Surface Waters Under Threat

This is an installment of our State of Environmental Protection series. This series utilizes public data from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to evaluate the current state of our environment and recent trends over time, as well as claims and assumptions behind attacks on federal environmental justice, science, and health. We investigate the progress made since the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and numerous other environmental laws were put into effect during the 1970s. Moreover, we seek to understand the landscape of environmental regulation, responsibility, and harm originating from industry in the United States.

EDGI and the Right to Trust our Environmental Health

I grew up in unincorporated Snohomish County, Washington—an area I often characterized, at the time, as the kind of place where people have guns and horses. As a kid, the woods behind my house felt like an endless adventure: a massive Pacific Northwest wetlands, where beavers would build ever-changing dams you might cross on foot (if you didn’t fall in), where stickerbushes grabbed at your clothes, and dripping thick underbrush would open up into spacious cedar groves that, even to a child, felt sacred.