Clinton Outlines U.S. Water Plan WASHINGTON (Reuters) -2/19/98
President Clinton outlined Thursday a five-year plan to spend an additional $2.3 billion to strengthen programs to fight water pollution from cities, agriculture and industries
The initiative is largely a reworking of existing programs and an effort to improve coordination among federal agencies, states and communities to control the tainted runoff that winds up in the nation's waterways
"This is a blueprint for solving the next generation of water problems," Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Carol Browner said. Browner and other administration officials briefed reporters on the plan Wednesday under an agreement that the information would not be released until Thursday
Browner said the initiative would deal with issues such as contamination of fish and shellfish, cleaning up beaches and coastal waters and controlling animal waste runoff from big livestock operations
The plan also calls for increasing wetlands by a net 100,000 acres a year, largely through restoring and enhancing wetlands degraded by development or pollution
The White House wants $568 million in additional spending next fiscal year for the overall effort, and a total of $2.3 billion in new spending over five years. The EPA, Agriculture Department and other federal agencies would get part of the increase, with the rest for programs for states and landowners
It would be up to Congress to approve that money
Environmentalists generally commended the package, but said they would watch to see how it was carried out
The plan "includes a number of modest, common-sense proposals to address water pollution problems including polluted runoff, wetlands protection, beach protection and contaminated fish consumption," environmental groups in the Clean Water Network, said in a statement
Sectors that would be affected by the initiative also said it generally appeared acceptable
"I am pleased with the tone of the document. It's clear that they went out of their way to avoid pointing a finger at any one sector, and they resisted attempts to propose new regulatory initiatives," Mark Maslyn, of the American Farm Bureau Federation, said
Included in the package was a national survey of contaminants in fish and shellfish, tougher water quality standards for beaches, and a plan to measure nitrogen and phosphorous levels in waterways
The plan also called for requiring water discharge control permits for industrial livestock operations that are blamed for sending animal waste into waterways, and for expanding buffer zones between farm lands and waterways
To inform people better on water quality in their communities, the plan called for better monitoring and reporting of pipe discharges into waterways and for a study of the system of monitoring water quality
The plan also called for expanded efforts to improve water quality on a watershed basis, the relocation or removal of thousands of miles of roads and trails, and an accelerated effort to improve or restore 25,000 miles of stream corridors
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