution incidents under the Trump administration, such ill effects are likely to fall most seriously on people of color. Statistics show that race is far greater a determinant of environmental harm than income, with studies by Dr. Robert Bullard demonstrating that “poor whites do better than middle-class blacks,” when it comes to exposure to pollution,28 because of factors including inequitable housing policies and barriers to full participation in proceedings related to the construction and operation of environmentally-dangerous land uses.29 It bears noting, in this context, that one of the Trump administration’s earliest proposals to reorganize EPA would have eliminated the agency’s Office of Environmental Justice.30

Those Americans who are at greater risk because of President Trump’s campaign to decimate the EPA may have some unexpected company in the corporate world. Law-abiding business are also among those harmed when enforcement and compliance inspections are cut. Companies willing to go to the expense of ensuring their operations meet the Clean Water Act and other environmental regulations are put at a competitive disadvantage relative to those businesses who are more willing to cut regulatory corners. When “specific” deterrence of environmental harms wanes, as it must when more than half the inspections undertaken just a decade ago are no longer being performed, “general” deterrence is very likely to drop as well, because companies come to realize that there is far less risk of punishment for environmental law violations than there had been in years passed (especially given that penalties for an increasing number of violations are now proposed for waiver or reduction if they are voluntarily “self-reported”31).

24 Steve Eder and Eric Lipton, “Sidestepping Protections,” The New York Times (December 27, 2018). 25 Eric Lipton, “Easing a ‘War on Coal’,” The New York Times (December 27, 2018). 26 John Branch and Eric Lipton, “Dismissing Science,” The New York Times (December 27, 2018). 27 “EPA Head Defends White House’s Plan for Massive Cuts to his Agency,” The Washington Post (June 15, 2017). Op cit. 28 Oliver Milman, “A civil rights 'emergency': justice, clean air and water in the age of Trump,” The Guardian (November 20, 2017). 29 Ibid, see also Bullard, R.D. “Race and Environmental Justice in the United States.” Yale Journal of International Law Vol. 18, No. 1 (Winter, 1993): 319-335 at 334. And, Bullard, Robert D., Paul Mohai, Robin Saha, and Beverly Wright, “Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty: Why Race Still Matters After All of These Years,” Lewis & Clark Environmental LawJournal 38 (2): 2008 pp. 371-411 at 406 to 408. 30 “A civil rights 'emergency': justice, clean air and water in the age of Trump,” The Guardian (November 20, 2017). Op cit. 31 Mike Soraghan, “Trump's EPA turns to less punitive responses to pollution,” Energy and Environment News (June 11, 2018).

By contrast, any business entity that continues to “play by the rules,” and spends more on pollution control than other, less compliant companies, runs the risk of losing market share or becoming uncompetitive. At some point, especially in publicly traded companies, the desire to be a good corporate citizen must yield to an understanding that EPA, by cutting inspections and enforcement, is signaling that compliance with environmental laws is no longer a high priority.

In sum, the statistics cited above demonstrate that President Donald Trump has successfully undermined the effectiveness of EPA by cutting the agency’s staff, inspections and enforcement capabilities beyond long-followed bi-partisan norms established under Presidents George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. As a consequence of these rogue attitudes, we are suffering through demonstrably higher levels of significant non-compliance with major environmental statutes like the Clean Water Act. The rule of environmental law in the US has suffered a massive blow due to President Trump’s aberrant interest in eliminating EPA “in almost every form.”32

III. The Role of Citizen Science in Ensuring Compliance with Environmental Law Understandably, concern over recent extraordinary declines in enforcement, staffing and inspections at EPA is increasingly widespread, especially as the impacts of these changes — and the potential impacts of the nearly 80 instances in which the Trump administration seeks to roll back environmental regulations33 — become more widely known.

Some of this concern may be due to the widely held conviction, elegantly espoused by former EPA Administrator Reilly in the remarks cited in the opening paragraph of this paper, that a clean, safe environment will foster a strong economy. Such a worldview suggests that environmental inspections and enforcement should not be cut back, in an effort to boost the economy, and that enforcement of our environmental laws should not be subject to large, ideologically driven shifts upward or downward.

