Bren environmental law professor James Salzman was quoted in an article about a recent Environmental Protection Agency move to rollback Obama-era enhancements to the Clean Water Act. The new changes, termed the Navigable Waters Protection Rule, remove limits on the amount of pollution that can be dumped into streams and wetlands.
“We had that system before the Clean Water Act, and Lake Erie was declared biologically dead,” said Salzman, a professor of environmental law at the University of California. “We have been here before. The fact is some states are very stringent and some states aren’t.”
Salzman, a former member of the National Drinking Water Advisory Council and the Trade and Environment Policy Advisory Committee, said the safeguards mean little for the millions of Americans who obtain their water from wells and not municipal systems.