News

Otto Doering

Nitrogen. It makes up three-fourths of the air all around us. It cascades through our environment between land, water and the atmosphere. It is critical to agricultural production that feeds the world. And it is a byproduct of all the fossil fuels we consume.

In the United States, we put five times more nitrogen into the environment than is deposited or released naturally. That excess nitrogen causes a variety of environmental and health problems – pollution of ground and surface waters, smog, increased emissions of greenhouse gases.

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G. Tracy Mehan III, a former top water-quality official in the Environmental Protection Agency, and a panel of Minnesota water experts spoke Monday, June 25, on the accomplishments of the federal Clean Water Act, its limitations and prospects for resolving today’s biggest water pollution problems.

Mehan’s conclusion? The Clean Water Act, passed by Congress 40 years ago this fall, has done great things to clean up rampant pollution from sewage treatment plants and industries, but it was never intended to address the multiple-source pollution that is our biggest problem today. But there are other means by which citizens and policy-makers can work together to protect and clean up water.

The lecture and panel were sponsored by the Freshwater Society and the University of Minnesota College of Biological Sciences.

If you missed the event, it is available on archived video.

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Check out an electronic version of our latest Facets of Freshwater newsletter. There are three ways you can read the newsletter:

Download the 12-page PDF, page through it as an electronic magazine or read each article individually by clicking on the links, below:

• U.S. Geological Survey research links a big decline in the water level in White Bear Lake to groundwater pumping.

• A free Freshwater app is available for smartphones.

• Attend a June 25 lecture on the 40th anniversary of the Clean Water Act.

• Gene Merriam urges consumers to demand more-sustainable food.

• The Community Clean-Ups for Water Quality program will enlist 40,000 Girl Scouts in protecting lakes and streams this fall. A Community Clean-Up drew Anoka Rotarians to protect their rivers.

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G. Tracy Mehan III

Forty years ago this autumn, the U.S. Congress overwhelmingly overrode President Richard Nixon’s veto and enacted the Clean Water Act. The act dramatically reduced pollution from industry and sewage treatment plantsthat must obtain federal permits to discharge their wastes. But the legislation was much weaker in dealing with today’s biggest water-quality challenge: Polluted runoff from multiple, diffuse sources, especially from agriculture.

G. Tracy Mehan III, an environmental consultant who was the top water-quality official in the Environmental Protection Agency from 2001 to 2003, will deliver a free, public lecture in St. Paul on the Clean Water Act’s successes, political obstacles to strengthening the law and avenues that can lead to progress.

The lecture is sponsored by the Freshwater Society and the University of Minnesota College of Biological Sciences. It will be at 7 p.m. in the theater of the Student Center on the university’s St. Paul campus. The lecture is titled The Clean Water Act After 40 Years: What Has It Accomplished? How Do We Fulfill Its Promise?

Register to reserve your place at the lecture.

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