Those who oppose the extraordinary cuts made to EPA under President Trump might also point to the relative stability of criminal referral numbers between 2008 and 2012, which are the years linking the George W. Bush Administration and the first Obama administration,34 before congressionally-driven budget cuts35 began to hobble EPA staff capability. Although current EPA officials claim they are still going to use “all the tools” in their regulatory toolkit to achieve

32 “EPA Head Defends White House’s Plan for Massive Cuts to his Agency,” Washington Post (June 15, 2017). Op Cit. 33 “Environmental Protections on the Chopping Block,” The Environmental Integrity Project (accessed February 20, 2019), citing Nadja Popovich, Livia Albeck-Ripka and Kendra Pierre-Louis, “78 Environmental Rules on the Way Out Under Trump,” The New York Times (Dec. 28, 2018).

34 “How Trump’s EPA is letting environmental criminals off the hook, in one chart,” Vox (January 18, 2019). Op cit. 35 David Rogers, “GOP challenges Obama on EPA and fire funding,” Politico (June 9, 2015).

The Right to Know and the Responsibility to Act: Ensuring Environmental Compliance Through Inspection, Enforcement and Citizen Science. [ABA Section on Environment, Energy, and Resources, March 2019]. Page 6 compliance, 36 such claims are undercut by the previously cited reductions in EPA staff (especially in the Office of Compliance and Enforcement), inspections and enforcement under President Trump. In reality, far too many of EPA’s compliance tools are now merely sitting in their toolkits, because there isn’t enough staff or political will,37 to put them into play.

History suggests that inspections and enforcement case numbers will eventually begin to climb again, especially given the aberrant nature of Trump-era EPA compliance and enforcement policies. Still, the damage caused by current enforcement and compliance cuts at EPA begs the question: can anything be done, while Trump is still president, to reduce the ill effects of his efforts to reduce the EPA to “tidbits”? One potential answer to this urgent question lies in an increased reliance on citizen science and public disclosure of pollution events, both of which have driven a significant expansion of enforcement of clean water laws and funding to improve water quality in the state of New York.

New York prides itself on a commitment to environmental protection and has taken forthright steps, in recent years, to protect air and water through agency decisions like the one banning high-volume “hydrofracking” as a technique for extracting oil and gas from subsurface shale formations.38 Nevertheless, New York has hardly been immune to declines in environmental staffing, inspections and enforcement. In 2008, New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation (“DEC”) employed 278 staffers in its Division of Water. In 2015, that number had declined to 234, according to information reported by DEC.39 The decline looks even steeper to the author of this paper, who began his own ten-year stint as a DEC enforcement attorney in 1990, when the department’s water division employed 339 staff members.40

In part due to these staff reductions, achieving Clean Water Act compliance in New York remains a major challenge. For example, significant levels of bacteriological pollution have been documented since 2006 through a comprehensive program of water quality testing on the Hudson

36 Valerie Volcovici, Richard Valdmanis and Leslie Adler, “EPA fines for polluters at lowest level in two decades, data shows,” Reuters (January 24, 2019). See also, “Under Trump, EPA inspections fall to a 10- year low”. Op cit. 37 “A Sheep In the Closet - The Erosion of Enforcement at the EPA,” op cit. The section of the article running from pages 49 to 52, entitled “Industry Influence, Political Obstruction, and a Chilling Effect on Staff” describes case after case in which EPA staff report that they feel deterred from pursuing a robust program of law enforcement. 38 New York State’s decision not to allow high-volume “hydrofracking” is contained in “Findings Statement: Regulatory Program for Horizontal Drilling and High-Volume Hydraulic Fracturing to Develop the Marcellus Shale and Other Low-Permeability Gas Reservoirs,” New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (June 2015). See also Neela Bannerjee, “Why Did NY Ban Fracking? The Official Report is Now Public,” Inside Climate News. May 15, 2015. 39 DEC Freedom of Information Law response. 40 Ibid.

