The Clean Water Act has protected the Nation's water bodies from unregulated pollution and rescued them from the crisis status they were in during the late 1960s and early 1970s.

When the Clean Water Act was passed in 1972, our waters were in dire shape.

• The Cuyahoga River caught fire several times,
• Lake Erie was all but devoid of life,
• oil spills commonly occurred on our coasts,
• and industrial polluters treated rivers and lakes as open sewers.

Now these vital protections are being lost. In two decisions in the last 10 years, Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook Cty. v. Army Corps of Engineers in 2001 and Rapanos v. United States in 2006, the Supreme Court misinterpreted the law and placed pollution limitations for many vital water bodies in doubt.

After these decisions, Bush appointees at the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Army Corps of Engineers excluded numerous waters from protection and placed unnecessarily high hurdles to protecting others.

Because of the muddled mess left by the Supreme Court and agencies' guidances, we believe many polluters across the country have simply determined that specific waterways lack protection and acted to destroy, degrade or pollute that water without informing federal officials. Which is why we're fighting for the passage of the Clean Water Restoration Act (S 787).