Marine Pollution Bulletin 81 (2014) 1–2
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Marine Pollution Bulletin journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/marpolbul
Editorial
Was the Clean Water Act Effective?
0. Introduction I was in a room of scientists and I posed the question, ‘‘Has the Clean Water Act been effective’’? Granted, it was an open-ended question about legislation over 40 years ago whose aim was to ensure that surface waters of the United States are ‘‘swimmable and fishable’’. In retrospect, I should not have been surprised by the answers I heard. The older scientists unanimously agreed, ‘‘of course’’! Younger scientists were generally more skeptical and the bravest were insistent about the Clean Water Act’s ineffectiveness. So, who was right? 1. The Argument For Older scientists were quickly able to outline the atrocious environmental insults circa 1970. Permanently emblazoned in their memory were visions of the Cuyahoga River, Platform A, or precipitous declines in marine bird and mammal populations. The Cuyahoga River, near Cleveland, Ohio was so polluted that surface oil slicks would catch on fire. Actually, these slicks burned several times during the early and mid-20th century. However, the fire in June 1969 caught the attention of Time Magazine and, once published, helped galvanize the environmental movement towards state, inter-state, and federal regulations such as the Clean Water Act. The Cuyahoga is now an American Heritage River described by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency as ‘‘fishable’’. Platform A was an oil drilling rig in the Pacific Ocean along the southern California coastline near the City of Santa Barbara. In February, 1969 a blowout at this platform resulted in 100,000 barrels of crude oil creating an oil slick 800 km2 and fouling over 350 km of beaches. The spilt oil killed at least 3600 marine birds and an untold number of marine mammals. The alleged recklessness of the oil exploration, followed by the perceived cover up, was another turning point in environmental awareness that led to the Clean Water Act and California’s even more rigorous Porter-Cologne Act. Pesticides labeled as ‘‘legacy contaminants’’ today, were a modern miracle five decades ago. DDT was a pesticide that has saved literally millions of human lives from mosquito transmitted diseases such as malaria. As we now know, the acute toxicity and longevity of DDT that helped its creator win a Noble Prize, was also its greatest flaw. Non-target organisms, such as Brown Pelicans and California Sea Lions, experienced precipitous population declines resulting from bioaccumulation of DDT in these higher order predators. Rachel Carson and her now famous book, Silent Spring, rallied the environmental community. A ban on DDT was
implemented shortly after the Clean Water Act was signed into law. Currently, Brown Pelicans and California Sea Lions populations are at their highest level in 40 years and Brown Pelicans have been removed from the endangered species list. 2. The Argument Against The younger scientists quickly pointed to current day problems to illustrate the deficiency in the Clean Water Act. Recent events in the media, such as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the Gulf of Mexico dead zone, or Contaminants of Emerging Concern (CECs), all pose threats to ‘‘fishable and swimmable’’ waters in the United States. How can the Clean Water Act be effective if the Deepwater Horizon spilt 4.9 million barrels, 50 times more oil than Platform A 40 years previous? The Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone results from large-scale eutrophication. Over 17,500 km2 of hypoxic ocean water was estimated in 2011, an area larger than size of Connecticut. The nutrients that drive this large-scale eutrophication emanate from the United States’ largest watershed, the Mississippi River. The Mississippi River drains roughly 40% of the contiguous United States, including massive agri-business that is thought to comprise at least 70% of the nutrient load from this watershed. Annually, the size of the Dead Zone ebbs and swells in direct relationship to the volume discharged from the great Mississippi River. The lack of nutrient standards and follow-up enforcement is a clear example of the Clean Water Act’s failure as an environmental protection policy. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), established as part of the Clean Water Act legislation, currently has 126 priority pollutants that it routinely regulates. This list has not materially changed since the 1970s. Yet, there are thousands of industrial, pharmaceutical, personal care products, and current use pesticides that are potentially discharged to the aquatic environment, with hundreds more being developed each year. One example is Diazinon, an organophosphorus pesticide. Amongst other things, diazinon was used as a replacement for DDT after its ban from use in the early 1970s. However, diazinon was also banned from US residential use in 1994 after widespread contamination was found and impacts to non-target organisms were observed at very low concentrations. In turn, new pyrethroid pesticides such as cyfluthrin were used to replace diazinon. Cyfluthrin is now appearing more frequently and at toxic levels in the nations’ waterways. To younger scientists, the next unregulated constituent of emerging concern may become the 21st century’s version of DDT.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2014.01.053 0025-326X/Ó 2014 The Author. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-SA license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/).
