Rogue Drinking Water Partnership
Somos un socio fundamental de la Asociación para el Agua Potable de Rogue (Rogue Drinking Water Partnership, RDWP), una asociación de colaboración de proveedores locales de agua potable y organizaciones centradas en la protección del agua potable y las fuentes de agua.
Esta asociación de colaboración tiene un objetivo principal:
proteger la calidad del agua potable para la comunidad de la cuenca del Rogue.
Estrategias
pre-1970
1960s: Major environmental disasters prompt public outrage
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The "environmental crisis" of the late 1960s, including the massive coverage of the Santa Barbara oil spill and Cuyahoga River fire, galvanized public opinion and helped create the opening for major environmental legislation in Congress. To the surprise of no one who worked on the Cuyahoga, an oil slick on the river caught fire the morning of Sunday, June 22, 1969. The blaze only lasted about 30 minutes, extinguished by land-based battalions and one of the city’s fireboats. But on the day of the fire, it had meant nothing to the masses. Only in the following months and years did the fire gain noteriety.
1948: Federal Water Pollution Control Act
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Commonly known as the Clean Water Act (CWA), this is the primary U.S. federal law regulating water pollution. Enacted in 1948 and significantly amended in 1972, it aims to restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of our nation's waters. The Act establishes a framework for regulating pollutant discharges, sets water quality standards, and provides funding for sewage treatment plants, according to the EPA.
1968: Wild & Scenic Rivers Act
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Congress established the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System, aiming to preserve rivers with outstanding natural, cultural, and recreational values in a free-flowing condition for future generations.
The Rogue River was one of the first 8 rivers designated under this act, specifically from the mouth of the Applegate River to the Lobster Creek Bridge, a total of 84 miles. Additionally, a portion of Elk Creek is designated as Wild & Scenic. Elk Creek is a key tributary of the Rogue River located near the southwestern Oregon community of Shady Cove. Originating from the high Cascades, the forests, riparian, and meadow landscapes of this watershed are uniquely diverse. Influenced by a multiple-use patchwork of mixed federal and private land ownership, the Elk Creek Basin remains rich in fish and wildlife habitat values.​​​
Wild & Scenic
1969: National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)
A landmark national environmental policy was enacted (NEPA), requiring federal agencies to assess the environmental impacts of their actions and consider alternatives. President Nixon sent Congress a plan to consolidate many environmental responsibilities of the federal government under one agency, a new Environmental Protection Agency. This reorganization would permit response to environmental problems in a manner beyond the previous capability of government pollution control programs.
The following were all approved by Congress in 1970, establishing the EPA's authority:
Research
The EPA would have the capacity to do research on important pollutants irrespective of the media in which they appear, and on the impact of these pollutants on the total environment.
monitoring
Both by itself and together with other agencies, the EPA would monitor the condition of the environment. With that data, the EPA would be able to establish quantitative "environmental baselines," which are critical for efforts to measure the success or failure of pollution abatement efforts.
Enforcement
The EPA would be able (jointly with individual states) to set and enforce standards for air and water quality and for individual pollutants. All industries would be assured of consistent standards covering the full range of their waste disposal problems.
Support
As states developed and expanded their own pollution control programs, they would be able to look to one agency to support their efforts with financial and technical assistance and training.
1970s
1972: Clean Water Act (CWA)
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The Federal Water Pollution Contract Act (1948) was amended in 1972, and the law subsequently became commonly known as the Clean Water Act (CWA).
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The amendments accomplished the following:
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Established the basic structure for regulating pollutant discharges
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Gave the EPA the authority to implement pollution control programs
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Maintained existing requirements to set water quality standards for all contaminants in surface waters
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Made it unlawful for any person to discharge any pollutant from a point source into navigable waters, unless a permit was obtained
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Funded the construction of sewage treatment plants
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Recognized the need for planning to address the critical problems posed by nonpoint source pollution
1973: Endangered Species Act (ESA)
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The Endangered Species Act of 1973 provided a framework to conserve and protect endangered and threatened species and their habitats. This means that water projects, water management practices, and any actions that could affect water quality or quantity in areas where endangered species or their habitats are located must be carefully assessed and potentially modified to avoid negative impacts.
In our area, native fish listed on the ESA are the most likely to impact how our water is managed. For example, Coho Salmon are listed as threatened under the ESA and there are minimum flows required that are prioritized over other water rights, including agriculture.
1974: Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA)
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All water providers are held to a high standard of testing that ensures drinking water is safe for users. The Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) is the main federal law that ensures the quality of Americans' drinking water. Under SDWA, EPA sets standards for drinking water quality and oversees the states, localities, and water suppliers who implement those standards. Oregon implements its drinking water protection program through a partnership between the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality and Oregon Health Authority. This law focuses on all waters actually or potentially designed for drinking use, whether from above ground or underground sources.
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2024 was the 50th anniversary of the SDWA!
1980s & 90s
1987: Clean Water State
Revolving Fund (CWSRF)
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This loan and grant program is a federal-state partnership that helps communities build out and improve their water infrastructure, including sewage treatment plants, pumping stations, and sewage overflow controls. The 2022 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law included a much-needed boost in funds to the CWSRF: $11.7 billion, with an additional $1 billion to address PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, aka “forever chemicals”) and other emerging contaminants.
