Executive Summary

For decades, the Clean Water Act protected the Nation's surface water bodies from unregulated pollution and rescued them from the crisis status they were in during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Now these vital protections are being lost. This report details the threat to our Nation's waters by examining dozens of case studies, and highlights the urgent need for Congress to restore full Clean Water Act protections to our waters.

These decisions shattered the fundamental framework of the Clean Water Act. Today, many important waters - large and small - lack critical protections against pollution or destruction. The case studies in this report provide telling examples of how dire the situation is and how urgent it is for Congress to take action.

Congress must reverse the damage done by the Supreme Court's decisions and the agency policies that followed by restoring Clean Water Act protections that were in place prior to 2001. Without such action, a generation's worth of progress in cleaning up our Nation's waters may be lost. We cannot afford to return to the days of dirty water.

Clean water depends on the health of all water bodies, from small streams, to woodland vernal pools, to our greatest rivers, lakes, and coastal waters. Science overwhelmingly shows that headwater streams and wetlands are vital parts of the aquatic system. Indeed, small streams and wetlands in the upper reaches of our watersheds often account for the vast majority of the chemical, physical, and biological activity that takes place throughout the water cycle. These waters provide the foundation of the food chain upon which aquatic life depends. They filter pollutants, store flood waters, and recharge flow in our greatest waterways. Just as our circulatory system can not function without its capillaries, the water cycle cannot function without its smaller waters.

When Congress passed the Clean Water Act in 1972, our waters were in dire shape. The Cuyahoga River had 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.

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