2
Editorial / Marine Pollution Bulletin 81 (2014) 1–2
3. So Who’s Right? Both opinions have technical merit. Evidence has shown that the Clean Water Act has been successful at reducing pollution and restoring at least some waterbodies to fishable and swimmable. Likewise, legislative challenges to protect our ecosystem from new threats to the ‘‘physical, chemical, and biological integrity’’ remain. Regardless of success or failure, the Clean Act has been reauthorized two times since its inception in 1972. My first thesis is that the Clean Water Act has effectively resolved much of the ‘‘low hanging fruit’’. The focus of the Clean Water Act was on point sources of pollution when the greatest threats to water quality were sewage treatment plants or large industrial facilities. For example, sewage treatment plants in southern California, home to four of the largest treatment plants in the country, have reduced pollutant discharges by more than 90%. These improvements resulted from increased treatment, pre-treatment, and reclamation, all of which can be traced directly to requirements in the Clean Water Act. Southern California is also home to six of the 12 most populous counties in the United States, creating potentially enormous pollution problems from municipal stormwater runoff. Identifying and reducing individual sources of pollutants widely dispersed in these coastal urban watersheds is much more challenging than single, spatially focused sewage treatment plants. The same could be said of the Mississippi River. After attempting to control stormwater pollution for 20 years (the first stormwater regulatory permits in southern California were issued in the early 1990s), only now it seems are the old point source pollution control paradigms being abandoned in favor of watershed based approaches. This leads to my second thesis. As the low hanging fruit are resolved, many of the more difficult problems grow in spatial scale. Just as the Clean Water Act focused on local point sources, and
now is trying to adapt to watershed or regional scales, future problems may need to be addressed at even larger spatial scales. Perhaps the biggest marine water quality issue facing society is ocean acidification. Even small shifts in pH have the potential to cause catastrophic damage well beyond a river on fire. However, ocean acidification no longer derives from local ocean discharges. In fact, ocean acidification arises largely from global carbon dioxide air emissions. Thus, large-scale resolution to prevent or reduce ocean acidification will likely require international cooperation and extend beyond the Clean Water Act to the Clean Air Act. My third thesis is that the answers I received from both my younger and older colleagues were an exercise in social science more than environmental science. Their answers were clearly colored by their perception of environmental condition. Older scientists compare current day conditions to conditions when they were young. Younger scientists do not have this perception and view present day problems in their own light. Who is right and who is wrong was a function of their perspective. What this tells me is that younger scientists should also be students of history and older scientists should be wary of shifting baselines. Knowing that our challenges at identifying and responding to pollution in the 21st century are much more difficult than they were in the 20th century gives me both pride and pause. Pride that the Clean Water Act has been so effective at resolving many of the issues created by our forefathers and pause that our children will inherit the more difficult challenges created by us.
⇑
Kenneth Schiff Southern California Coastal Water Research Project, 3535 Harbor Blvd, Suite 110, Costa Mesa, CA 92626, USA ⇑ Tel.: +1 (714)755 3202. E-mail address: [email protected]
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Marine Pollution Bulletin journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/marpolbul
Editorial
Was the Clean Water Act Effective?
0. Introduction I was in a room of scientists and I posed the question, ‘‘Has the Clean Water Act been effective’’? Granted, it was an open-ended question about legislation over 40 years ago whose aim was to ensure that surface waters of the United States are ‘‘swimmable and fishable’’. In retrospect, I should not have been surprised by the answers I heard. The older scientists unanimously agreed, ‘‘of course’’! Younger scientists were generally more skeptical and the bravest were insistent about the Clean Water Act’s ineffectiveness. So, who was right? 1. The Argument For Older scientists were quickly able to outline the atrocious environmental insults circa 1970. Permanently emblazoned in their memory were visions of the Cuyahoga River, Platform A, or precipitous declines in marine bird and mammal populations. The Cuyahoga River, near Cleveland, Ohio was so polluted that surface oil slicks would catch on fire. Actually, these slicks burned several times during the early and mid-20th century. However, the fire in June 1969 caught the attention of Time Magazine and, once published, helped galvanize the environmental movement towards state, inter-state, and federal regulations such as the Clean Water Act. The Cuyahoga is now an American Heritage River described by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency as ‘‘fishable’’. Platform A was an oil drilling rig in the Pacific Ocean along the southern California coastline near the City of Santa Barbara. In February, 1969 a blowout at this platform resulted in 100,000 barrels of crude oil creating an oil slick 800 km2 and fouling over 350 km of beaches. The spilt oil killed at least 3600 marine birds and an untold number of marine mammals. The alleged recklessness of the oil exploration, followed by the perceived cover up, was another turning point in environmental awareness that led to the Clean Water Act and California’s even more rigorous Porter-Cologne Act. Pesticides labeled as ‘‘legacy contaminants’’ today, were a modern miracle five decades ago. DDT was a pesticide that has saved literally millions of human lives from mosquito transmitted diseases such as malaria. As we now know, the acute toxicity and longevity of DDT that helped its creator win a Noble Prize, was also its greatest flaw. Non-target organisms, such as Brown Pelicans and California Sea Lions, experienced precipitous population declines resulting from bioaccumulation of DDT in these higher order predators. Rachel Carson and her now famous book, Silent Spring, rallied the environmental community. A ban on DDT was
