America’s drinking water is “getting cleaner. A recent National Bureau of Economic Research analysis of 266 million drinking water readings found that the share of readings with levels of regulated pollutants that exceed current health standards fell by half between 2003 and 2019,” notes The Doomslayer.
As that analysis explains,
Since the 1974 Safe Drinking Water Act, the U.S. has spent $2 trillion to provide safe drinking water, yet drinking water for 10–20 percent of Americans violates standards. We study trends, causes, and consequences of U.S. drinking water pollution, using 266 million readings on 1,250 pollutants over decades that we obtained from 48 states via dozens of Freedom of Information Act and associated requests. We link pollution to administrative Medicare data on older Americans’ health outcomes. Three findings emerge. First, U.S. drinking water pollution has declined rapidly; the share of readings exceeding current health standards fell by half from 2003–2019…Low-income areas have higher pollution; Black and Hispanic communities have more complex patterns.
Water has gotten so much cleaner in the Hudson River that many fish there are now safe to eat.
Fish have returned to the once horrifically polluted Chicago River.
For over a century, the river that flows through Paris (the Seine) was so dirty that it was illegal to swim in it. But now, it has become so clean that swimming in it was recently legalized by the City of Paris.
In Germany, a sludge-filled river became a thriving ecosystem: “For more than a century, Germany’s Emscher river carried sewage and industrial sludge through the Ruhr, earning a reputation as an open sewer. Now, after a massive cleanup, the river is becoming a thriving ecosystem once again.”
