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Clean Water Act can’t be repealed

ERIN KITT-LEWIS, Roaring Spring

DARLENE CLARK, State College

As nurses, we are deeply concerned about protecting our water.

The Clean Water Rule protects about 60 percent of the nation’s streams and millions of acres of wetlands that provide drinking water for 117 million Americans.

Warming temperatures, more frequent intense storms, like Hurricane Florence, pose serious risks to the quantity and quality of our water.

Protecting our water is a public health issue.

In Pennsylvania, we’re experiencing excessive rainfall. This is no time to repeal the Clean Water Rule, a rule that was years in the making and included input from thousands of stakeholders.

We urge U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler to stop the plan to repeal this rule.

We are also deeply concerned about toxic fracking waste water coming into Pennsylvania.

Fracking waste water contains thousands of toxic chemicals and radioactive chemicals and poses a public health risk if it leaks into our waterways.

A 2016 study by the Yale School of Public Health noted fracking waste contained benzene, cadmium, lead, arsenic and mercury.

We must do all we can to protect our waters. Opposing any rollback of the Clean Water Rule is a critical first step.

Lastly, we recognize that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is a public health agency.

Now is the time for them to put public health first and scrap plans to repeal this science-based, common-sense regulation that will protect the drinking waters of Pennsylvania and the U.S.

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