October 10, 2002
New Illinois Polluted Waters List Names 414 Rivers, Lakes, and Streams Statewide
Clean Water Advocates Call For Cleanup Plans,
Urge Bush Administration Not To Stall Cleanups
A new list published by the Illinois EPA names 414 rivers, lakes, and streams in Illinois that are suffering from water pollution, and clean water advocates are urging the Bush administration to reconsider proposals that would further delay action to clean them up.
"We celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Clean Water Act this month, but the new IEPA list of polluted waters is a reminder that too many Illinois waters are still unsafe for drinking, swimming, or for wildlife," said Jack Darin, Director of the Sierra Club, Illinois Chapter.
The list, released in draft form by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, details pollution problems in 414 waterways in every part of Illinois. The draft list prepared by Illinois EPA is available here. For each polluted waterbody, Illinois EPA lists problem pollutants and their suspected sources. IEPA projects completing cleanup plans for each of the affected waters by 2017.
"Identifying these water pollution problems is just a start," said Marc Miller of Prairie Rivers Network. "Now we all need to do our part to clean these waters up."
Clean water advocates are concerned with recent actions by the Bush administration that could weaken or further delay the completion of plans to address pollution in individual watersheds, and they called on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider such actions.
A recent decision by US EPA to delay action on cleaning up nutrient pollution in Illinois and other states will have a major impact on state efforts to make waters healthy again. Recently USEPA advised states that they would not enforce a 2004 deadline for regulating phosphorus pollution. Phosphorus harms many Illinois waters by overfertilizing algae, contributing to low levels of oxygen in the water needed by wildlife.
According to the new list published by Illinois EPA, phosphorus and other nutrients are a factor in over half (53%) of the state's polluted waters. Because Illinois EPA does not have a standard for phosphorus in rivers, discharges of it to rivers are unregulated in Illinois. USEPA's action makes it likely that this will continue for an unspecified number of years.
In addition, USEPA is preparing substantial revisions to the rules governing how cleanup plans for polluted waters are to be done. The proposal is expected this month, but it has been reported that USEPA is preparing to weaken the requirements so that new pollution would be allowed into already impaired waters, and remove any deadlines for completing cleanup plans.
"Communities have waited long enough for clean water," said Ed Hopkins, Director of the Sierra Club's Environmental Quality Program in Washington, DC. "These cleanup efforts can produce solutions to longstanding water quality problems, but the Bush administrations' actions threaten to derail programs to make our waters safe again."