THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary

               PRESIDENT CLINTON AND VICE PRESIDENT GORE:
                      CLEAN WATERS ACROSS AMERICA

                            August 14, 1999

President Clinton, in his weekly radio address, today announced new steps to restore America's rivers, lakes and coastal waters. Under a proposed new rule, the Environmental Protection Agency will work with states to better assess the health of U.S. waterways and to develop detailed plans to make them safe for fishing and swimming. In addition, the President called on Republicans in Congress to fund his key environmental initiatives, drop anti-environmental "riders," and abandon a risky tax cut plan that could shut down national parks and stall toxic waste cleanups.

Healthy Rivers, Lakes, and Coastal Waters. Despite tremendous progress in the quarter-century since the Clean Water Act was passed, 40 percent of America's surveyed waterways remain too polluted for fishing and swimming. The Clean Water Action Plan launched last year by the President provides communities with new resources to reduce dirty runoff and other threats to water quality. Today's proposal would strengthen EPA's "total maximum daily load" requirements to help restore 20,000 waterways nationwide. Under the proposed rule, states, territories, and authorized tribes will:

• Prepare more comprehensive assessments of waterways, identifying those exceeding clean water standards, and pinpointing those facing the greatest pollution threats.
• Set a cap on the pollution entering a given water body, and decide how much of that pollution can come from sources like factories, sewage treatment plants, farms and urban runoff.
• Develop detailed cleanup plans and set timetables for implementing them. The plans could entail tighter pollution limits for individual factories, sewage plants or other "point" sources, and limits on urban and agricultural runoff or other "nonpoint" sources. For "high priority" waters - including those where pollution threatens drinking water sources or endangered species -- states are encouraged to adopt plans within five years.

Progress, Not Partisanship, on the Environment. The balanced budget President Clinton has proposed for the coming year would reduce the national debt, shore up Social Security and Medicare, and make new investments in education, health care, and the environment. But Congress has:

• Cut by nearly two-thirds the President's $1 billion Lands Legacy initiative to protect natural treasures, farms, urban parks, and wetlands; and denied proposed increases to combat global warming through improved energy efficiency and clean energy technology.
• Loaded appropriations bills with special-interest riders that would undermine wetlands protections, open public lands to harmful mining and logging, restrict common-sense programs to address global warming, and roll back or prohibit other environmental and public health protections.
• Approved a drastic tax cut that would force massive cuts in vital programs in the years ahead - for instance, shutting down national parks, crippling environmental enforcement, slashing safe drinking water funding, and blocking cleanup of toxic Superfund sites.

The President called on the Republican leadership to abandon its risky tax cut plan and fund his environmental initiatives. He also warned that he has vetoed bills before because they contained anti-environmental riders and, if necessary, is prepared to do so again.

###