Don’t Derail Clean Water Protections

Clean water is a basic need. With two-thirds of national park waters impaired and many communities living with unsafe drinking water, we need more protections for our waterways, not less.

Unfortunately, since President Trump came into office, his administration has done the exact opposite, systematically undermining and outright attacking the laws that protect our national parks and their waters.

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Stop the Rollbacks of Clean Water Protections

The administration wants to take us back five decades in our water cleanup efforts.

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Most recently, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers finalized a revised water rule that eliminates protections for more than half of America’s wetlands, along with many rivers and streams that were once protected under the Clean Water Act — threatening drinking water for millions of people and national park waterways across the country. For decades, the Clean Water Act has safeguarded the waters flowing through our parks, helping to sustain plants and animals and provide recreation opportunities for some of the more than 300 million people who visit them each year.

In rolling back these clean water safeguards, the administration has erased decades of progress in our efforts to clean up America’s waters, paving the way for more pollution that threatens our national park waterways from trout streams in Yellowstone to wetlands in the Everglades.

Press Release

Trump Administration Dismantles Clean Water Rule Days After Gutting National Environmental Policy Act, Putting Park Waters Further at Risk

The administration’s rollback of clean water protections is a devasting blow to our national parks and surrounding communities. 

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The health of America’s national parks depends upon the health of the waters that surround and flow through them. The National Park Service oversees thousands of miles of waterways and coasts throughout the country – from lakeshores around the Great Lakes to the Colorado River flowing through nine national parks like the Grand Canyon. For more than 20 years, national park visitors have consistently ranked water quality or water access as a top-five most valued attribute when visiting national parks. And Outdoor Industry Association found that consumers spend $887 billion annually on outdoor recreation, with nearly $140 billion on kayaking, rafting, canoeing, scuba diving and other water and recreation activities, all of which takes place in our parks.

Clean water is essential for all people and vital for our national parks, which is why NPCA will continue to fight any rollbacks that put our park waters at risk. We call on the administration and Congress to maintain the highest level of protection for our nation’s waterways for our health, our communities, our parks and all who rely on them.