Love That Dirty Water

So naturally the association would push a bill to save the Clean Water Act, right? No, it has come out against it because, it says, “[C]onservation is best achieved by private land stewards managing natural resources on their own land.”

Yeah, right. In 1969, when “private land stewards” were doing exactly this, a record 99,100 major fish kills were reported across the nation and Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River caught fire.

Finally, consider the position of celebrated sportsman and sportsmen’s mentor, Alaska Republican Congressman Don Young (not to be confused with the Don Young who runs DU). Outdoor Life magazine has recognized Rep. Don Young with its “Conservation Award”; and in two glowing pre-election profiles it described him as a “hardheaded defender of sportsmen’s rights,” “your kind of politician,” “a top watchdog,” and a “fearless Washington advocate of the sportsman’s life [who] fights the good fight.”

The NRA has recognized Rep. Young by naming him to its board. And he has chaired the executive council of the Congressional Sportsman’s Caucus. Such a sportsmen’s hero would, of course, rush to restore fish and wildlife by restoring the Clean Water Act, right? Well, no.

Rep. Young, who defines environmentalists as “my enemy,” “not Americans” and “waffle-stomping, Harvard-graduating, intellectual idiots,” has helped polluters spike the Clean Water Restoration Act. After all, it might (at least in the imaginations of his campaign funders) inconvenience operators of the massive Pebble Mine planned for Alaska’s salmonid-rich Bristol Bay region, a project he is on record as “wholeheartedly” supporting.

In 2008 Young was recognized yet again, this time by the League of Conservation Voters, which named him to its Dirty Dozen List, consisting of the 12 worst anti-conservationists in Congress.

Our waters got significantly dirtier when the Bush administration declined to enforce even the few clean-water regulations it left in tact. According to EPA data for 2005 (obtained by the Public Interest Research Group under the Freedom of Information Act):

• 57 percent of all major U.S. industrial and municipal facilities discharged more pollution then their permits allowed.
• The average facility exceeded its pollution limit by 263 percent.
• The 3,600 facilities that exceeded their permit limits did so 24,400 times.



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