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Thursday, March 28, 2024

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Pulling back the curtains on wage-theft enforcement in MN; Trump's latest attack is on RFK, Jr; NM LGBTQ+ equality group endorses 2024 'Rock Star' candidates; Michigan's youth justice reforms: Expanded diversion, no fees.

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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says rebuilding Baltimore's Key Bridge will be challenging and expensive. An Alabama Democrat flips a state legislature seat and former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman dies at 82.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Promise of Clean Water Act Unmet

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Friday, October 19, 2007   

Des Moines, IA – Decades ago, a river in Cleveland, Ohio, was so polluted that it actually caught fire. The public outrage over that incident was the inspiration for the federal Clean Water Act, which was passed 35 years ago this week. Niela Seaman with the Iowa Sierra Club says before the Act was passed, many cities and industries dumped untreated wastewater and pollutants directly into Iowa rivers and lakes.

"The water is better than it was before, but we still have some serious water quality issues. In the last four or five years, we have been working very hard to get our water quality standards updated to what the Environmental Protection Agency requires."

Seaman says Iowa has almost 400 bodies of water on the Iowa Department of Natural Resources' list of so-called "impaired waterways," and only in the last few years have efforts been made to bring the state into compliance with the Clean Water Act.

Seaman says at the time the Clean Water Act was passed, its intent was to make all waters in the U.S. suitable for fishing and swimming within 11 years, and to end dangerous pollution discharges within 13 years. More than three decades later, not all the promises of the law have been met. Today, more than 150 Congressional representatives have cosponsored the "Clean Water Restoration Act," to revive and redefine what it will take to make water quality progress.


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