WASHINGTON— The Environmental Integrity Project, Waterkeeper Alliance and Center for Biological Diversity today sent to EPA a notice of intent to sue the agency for its failure to implement a key requirement of the federal Clean Water Act: issuing national reports on water quality.

“The EPA has obscured essential information about waterway pollution and aquatic ecosystem health for seven years, leaving us no choice but to launch this lawsuit,” said Hannah Connor, environmental health deputy director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “I urge agency officials to quickly provide this assessment of how much states and the EPA have done to reduce pollution, how much remains to be done, and what actions are needed to restore polluted waterways to health.”

The landmark 1972 law requires EPA to report on the condition of America’s streams, rivers, lakes and estuaries at least once every two years. But EPA’s last national water quality report was released seven years ago, in 2017, according to the notice, which is the first required step before a federal lawsuit.

“With all of the environmental challenges our nation faces, it’s critically important that EPA doesn’t forget about the Clean Water Act — a cornerstone law that has been neglected and only partially implemented,” said Meg Parish, senior attorney at the Environmental Integrity Project. “The Clean Water Act can’t live up to its promise if EPA won’t report on polluted waterways, as required, or update its standards to keep pace with technology.”

In addition to this legal action, a broader national coalition of more than 50 clean water organizations sent a letter to EPA Administrator Michael Regan today urging the agency to also fix two other major problems: Failing, for decades in some cases, to update and strengthen technology-based standards for industry water pollution control systems; and not identifying the funding needed to fulfill EPA’s Clean Water Act responsibilities.

“EPA's effluent limitation guidelines have been on life support since most of its staff and funds were transferred to other programs in 2000,” said Betsy Southerland, former director of the EPA's Office of Science and Technology. “Consequently, the discharge of industrial pollutants posing serious risks to public health and the environment, including newly recognized pollutants such as PFAS, has continued unabated for decades.”

About half of America’s river and stream miles that have been assessed are so polluted they are unsafe for fishing, swimming or the other public uses the Clean Water Act was meant to protect, according to the most recent available state reports, some of which date back a decade.

“Congress made biennial water quality reports from EPA mandatory for good reason —they are necessary for lawmakers to determine the effectiveness of the Clean Water Act,” said Kelly Hunter Foster, senior attorney at Waterkeeper Alliance. “Waterkeepers and a myriad of stakeholders across the country have historically relied on the accessibility of this analysis and reporting on state and national water data to protect their local waterways and advocate for essential pollution controls.”

Hundreds of chemical plants, refineries and other industries are releasing grossly high levels of pollution into local waterways because of EPA’s outdated and weak technology-based pollution control guidelines (called effluent limitation guidelines).

Examples based on data from EPA and state records include the following:

• Louisiana: The world’s largest ammonia production facility, the CF Industries Donaldsonville Nitrogen Complex, an hour west of New Orleans, discharged over 3.1 million pounds of total nitrogen into the Mississippi River in 2021, as much as 25 average municipal sewage treatment plants. Nitrogen feeds excessive algal blooms and low-oxygen “dead zones.”
• Texas: The OxyChem Ingleside plant on the Gulf Coast, which produces vinyl chloride and other chemical products, discharged an estimated 687,840 pounds of total nitrogen into Corpus Christi Bay in 2023, more than five average sewage treatment plants.
• Ohio: Kraton Polymers, a synthetic rubber polymer manufacturer in Belpre, Ohio, approximately 100 miles southeast of Columbus on the Ohio-West Virginia border, discharged an estimated 488,467 pounds of total nitrogen into the Ohio River in 2023, about 1,340 pounds per day.
• West Virginia: The Chemours Washington Works plastics plant, about 60 miles north of Charleston, WV on the Ohio-West Virginia border, discharged an estimated 418,122 pounds of total nitrogen into the Ohio River in 2023, about 1,145 pounds per day, from its wastewater outfalls. The facility’s permit requires monitoring and reporting, but has no limits for nitrogen pollution.
• Indiana: The BP Whiting refinery beside Lake Michigan discharged nearly 3,600 pounds of selenium, which can be toxic to fish, into the lake in 2021. It also released more than 30 million pounds of total dissolved solids and 9 million pounds of chloride, both of which can kill aquatic life at high concentrations, and 574,008 pounds of nitrogen, among many other pollutants.

Some of the EPA’s effluent guidelines for industry date back four decades, including those for inorganic chemicals (last updated in 1982), petroleum refining (1985), fertilizer manufacturing (1986), and the makers of organic chemicals, plastics and synthetic fibers (1994). (See list on attached fact sheet).

At the agency’s current pace of updating these standards, which are supposed to be tightened as technologies improve, it may be a century before the EPA modernizes industrial discharge guidelines set in an era before desktop computers and cell phones.

For a policy brief on water pollution from chemical plants and plastics facilities, click here.