From Mother Nature Network's Russell McLendon:
1972 was a watershed year for American water. That fall, an unusually unified Congress overrode President Nixon's veto and passed the Clean Water Act, a historic law that transformed the country's relationship with its water supply.
Forty years later, the law's legacy is hard to overstate. Not only did it empower the EPA to punish polluters, but it helped legitimize the young U.S. environmental movement at a key time in its history. River fires, toxic spills and other crises had cast a national spotlight on water pollution, spurring support for an aquatic sequel to the 1970 Clean Air Act. And unlike its precursor, the Federal Water Pollution Control Act of 1948, this law sought to make all U.S. waters "fishable and swimmable" by a specific deadline (1985), and gave regulators the tools to actually follow through.
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