1990: Oil Pollution Act
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The Oil Pollution Act of 1990 amended the CWA to make it easier to recover the costs of cleanup from the companies responsible. This was in direct response to the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, which dumped 11 million gallons of oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound. More recently, the CWA has helped U.S. taxpayers recoup more than $18 billion from oil company BP following its Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, and $50 million from petrochemical manufacturer Formosa Plastics for illegally dumping plastic and other pollutants into Texas waterways.
2000s-2020s
2015: Clean Water Rule
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In 2015, then president Barack Obama’s EPA and Army Corps of Engineers published the Clean Water Rule to clarify the scope of protections in the CWA—and specifically included wetlands and streams. ​
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Previous iterations of "Waters of the United States" lacked a formal definition. Thus, all tributaries to a stream were previously regulated without qualification. The 2015 rule more precisely defines tributaries as waters characterized by the presence of physical indicators of flow such as a clearly evident bed and bank with discernible signs of an ordinary high water mark. Tributaries must also contribute flow directly or indirectly to a traditional navigable water, an interstate water, or the territorial seas.​​
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Previously, the term “adjacent” was ambiguously defined and its interpretation was subjective.
2018: America's Water Infrastructure
Act (AWIA)
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AWIA provides funding to assist public water systems in small and disadvantaged communities with reducing lead in drinking water systems, provides financial assistance to homeowners for lead line replacement and testing drinking water in schools and child care facilities for lead.
2019: Dirty Water Rule
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In 2019, the Trump administration repealed the 2015 rule and replaced it with what environmental advocates called the “Dirty Water Rule” because of how it drastically eliminated protections for millions of miles of waterways. The agencies involved failed to do the legally required work of justifying this radical change in policy in light of what it would do to public health and safety, to the environment, and the economy that depends on water resources, according to the Natural Resource Defense Council. The administration was unable to forecast the rule’s potential impacts, and the EPA’s own advisors warned that parts of the rule were not based on science at all.
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This illegal rule was quickly suspended by federal court action which found the rule would result in “serious environmental harm.” In December, the Biden administration issued a proposed rule to formally repeal the Dirty Water Rule and reinstate the definition of “waters of the United States” originally established by the Reagan administration and that governed the scope of the Clean Water Act for decades.
2000s-2020s
2023: Sackett vs EPA
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This controversial U.S. Supreme Court decision gutted the Clean Water Act’s protections for wetlands and many streams. Before the Sackett v. EPA case, Congress, agencies, and the courts all understood the CWA to protect most surface waters: oceans, lakes, streams, and wetlands. But the Sackett decision ruled out protections for an estimated tens of millions of acres of wetlands across the country. This ruling ignored scientific evidence and the intention of the law to protect our waters.
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Whether or not the Supreme Court can agree on the definitions of "Waters of the United States" as intended by Congress in 1972, we can all agree that the result will be lower water quality throughout all our water bodies, regardless of whether they are considered "navigable waterways" or have a "significant nexus" as defined in previous definitions. Water moves, and it moves pollution with it.
2024: Loper Bright
Enterprises v. Raimondo
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The Court's conservative majority decided to upend 40 years of precedent known as the Chevron deference, a long-standing principle that when a law is vague, a federal court should defer to a federal agency’s expertise and reasonable interpretation of the law. This decision means federal courts now have greater power to review and reject agency interpretations of ambiguous statutes, potentially leading to increased litigation and uncertainty for federal agencies.
2025 San Francisco v. EPA
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The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the EPA cannot impose "end-result" requirements on Clean Water Act permits, meaning they cannot make permit holders like San Francisco responsible for the overall water quality in a receiving body of water.
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Take a look at the analogy Attorney Albert Ettinger
uses to explain the implications this ruling will have on clean water in the US.
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​“Because the EPA is not allowed to include health-based standards when regulating water pollution, it'll need to know everything about what might be discharged before a clean-water permit can be issued—making the permitting process delayed and incredibly expensive. The result is likely to be a new system where the public is regularly subjected to unsafe water quality.”
March 2025 EPA Memorandum
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The EPA, under administrator Lee Zeldin, issued a memorandum that further narrowed protections for wetlands, despite the fact that the Biden administration had already implemented changes to comply with the Sackett ruling. Zeldin also announced a new effort likely to result in regulatory changes that further weaken the Clean Water Act. The approach endangers communities across the country—leaving them more exposed to toxic pollution, dangerous flooding, and the contamination of drinking water supplies for tens of millions of people.
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR OREGONIANS?
Keeping track of all the legislation and court rulings can be a difficult task, and we understand that. In practice, the protection of our drinking water is led by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality’s (Oregon Health Authority) drinking water protection program, which assists public water systems and communities with protecting their sources of drinking water (streams, lakes and aquifers) from contamination. The program addresses over 2500 public water systems in Oregon.
Learn more about how DEQ is monitoring water quality, protecting our source water, and helping communities improve their water systems at the links below:
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