Analysis of data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finds more than 60 percent of industrial and municipal facilities across the country exceeded their Clean Water Act permit limits at least once between January 2002 and June 2003 – and did so by an average of six times their legal limits.
The data on facilities' compliance with the Clean Water Act was obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and released Tuesday by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG).
Nationally, 436 major facilities exceeded their Clean Water Act permit limits for at least 10 of the 18 reporting periods between January 1, 2002 and June 30, 2003.
Thirty-five facilities exceeded their Clean Water Act permits during every reporting period between January 1, 2002 and June 30, 2003.
U.S. PIRG environmental advocate Richard Caplan says the findings are an indictment of the Bush administration's disinterest in enforcing one of the nation's most important environmental laws. "We need strong action to address this illegal pollution, but the Bush administration has instead proposed slashing the Environmental Protection Agency's enforcement budget and weakening critical Clean Water Act programs," Caplan said.
Caplan added that the report's findings are likely conservative, since the data analyzed includes only "major" facilities and does not include pollution discharged by hundreds of thousands of minor facilities across the country. The 10 states with the most exceedances of Clean Water Act permit limits between January 1, 2002 and June 30, 2003 are Ohio, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, Massachusetts, Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee, and Indiana. The 10 U.S. states with the highest percentage of major facilities to exceed their Clean Water Act permit limits at least once are Rhode Island, New Hampshire, North Carolina, West Virginia, Massachusetts, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Ohio, Iowa, and Nevada.
The 10 U.S. states with the highest average permit exceedance between January 1, 2002 and June 30, 2003 are Hawaii, Rhode Island, Arizona, West Virginia, Michigan, Connecticut, Nevada, Iowa, Texas and North Carolina.