River41 and its tributaries42 involving over 180 citizen science volunteers and staff members at the non-profit organization Riverkeeper.

Riverkeeper’s water quality testing reveals that bacteria levels in over 20 percent of Hudson River samples exceed federal safe swimming guidelines.43 After it rains, the number of exceedances triples.44 Not only do communities from Poughkeepsie to the Adirondacks drink water from the Hudson, tens of thousands of New Yorkers swim, fish and boat on the river, with the assumption that government is taking the necessary steps to keep the water clean.

In New York, citizen science is triggering more robust action by government to assure that rivers are clean and drinking water is safe. The increasingly voluminous body of bacteria testing results compiled by Riverkeeper and its citizen science volunteer partners has driven a growing awareness of how badly our waters remain contaminated. This, in turn, helped lead New York State to enact a comprehensive “Sewage Pollution Right to Know Act” in 2012, to assure public access to critical information about water treatment plant failures and storm-related contaminant discharges into the waters where New Yorkers swim, boat and fish.45

The 2012 Sewage Pollution Right to Know Act requires that operators of sewage treatment plants notify state health and environmental agencies - and the public - of the location, amount and likely duration of any discharge that threatens public health, as well as what is being done to abate such a discharge, within four hours of its discovery.46 Such notification is automatically provided to members of the public who sign up for the email or text-based NY ALERT system,47 which sends each pollution report to subscriber inboxes or cell phones in the affected region at practically the same time that report is sent to regulators.

In 2017, thanks to the Sewage Pollution Right to Know Act, New Yorkers received nearly 2,400 pollution alerts involving 175 different treatment facilities or collection systems and 220

41 Riverkeeper.org, Hudson River Estuary Data. Per footnote 1, the author has been President of Riverkeeper since 2010. 42 Riverkeeper.org, Tributary and Waterfront Data. 43 Dan Shapley, “How’s The Water? Hudson River Water Quality and Water Infrastructure” (Fall 2017). See findings box at page 1. 44 Dan Shapley, “How’s the Water: 2015. Fecal Contamination in the Hudson River and its Tributaries,” (Fall 2015). See findings box at page 7. 45 New York State Assembly, Summary and Text, Sewage Pollution Right to Know Act (June 2012) at Section 2. See also, “Riverkeeper Celebrates Governor’s Signing of Sewage Right to Know Act,” (August 9, 2012). 46 New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, “SPDES Compliance and Enforcement Annual Report - SFY 2016/17,” Appendix B, at page 41 (October 1, 2017). 47 New York State Emergency Notification System.

The Right to Know and the Responsibility to Act: Ensuring Environmental Compliance Through Inspection, Enforcement and Citizen Science. [ABA Section on Environment, Energy, and Resources, March 2019]. Page 8 waterbodies.48 According to DEC, many of these discharges relate to permit violations that will be addressed by enforcement through negotiated “Orders on Consent” compelling the permit- holding municipality “to identify overflow discharge locations and make substantial treatment plant and collection system improvements to eliminate future discharge events.”49

With the public clamoring for action in the face of nearly 2,400 pollution reports affecting 220 different waterways, not only did state enforcement efforts increase,50 so did funding for water supply and wastewater treatment infrastructure improvements. In 2017, for example, New York’s Governor Cuomo and legislative leaders from both parties agreed to provide the unprecedented sum of $2.5 billion in state grants, over five years, one billion dollars of which will help pay for wastewater treatment plant upgrades needed to satisfy state enforcement orders.51 This new spending will also solve a host of other water pollution problems stemming from aging drinking water treatment plants, leaking septic systems, old landfills, lead in water supply lines, overburdened stormwater systems and the state’s expanding dairy industry.

