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By Margaret Kriz, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Friday, Jan. 19, 2007

As Washington gears up for the environmental battles of the 110th Congress, activists, industry lobbyists, and Bush administration officials agree on at least one thing: America's air and water are significantly cleaner today than they were 40 years ago. In the 1960s, toxic chemical clouds regularly blanketed Los Angeles, and Ohio's polluted Cuyahoga River was known to catch fire. In the early 1970s, Congress passed and President Nixon signed the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, the first of a series of bedrock laws aimed at restoring the nation's environmental health.

In the decades since, America has made impressive environmental progress. The nation's emissions of major air pollutants have been halved since 1970. Dangerous discharges of carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, lead, particulates, and volatile organic compounds plunged from 302 million tons per year in 1970 to 141 million tons in 2005, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. More Americans are drinking clean and safe water. In 1969, an estimated 60 percent of the water systems across the nation met Public Health Service safety standards. Today, 89 percent of Americans have access to water that meets all of EPA's health standards.

"It's an impressive achievement in light of" U.S. economic growth, said S. William Becker, executive director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies, which represents state and local air-pollution regulators. Over the past 30 years, Americans' electricity demand nearly tripled, from 1,392 billion kilowatt hours in 1970 to 3,816 billion kilowatt hours in 2005. Ever-increasing numbers of Americans have cars and are racking up more miles behind the wheel each year, Becker pointed out. "And yet emissions have generally gone down," he said.

Industry lobbyists note that progress did not slow when Republicans controlled Congress and the White House. "Since the 1970s, every pollution indicator has shown a constant improvement," utility-industry lobbyist Scott Segal said. "That was true in the Clinton administration, and that's been true in the Bush administration."

EPA regulators are eager to call attention to the steps that they've taken to make the air and water even cleaner. "Some people have the perception that air quality is actually getting worse," said Bill Wehrum, acting assistant administrator for EPA's office of air and radiation. "In fact, quite the opposite is true."

During the past six years, EPA followed through on the Clinton-era rules cutting sulfur dioxide pollution from diesel trucks. Bush administration regulators have curbed air pollution from construction and farm equipment. They've imposed controls aimed at cutting electric power plants' emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and mercury by 70 percent by 2015. And early this year, regulators plan to target air pollution from diesel locomotives and small marine engines.

Likewise, the federal government has clamped down on companies that once poured industrial waste directly into waterways. Cities are required to treat their sewage before releasing wastewater into rivers or streams. "The water is cleaner because of years of regulation of pathogens and toxic pollutants at the federal, state, and local levels," said Benjamin Grumbles, EPA's assistant administrator for water.

But serious air- and water-pollution challenges remain. Polluted runoff from America's cities, fertilizer-laden drainage from farms, and polluted water from large animal-feed operations still plague the nation's waterways, causing dead zones in the warm summer months. Air pollution in many cities exceeds EPA's safety thresholds during the hot summer days, according to Becker's estimates. "Eighty percent of our population lives" in areas that don't consistently meet air-quality standards, he said. "We still have 46 states that have fish advisories against eating fish from local lakes because they're contaminated with mercury."

Philip Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust, said that the federal government faces some of the world's most monumental environmental problems. "We have not begun to address the bigger global environmental issues that we didn't even recognize [as] existing 30 years ago," he said, "like global warming and the degradation of the oceans."

Becker is willing to give federal regulators a small pat on the back. "I'm still one who believes that the Clean Air Act has been a tremendous success. It's translated into one of the most successful social and domestic programs this nation has ever had," he said. "So perhaps we should stop and applaud for about five minutes, and then recognize that we still have all these other problems." [an error occurred while processing this directive]

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