| The Clean Water Act of 1972 was the most important legislation that the American federal government passed in order to protect our waterways from pollutants. Its main goal was to restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the nation's waters so that they could support the protection and propagation of fish, shellfish, wildlife, and recreation in and on the water. However, in the last thirty-nine years the Clean Water Act has been continuously defunded and deregulated by the federal government because of specialized interests groups. This study aims to examine the history and effects of the decentralization of the Clean Water Act, by comparing it to the centralized Water Framework Directive, which is mandated in the European Union by all of the member states. I propose that the Clean Water Act needs to be more strictly monitored by the federal government in efforts to save our American waterways. |
