Clean Water Act
50ᵗʰ anniversary

On October 18, 1972, the Clean Water Act was signed into law, and Maine has much to celebrate as we mark this milestone.

Maine is a state defined by its waters. More than 7,000 rivers and streams totaling about 45,000 miles run through the state. Around 32,000 lakes, ponds and reservoirs cover more than a million acres, with around 6,000 of those big enough to qualify as lakes or great ponds. The state’s coastline is officially 228 miles long, but when you count every cove and cranny, nearly 3,500 miles of rocky shore and sandy beach meet the North Atlantic’s waters.

With water and wetlands making up around 17% of the state’s area, it’s no wonder a statesman from Maine took the lead in crafting the Clean Water Act to protect and preserve our liquid legacy. Edmund Muskie recognized the link between clean air and water and human health and championed several laws aimed at curbing pollution as Governor of Maine in the 1950s and as chair of the Senate’s Subcommittee on Air and Water Pollution in the 1960s. The years of Muskie’s leadership and vision on this front culminated in the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972.

The Clean Water Act established ambitious goals for restoring the nation’s waterways. In just over a decade, the aim was to clean waters to a level that could support recreation and aquatic life (the so-called swimmable and fishable standard), and eliminate all pollution discharges two years after that. The act required all facilities within the same industry to treat their wastewater to the same level across the board and also made funds available to upgrade municipal sewage treatment plants. From the Willamette in Oregon to the Potomac in Maryland, rivers across the country have seen vast improvements in water quality thanks to this standardization of requirements, although more work remains to reduce polluted runoff from entering the water.

Read on for this special feature that ran in this the Summer 2022 issue of Green & Healthy Maine.

Top: Memorial Bridge in Augusta over the Kennebec River. / Bottom: Lewiston Falls on the Androscoggin River with the city of Lewiston visible in the background. Photo: Jennifer Yakey-Ault.