Fox says that the United States is restoring the water quality of its rivers, lakes, and streams by charting a new course that emphasizes collaborative strategies built around entire watersheds and the communities they sustain. Fox was interviewed by Jim Fuller.

Question: President Clinton has said that 40 percent of our nation's waters are still too polluted for fishing and swimming -- 25 years after the U.S. Congress passed the Clean Water Act. How much progress is being made in combating water pollution?

Fox: We have made significant progress in this country. We have invested literally thousands of millions of dollars in water pollution control over the last 25 years. In 1972, the Potomac River was too dirty for swimming, Lake Erie was dying, and the Cuyahoga River in Ohio was so polluted it caught fire. Since the enactment of the Clean Water Act, we've made tremendous progress in improving the general quality of our nation's rivers, lakes, and streams. We've doubled the number of waterways that are safe for fishing and swimming, reduced industrial discharges by millions of pounds a year, and more than doubled the number of Americans served by adequate sewage treatment. But we still have a long way to go. And that's what the Clean Water Action Plan is all about -- making the commitment as a nation to have waters that are safe for fishing and swimming.

Q: What is the Clean Water Action Plan?

A: The Clean Water Action Plan is a major new initiative announced by President Clinton in February 1998 to improve the water quality of the nation's rivers, lakes, and streams. To carry out the initiative, the president has allocated $651 million in the fiscal year 2000 budget -- and has called for a total increase of $2,300 million over five years to clean up watersheds across the country. In fact, we have doubled the amount of money that's available to reduce what we call nonpoint source pollution, which is the polluted runoff that comes from farms, city streets, and other sources that contaminate our waters.

The administration is also focusing on a series of drinking water initiatives built on the Safe Drinking Water Act amendments enacted by Congress in 1997. These initiatives call for over $2,000 million in annual financial assistance to state and local governments to upgrade their drinking water systems so that people can have confidence that when they turn on the tap, they're getting water that is safe for drinking, bathing, and showering.

Q: How is the Clean Water Action Plan different from previous attempts to deal with water pollution?

A: There is excitement over the Clean Water Action Plan for a number of reasons. Number one, for the first time it brings together the different programs of all the agencies of the federal government to try to solve water pollution problems in this country. It has become obvious that EPA alone can't deliver clean water to the American public. We can only accomplish this to the extent that we work together with the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Transportation. So the Action Plan is very exciting from that standpoint. It is also exciting in that it provides new money to all our agencies -- money that is then provided to state governments so that we can work collectively on achieving water quality goals.

One of the most significant developments is that for the first time, we are looking at the entire watershed. That means we're no longer just looking at the problems coming from an individual factory or farm. Instead, we're looking at all the different water pollution problems affecting a region or community -- from forest to farm to urban neighborhood -- so that we can tailor-make our solutions to the unique problems of that region. And we've had tremendous success in working with the state governments. I was quite surprised to see that within only six months of the president's announcement of the Action Plan, we received priority watershed plans from all 50 states and many Indian tribes. It is very exciting to see that kind of enthusiasm. Everybody seems to realize that working together to solve water pollution problems is in everybody's interest.

Q: What are some of the actions called for by the Clean Water Action Plan?

A: The Action Plan includes 111 major new actions to restore and protect our water resources. These are specific action items that each agency must respond to within certain timeframes. Those commitments take us into the next century. The focus is on trying to combat polluted runoff from sources such as city streets, suburban yards, and farms. For example, working with the Department of Agriculture, we will for the first time issue discharge permits for literally thousands of animal feeding operations -- such as large hog farms, cattle farms, dairies, and poultry houses -- that produce significant amounts of manure that ultimately gets into our waters. This joint strategy will also include recommendations for new regulations that will apply to animal feeding operations, as well as voluntary actions that can be taken by smaller farmers around the country.

Another action item calls on EPA to develop new water quality standards to ensure that beaches are safe for swimming, and a new Internet-based system to provide the public with online information on whether or not their beaches are safe. The Internet will also be used to provide information on the health of aquatic systems in more than 2,000 watersheds nationwide.

We are also trying to do a better job of educating people about their relationship to water quality. In urban areas, for example, homeowners will often change the motor oil in their cars and pour the used oil down a storm drain, thinking it will be treated at a sewage treatment plant. However, many storm drains are connected directly to a local waterway, and so pouring the oil into a drain is just like pouring it into a river. We want to educate people about how they can contribute to solving water pollution problems.

Q: The Action Plan also provides increased incentives to farmers and other landowners to adopt practices that protect water quality. For example, would you discuss how farmers are encouraged to create protective forest and grassland buffers along rivers and streams?

A: One of the interesting technological advances that we've seen in the water pollution control area is that some of the techniques that were used to protect our water quality in the 1930s and 1940s actually make a lot of sense today. By installing what we call buffer strips along waterways we can, on the one hand, reduce the amount of pollution that is running off a farm field into a stream, and, on the other hand, create riparian areas along stream corridors for wildlife to live. These buffer zones -- which can be anywhere from 3 to 60 meters in width -- can also provide essential nutrients to the fish and offer benefits for flood prevention and control, while reducing pollution that's going into the water. It's a wonderful technology.

Q: How important is the restoration of wetlands in the fight against water pollution?

A: One of the president's action items calls for the creation of 40,000 hectares of wetlands a year beginning in 2001. This includes a 50 percent increase in wetlands restored by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. That's an ambitious goal. And what it says is that we need to do a very good job in improving and expanding wetlands as opposed to simply watching their demise, which is what we've been doing in this country for the last 100 years. There are just a fraction of the wetlands today that existed 200 years ago. We now know that wetlands are an incredibly important part of our ecosystem -- that they provide flood control, wildlife habitat, and water quality benefits. Many Americans are now realizing that they also provide an enjoyable place to watch birds. These are very different values than we had even 50 years ago, when wetlands were thought of as swamplands that needed to be drained to protect against mosquitoes. And so we are working aggressively to expand wetlands areas. This will require significant new financial commitments from government for land acquisition and creating partnerships with states and owners of agricultural lands where many of these wetlands are going to be restored. We're hopeful that working together we will be able to achieve the president's goal.

Q: What would you point to as the biggest success story in fighting water pollution?

A: One of the most outstanding successes that we've seen in the last 25 years has been the improvement in municipal sewage treatment capacity throughout the United States. Under the provisions of the Clean Water Act, we have invested over $75,000 million to construct and upgrade sewage treatment facilities, nearly doubling the number of people served with secondary treatment -- a basic level of sewage treatment -- to more than 150 million. We do a very good job of controlling water pollution from municipalities through sewer systems. At the same time, we understand that our municipalities need to continually invest in this kind of basic infrastructure if we are going to achieve our water pollution goals in the future. And that's a challenge because infrastructure investments are incredibly expensive; they also represent difficult decisions for state and local governments to make. But they are tremendously important decisions for the future of our nation's waters.

We have also seen increasing investments in water pollution control technology around the world. In that regard, we have an elaborate and increasingly successful partnership with Mexico to address water pollution problems along the U.S.-Mexican border. This has been, in fact, a fairly significant initiative by this administration. We've provided tens of millions of dollars to improve and upgrade sewage treatment plants for residents on both sides of the border. We also have a number of bilateral forums that have made a lot of progress working on priority environmental problems. Having said that, there are still many challenges that we face in the U.S.-Mexican border region -- an area of both our countries that traditionally has been underserved by basic water infrastructure. The people that live in that area have very significant needs that
must be met.