by Sarah Ellis, Volunteer Writer
For Tennesseans, much of the water we use comes from the ground underneath our feet. Thanks to our state’s underground network of caves and streams, groundwater is widely available — and, for the most part, clean and safe to drink. Ten percent of Tennesseans draw their drinking water directly from a private well or spring, and many more benefit from the groundwater used to power agriculture and help natural ecosystems flourish.
But clean water is by no means a given; in fact, waters across the nation may soon be under threat of contamination. In 2019, the Trump-era EPA finalized a rollback of the 2015 Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule, which provided broad federal protections for bodies of water from wetlands to rivers to streams. The new rule (called the Navigable Waters Protection Rule) is significantly narrower, restricting protections to “navigable” waters a boat can pass through. This leaves numerous other bodies of water vulnerable to pollution or destruction, including ephemeral streams.
What does that mean for Tennessee? This EPA reversal could build political momentum to weaken Tennessee’s Water Quality Control Act, which offers protection for wetlands, groundwater, and headwater streams. Without it, water protections in our state would be severely diminished. “We’ve been losing wetlands consistently over the years,” says Axel Ringe, Chair of the Sierra Club Tennessee Chapter Water Quality Committee. “We really can’t afford to lose more of them; they provide a significant ecological function in terms of water purification, biodiversity, and habitat.”
In the summer of 2020, the Tennessee Water Group (TWG) began meeting virtually to discuss this issue. They’re preparing to defend Tennessee’s Water Quality Control Act against potential adverse legislation, which could come up when the Tennessee General Assembly reconvenes on January 12, 2021. “We’ve been talking to various experts on hydrology and water quality across the state to get expert testimony we can use if a bill like that actually does come before the legislature,” Ringe says. He hopes these experts can speak to the scientific necessity of keeping groundwater clean and protected.
TWG includes a vast collective of environmentalists, activists, and legal scholars, such as the Harpeth Conservancy, the Southern Environmental Law Center, and Protect Our Aquifer in Memphis. “We’re kind of circling our wagons at this point, and we’ll see what happens,” Ringe explains. If the Water Quality Control Act does come under threat, TWG will need Sierra Club members to get involved. “If necessary, we’ll be asking people to call or write their legislators,” Ringe says. “Start bombarding them with their perspective that they don’t want Tennessee’s waters to be any dirtier than they are.”
Of course, the hope is that this won’t become a pressing statewide issue. If the incoming Biden administration reinstates the old WOTUS rule, a state-level rollback is less likely to succeed. Still, TWG is ready for the worst-case scenario. “We want to be able to preserve the purity of that groundwater,” Ringe says, “not only for the ecological function, but for the people of Tennessee so they can drink it.”
Contact Sarah at sarahabbottellis@gmail.com.