Vote for Clean Water

I was recently camping with my son’s Boy Scout troop, near some caves in West Virginia. The caves were formed by a stream running down the mountain, that carved out a piece of limestone. The stream currently runs through several cow pastures, and we regularly found cow manure right next to the stream. While hiking through the cave with our guide, one of the Scouts decided to take a swim in one in the cave pools, dunking his head and playing around with some of the other Scouts —  all good fun for a bunch of rambunctious kids. Unfortunately for him there is a lot of bacteria in cow manure (well, any sort of poop, really) and because he ingested some of the water while swimming, he ended up sick and throwing up most of the next morning. 

Thankfully he recovered, but his experience with getting sick from manure or pollution getting into the water is more common than one would think. This past June, over 20 people swimming in Lake Anna, in Virginia, became ill due to E. Coli (the most common bacteria found in feces).  

The irony is, many of our rivers are great places to recreate and swim in. Rivers are generally much cleaner than they were 50 years ago — prior to the Clean Water Act being passed — but a lack of investment in wastewater and stormwater infrastructure, and a growing rollback of clean water laws continues to prevent progress in cleaning up our rivers and streams;  And in many cases actually making them worse.  

The solution to cleaner water is a simple one — maintain and enforce common sense, scientifically supportable clean water laws, and invest in maintaining and modernizing America’s clean water infrastructure. Both of these solutions can only happen when we have elected officials who care about protecting our communities and want to invest in the infrastructure needed to ensure we have clean water. That’s why it’s important to #VoteRivers this November. 

There are lawmakers, on both sides of the aisle, who understand the need for clean water. There are others who need to hear about why it needs to be a priority. We need more elected officials to stand up and champion the laws and the funding to keep our water clean.  

It’s only when we all #VoteRivers that we can guarantee there will be clean water when you turn on your faucet, boat on your river, or, like the Scout I was with,  swim in a stream.