NRDC

The EPA MUST Protect Our Water from Toxic Spills!

The EPA is accepting comments on a proposed rule to finally regulate the most dangerous chemical facilities and ensure they have a plan in place to prevent toxic chemical spills due to climate-change-supercharged natural disasters from reaching local waterways and threatening drinking water supplies and places where people from frontline communities swim and fish.

Submit your comment urging the EPA to adopt a strong “Worst Case Discharge” rule before the July 26 deadline!

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NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council)

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Dear NRDC Activist,

During Hurricane Harvey in 2017, harmful chemicals leaked from facilities overrun or damaged by the storm, spilling into local drinking water sources, threatening the health of nearby communities, and even causing some first responders to be hospitalized. Unfortunately, this isn't an isolated incident.

Toxic chemical spills happen all the time. And they are more likely to happen during natural disasters — often made worse by climate change — because industrial facilities that house dangerous chemicals are not required to plan for how they will prevent and respond to the worst-case scenario spills of hazardous substances. To make matters worse, environmental justice communities have borne the brunt of the harms caused by these unnecessary spills.

The EPA was mandated by Congress in 1990 to issue such regulations under the Clean Water Act but failed to act for decades.

So NRDC, the Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform, and Clean Water Action sued the EPA in 2019 — and won! As a result, the EPA has proposed a long-overdue "Worst Case Discharge" rule, which would require the most dangerous chemical facilities to have plans in place to protect our communities and environment from hazardous chemical spills.

Now, they're accepting public comments on that proposal — and they need to hear from you.

NRDC Activist, submit your public comment urging the EPA to finalize the strongest possible "Worst Case Discharge" rule to prevent hazardous substances from polluting our water during extreme weather events. Comments will only be accepted until July 26, so please submit yours right away!

NRDC Activist, risk from chemical disasters is just one of the many disproportionate burdens that environmental justice communities face daily.

After you submit your public comment, please consider making a tax-deductible gift to support NRDC and our partner, the Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform (EJHA)*, in our fight to end the rampant pollution that harms frontline communities.

All contributions will be shared 50/50 between our organizations, meaning your gift will help both NRDC and EJHA keep the pressure on EPA to protect our drinking water from chemical spills and support other campaigns to protect public health and the environment in the most effective way possible.

With climate change fueling more frequent and extreme weather events, we can expect more chemical facilities to experience leaks, spills, or explosions that wash a concoction of toxic substances into frontline communities and pollute local drinking water supplies.

And Black, Brown, and poor communities are disproportionately burdened by this pollution because facilities producing and storing hazardous substances — including known human carcinogens — are often located in or adjacent to these communities.

While EPA's proposed rule is a long-overdue first step in protecting communities from water pollution and drinking water contamination from chemical spills, we also need the agency to go further and ensure that the regulations cover all facilities where a discharge can pollute local waterways and adequately protect environmental justice communities and the broader public in the face of rampant climate change.

Submit your public comment before the July 26 deadline. We need to make sure the EPA course corrects its 30-year dereliction of duty with the strongest possible "Worst Case Discharge" rule that protects all communities from the impacts of hazardous chemical spills.

The fight for clean and safe drinking water doesn't end here. But this is a critical step in ensuring all communities, especially those on the frontline who have dealt with decades of toxic pollution already, are protected from hazardous chemical spills. Please join the fight by adding your voice today.

Sincerely,

Sara Imperiale
Litigation Director, Environment, Equity, & Justice Center, NRDC

Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OLEM-2021-0585-0001

*The Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform (EJHA) is a national network of grassroots environmental and economic justice organizations and advocates in communities that are disproportionately impacted by toxic chemicals from legacy contamination, ongoing exposure to polluting facilities, and health-harming chemicals in household products. EJHA supports a just transition towards safer chemicals and a pollution-free economy that leaves no community or worker behind. The EJHA network model features leadership of, by, and for environmental justice groups with support from additional allied groups and individual experts.

The mission of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is to safeguard the Earth: its people, its plants and animals, and the natural systems on which all life depends.

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