“Putting Drinking Water First” means stopping threats to drinking water where they start.
Clean Water Action is working to win strong water pollution controls by focusing on public health and drinking water impacts and bringing public health and environmental advocacy into Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) implementation.
Clean Water Action’s Putting Drinking Water First approach means making drinking water impacts a primary consideration when developing regulations and other programs involving upstream activities that could negatively impact downstream drinking water sources. The EPA/Corps Clean Water Rule better protects tributaries that impact the health of downstream waters, include drinking water sources: The Clean Water Rule has concrete implications for source water protection and for drinking water quality.
Lead is a highly poisonous metal and can affect almost every organ in the body and the nervous system. It is a naturally occurring element found, due to human activity, in all parts of our environment.
“Act like drinking water matters.” This approach has always been at the core of Clean Water Action’s programs.
Clean Water Action is a founding member of the Source Water Collaborative. The Collaborative is 26 organizations who have come together to protect America’s drinking water at the source – in the lakes, rivers, streams and aquifers we tap for drinking purposes.
Lead exposure is a problem that America has been facing for decades. The EPA estimates that lead in drinking water can account for 20% of a person's exposure to lead (Lead and Drinking Water). Currently, there are lead service lines in up to ten million homes across the country. Replacing them comes at a high cost.
President Biden proposed a lot of money for funding of lead pipe replacement in the American Jobs Plan. This could be a game changer. Removing the largest source of lead in drinking water is an enormous and expensive task. The cost of lead service line replacement has been the biggest barrier to both decisive federal regulation and proactive water system and community action. In addition to the President’s plan, significant funding has been included in several bills introduced or in the works in both the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House this year.
President Biden has pledged to take quick action on toxic fluorinated ‘forever chemicals’ known as PFAS “by designating PFAS as a hazardous substance, setting enforceable limits for PFAS in the Safe Drinking Water Act, prioritizing substitutes through procurement, and accelerating toxicity studies and research on PFAS.” These are welcome—and necessary—steps that must be taken to address this toxic pollution, but there’s a lot more the Biden administration can do.