First it was Campaign Finance, Now It’s America’s Waters

Not satisfied with enabling corporations to flood America’s political system with money, the Supreme Court has overturned decades-old interpretations of the Clean Water Act to allow many of those same corporations to flood our precious waterways with poison. Not only is this a threat to the water we drink but it has the potential to do great harm to Michigan’s economy by fouling fisheries and beaches and preventing us from leveraging one of the state’s greatest assets – our abundance of fresh water. For me, this is especially galling because as a young Congressional staffer in 1992 I had the privilege of drafting legislation, which became law, to strengthen the Clean Water Act. Later that year my boss at the time, U.S. Representative Nita M. Lowey, was honored as “Legislator of the Year” by the American Planning Association, because of legislation I helped her develop designed to strengthen financial support for the CWA and create thousands of good jobs by investing in the nation’s water infrastructure.

Instead of nullifying laws that protect our waters, health and quality of life, we should be working on cost-effective strategies to prevent pollution and enable more people to enjoy our beaches and waterways. If we do this, metro Detroit can leverage its inland lakes, Detroit River and Lake St. Claire as destinations and job generators the way Chicago and Toronto maximize their waterfronts.

Article on Supreme Court decision

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