Celebrating 50 Years of the Clean Water Act Clean Water Victories.

• Date: 22 September 2022
• Published date: 22 September 2022

CLEAN WATER IS A FUNDAMENTAL HUMAN RIGHT. But 50 years ago, the nation's rivers, lakes, and streams were anything but clean. The waterways that had powered the country's economic growth for a century had become dirty dumping grounds for chemical waste, industrial pollution, and raw sewage.

When Congress passed the Clean Water Act in 1972, it offered hope for these ailing waterways and the communities that depend on them. CLF had been founded six years earlier, but even then, its legal advocates understood that the power of this bedrock law would come from enforcing it: holding both government agencies and polluters accountable, filing lawsuits on behalf of the people affected by pollution, and ensuring that the law protected all communities.

CLF cut its teeth on the Clean Water Act when advocates sued the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for failing to stop raw sewage discharges into Boston Harbor. The organization took the lessons from that hard-won victory and put them to work across New England. Since then, CLF has wielded the Clean Water Act to achieve some of its most significant and far-reaching victories [see timeline, next page].

While tremendous progress has been made since the Clean Water Act became law, too many waterbodies today still fail to meet the EPA's basic water quality standards, and more intense rains and warmer temperatures threaten to erase the progress already made. And too many communities, especially low-income and communities of color, still live with polluted water.

CLF's strength lies in its innovation in applying the law to address today's emerging threats. CLF legal...