The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has released Coming Together for Clean Water: EPA’s Strategy to Protect America’s Waters. This strategy charts a path for meeting the nation’s clean water strategic plan goals over the next several years. Protecting the nation’s water resources is not only important to the health of the nation’s citizens and the environment, but clean water is also a critical resource for the economy.
In April 2010 EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson brought a broad range of stakeholders together for the Coming Together for Clean Water forum. The discussion at the forum focused on how to reinvigorate the nation’s clean water programs to achieve a significant leap forward in clean water protections.
The Coming Together for Clean Water strategy presents a framework for how EPA’s national water program will address the challenges and highlights EPA’s priorities for achieving clean water goals. This strategy focuses on the following key areas:
- ensuring transparency and effectively reporting on the status of the health of all waters
- increasing protection of source waters and healthy watersheds
- restoring degraded waters and ecosystems
- reducing the amount of pollution entering our waters that impact our health and our economy
- tackling new and emerging threats to our waters in a way that will ensure healthier, more livable communities.
This vision for EPA’s programs is important to consistent and collaborative efforts between EPA, state and tribal partners, local government partners, the private sector and the public in order to achieve significant improvements our nation’s water quality.
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