New EPA plan would drastically roll back clean water protections

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Environment Georgia

Atlanta, GA — Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) unveils its plan to drastically roll back Clean Water Act protections from vast networks of streams and wetlands in Georgia and across the country. Jennette Gayer, Director with Environment Georgia issued the following statement:

“The ‘Dirty Water Rule’ is the most extreme attack on clean water in recent memory. This outrageous proposal upends the core mission of the EPA: protecting human health and the environment.

“The health of Georgia’s rivers, lakes and marshes depends on the streams that feed them and the wetlands that filter out pollution. Stripping protections from these waterways would put the drinking water sources for more than 4.9 million Georgians at risk.

“The Dirty Water Rule being proposed to today would replace the 2015 Clean Water Rule, which restored federal protections to 57 percent of Georgia’s streams and millions of acres of wetlands around the country. More than a thousand scientific studies and a million Americans – including over 10,000 Georgians – backed protections for these waterways.”

“The rivers that make our state so special – the Chattahoochee, The Altamaha, The Savannah and more, rely on hundreds of small streams and wetlands. If you strip away protections for those clean water work horses and you threaten Georgia’s most iconic, and economically important, resources. We’ll be fighting against this rule and for our rivers every step of the way.”

Environment Georgia directed members and supporters to its action page where Georgians could sign-on to a statement opposing the EPA’s new rule.