implemented shortly after the Clean Water Act was signed into law. Currently, Brown Pelicans and California Sea Lions populations are at their highest level in 40 years and Brown Pelicans have been removed from the endangered species list. 2. The Argument Against The younger scientists quickly pointed to current day problems to illustrate the deficiency in the Clean Water Act. Recent events in the media, such as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the Gulf of Mexico dead zone, or Contaminants of Emerging Concern (CECs), all pose threats to ‘‘fishable and swimmable’’ waters in the United States. How can the Clean Water Act be effective if the Deepwater Horizon spilt 4.9 million barrels, 50 times more oil than Platform A 40 years previous? The Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone results from large-scale eutrophication. Over 17,500 km2 of hypoxic ocean water was estimated in 2011, an area larger than size of Connecticut. The nutrients that drive this large-scale eutrophication emanate from the United States’ largest watershed, the Mississippi River. The Mississippi River drains roughly 40% of the contiguous United States, including massive agri-business that is thought to comprise at least 70% of the nutrient load from this watershed. Annually, the size of the Dead Zone ebbs and swells in direct relationship to the volume discharged from the great Mississippi River. The lack of nutrient standards and follow-up enforcement is a clear example of the Clean Water Act’s failure as an environmental protection policy. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), established as part of the Clean Water Act legislation, currently has 126 priority pollutants that it routinely regulates. This list has not materially changed since the 1970s. Yet, there are thousands of industrial, pharmaceutical, personal care products, and current use pesticides that are potentially discharged to the aquatic environment, with hundreds more being developed each year. One example is Diazinon, an organophosphorus pesticide. Amongst other things, diazinon was used as a replacement for DDT after its ban from use in the early 1970s. However, diazinon was also banned from US residential use in 1994 after widespread contamination was found and impacts to non-target organisms were observed at very low concentrations. In turn, new pyrethroid pesticides such as cyfluthrin were used to replace diazinon. Cyfluthrin is now appearing more frequently and at toxic levels in the nations’ waterways. To younger scientists, the next unregulated constituent of emerging concern may become the 21st century’s version of DDT.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2014.01.053 0025-326X/Ó 2014 The Author. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-SA license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/).
2
Editorial / Marine Pollution Bulletin 81 (2014) 1–2
3. So Who’s Right? Both opinions have technical merit. Evidence has shown that the Clean Water Act has been successful at reducing pollution and restoring at least some waterbodies to fishable and swimmable. Likewise, legislative challenges to protect our ecosystem from new threats to the ‘‘physical, chemical, and biological integrity’’ remain. Regardless of success or failure, the Clean Act has been reauthorized two times since its inception in 1972. My first thesis is that the Clean Water Act has effectively resolved much of the ‘‘low hanging fruit’’. The focus of the Clean Water Act was on point sources of pollution when the greatest threats to water quality were sewage treatment plants or large industrial facilities. For example, sewage treatment plants in southern California, home to four of the largest treatment plants in the country, have reduced pollutant discharges by more than 90%. These improvements resulted from increased treatment, pre-treatment, and reclamation, all of which can be traced directly to requirements in the Clean Water Act. Southern California is also home to six of the 12 most populous counties in the United States, creating potentially enormous pollution problems from municipal stormwater runoff. Identifying and reducing individual sources of pollutants widely dispersed in these coastal urban watersheds is much more challenging than single, spatially focused sewage treatment plants. The same could be said of the Mississippi River. After attempting to control stormwater pollution for 20 years (the first stormwater regulatory permits in southern California were issued in the early 1990s), only now it seems are the old point source pollution control paradigms being abandoned in favor of watershed based approaches. This leads to my second thesis. As the low hanging fruit are resolved, many of the more difficult problems grow in spatial scale. Just as the Clean Water Act focused on local point sources, and
now is trying to adapt to watershed or regional scales, future problems may need to be addressed at even larger spatial scales. Perhaps the biggest marine water quality issue facing society is ocean acidification. Even small shifts in pH have the potential to cause catastrophic damage well beyond a river on fire. However, ocean acidification no longer derives from local ocean discharges. In fact, ocean acidification arises largely from global carbon dioxide air emissions. Thus, large-scale resolution to prevent or reduce ocean acidification will likely require international cooperation and extend beyond the Clean Water Act to the Clean Air Act. My third thesis is that the answers I received from both my younger and older colleagues were an exercise in social science more than environmental science. Their answers were clearly colored by their perception of environmental condition. Older scientists compare current day conditions to conditions when they were young. Younger scientists do not have this perception and view present day problems in their own light. Who is right and who is wrong was a function of their perspective. What this tells me is that younger scientists should also be students of history and older scientists should be wary of shifting baselines. Knowing that our challenges at identifying and responding to pollution in the 21st century are much more difficult than they were in the 20th century gives me both pride and pause. Pride that the Clean Water Act has been so effective at resolving many of the issues created by our forefathers and pause that our children will inherit the more difficult challenges created by us.
⇑
Kenneth Schiff Southern California Coastal Water Research Project, 3535 Harbor Blvd, Suite 110, Costa Mesa, CA 92626, USA ⇑ Tel.: +1 (714)755 3202. E-mail address: [email protected]