Just as importantly, in 2017, New York State enacted an “Emerging Contaminants Protection Act”, as a companion to the previously mentioned $2.5 billion grant program. As a result, the Department of Health will soon require virtually all of NY’s public drinking water supplies to test for a broad suite of previously unregulated chemical pollutants, the health impacts of which are only now becoming known.52 This new testing program will allow state officials to identify and deal with the many hidden drinking water contamination “hotspots” that experts are now warning about and, perhaps, restore confidence in the safety of our water supplies in the wake of major drinking water contamination episodes like those involving PFOS and PFOA in the City of Newburgh53 and the Village of Hoosick Falls.54

As 2019 began, New York continues to implement measures to improve the way it assesses, reports, enforces and invests, in order to reduce water pollution. For example, in January, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo proposed a FY 2019-2020 budget that aims to double state spending on water infrastructure improvements to $5 billion over ten years. The Department of Environmental

48 SPDES Compliance and Enforcement Annual Report - SFY 2016/17, op cit, Appendix B, at page 43. 49 Ibid. 50 The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation reports that the number of water pollution enforcement orders it completed went up from an average of 150 in 2013 and 2014 to an average of 197 in 2015 and 2016. See SPDES Compliance and Enforcement Annual Report - SFY 2016/17, op cit, Appendix C, at page 50. 51 Gerald B. Silverman, ”New York Pours $2.5 Billion into Clean Water Programs,“ Bloomberg (April 5, 2017).

52 See, New York State Emerging Contaminants Protection Act, Section 1, amending the Public Health Law of the State of New York to add a new section 1112. 53 Dan Shapley, “NYS commits to blood testing in Newburgh,” Riverkeeper website (October 27, 2016). 54 Statement, “Hoosick Falls blood test results show need for similar tests in Newburgh,” Riverkeeper website (August 5, 2016).

Conservation has created a new “drinking water source protection program” that will provide funding, in its first year, for 30 cities, towns and villages to develop contaminant trackdown and reduction programs to improve potable water supplies.55 The State’s Drinking Water Quality Council has also called for maximum contaminant levels of 10 parts per trillion for PFOS and PFOA. These limits, once adopted by the state Health Department, would be the strictest in the nation.56

Together, these enactments and proposals can reasonably be said to make New York a leader among states in enforcing clean water laws, improving water infrastructure, monitoring drinking water safety and protecting public water supplies at their source. New York’s approach is one that accurately reflects the principle of “using all the tools in your toolkit”: it involves a multi-faceted program of inspection, enforcement, compliance assistance and investment, supported and spurred on by citizen science and broad public disclosure of water pollution incidents, all helping to deliver cleaner rivers and safer drinking water.

III. Conclusion In 1972, the Clean Water Act promised every American drinkable, swimmable, fishable water within ten years. Now, nearly 50 years later, nearly half our rivers aren’t safe for recreation57 and tens of millions of us lack safe water to drink.58

Without a robust new federal commitment to environmental inspection, law enforcement and infrastructure investment, coupled with citizen action and public disclosure of pollution incidents, access to the benefits of the Clean Water Act and other bedrock environmental laws will become harder to achieve -- and easier to lose -- for millions of Americans.

What we must do, in order to provide healthier rivers, safer drinking water and a cleaner environment for all Americans, is to inspect, report, enforce and invest in compliance with environmental law. What we must not do, if we aspire to a cleaner, safer environment, is to allow continuation of the extraordinary declines in EPA staffing, inspections and law enforcement put in place by the Trump Administration.

55 Allison Dunne, “NYS Launches Program to Help Protect Drinking Water Sources,” WAMC (January 8, 2019). 56 Nick Niedzwiadek and Amanda Eisenberg, “Drinking water contaminant recommendations arrive,” Politico (December 19, 2018) and Dan Shapley, NYS Drinking Water Quality Council recommends limits on PFOA and PFOS, Riverkeeper (December 20, 2018).

57 “Water Quality Assessment and TMDL Information: National Summary of State Information,” EPA. Retrieved 2017-03-01. 44% of our recreational waters are listed in this EPA report as impaired for one or more pollutant. 58 “63 Million Americans exposed to unsafe drinking water,” USA Today (August 15, 2017). See also Brad Plumer and Nadja Popovich, “Here Are the Places that Struggle to Meet the Rules on Safe Drinking Water,” The New York Times (February 12, 2019.

REFERENCES In order of citation:

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