Regulation, Huh? Who Would Have Thought?

In February, Future Crunch, that fount of “good news you probably didn’t hear about” and science news that is “indistinguishable from magic,” linked to a story reporting that, “The Mississippi River is the cleanest it’s been in more than a century.” It’s another powerful repudiation of the blanket opposition to government regulation common since the Reagan administration.

The story in The New Orleans Advocate—“Mississippi River pollution plunged after passage of Clean Water Act”—said, “A new LSU study shows that the lowest downriver reaches of the river have been getting cleaner since the 1970s, when Congress passed the Clean Water Act, a landmark piece of legislation considered one of the most powerful environmental laws in U.S. history.”

Specifically, “A century’s worth of river testing…shows a clear and steady decline in bacteria, lead and other pollutants since the Clean Water Act was enacted in 1972.”

“The precipitous drop in bacteria—much of which stems from human and animal waste—was stunning,” Eugene Turner, an oceanography and coastal sciences professor and the study’s author, said.

“It’s 1% of what it was before the 1980s,” Turner said.

“The reason is simple,” according to Turner. “We have sewage treatment plants now.”

“Before the Clean Water Act, it was common for cities to pipe sewage into the nearest creek or river. Efforts to build or improve sewage treatment plants were often met with fierce resistance, usually over their high costs. Dumping is, after all, much cheaper than treating.”

“The Clean Water Act set minimum standards for waste discharges for each industry and municipal waste manager. And it developed regulations for specific problems, including chemical releases and oil spills,” according to Advocate environment reporter Tristan Baurick.

“Along with bacteria, the law took particular aim at lead, an element that’s especially harmful to the development of children’s brains and was once common in household paints and gasoline. In the lower Mississippi, lead concentrations are about 1,000 times lower than they were in 1979, according to water quality data Turner collected.”

“Turner’s study underlines the importance of preserving the Clean Water Act and expanding its reach, said Olivia Dorothy, a Mississippi River management expert with American Rivers.”

“‘The Clean Water Act has been tremendously effective at decreasing the amount of industrial and urban pollution, as this study shows,’ Dorothy said. ‘We need to protect the act and all of its authorities, [and] we also need to start looking at expanding it to cover the emerging public safety threats as they relate to water.’”

“Emerging threats include pharmaceuticals-laced sewage and viruses, including COVID-19, which can spread from partially treated wastewater, overwhelmed treatment systems and aging septic tanks, [Turner] said. Plastic waste is another growing concern.”

“‘We’re putting plastic in our river in incredible amounts,’ Turner said. ‘That’s what we used to do with sewage and lead. We just threw it in the river until we eventually realized that’s not good and we did something about it.’”

As Future Crunch concluded, “Regulation, huh? Who would have thought?”