Gayle Killam conducting a Clean Water Act training. Courtesy Gayle Killam.

River Network’s Clean Water Act (CWA) training program grew out of the recognition that law and policy training was essential for local groups. These groups often knew the laws weren’t working properly in their watersheds, but they lacked the knowledge as to what to do next in response. 

Equity was the principle by which we got involved in the Clean Water Act. Don Elder, in doing this work at the local level in Alabama before joining River Network in 1996, realized just how many assumptions go into allowable toxin level calculations under the CWA for fishable, swimmable waters. Whether it was the number of ounces of fish the “average” person eats, which assumed a Western diet and doesn’t account for subsistence fishing, or the “average” weight of a person, which assumes an adult white male and didn’t accurately protect women and children, Elder and other River Network staff saw that when we go about building policies this way, the “default” setting often doesn’t protect everyone or account for disparities in how the effects of pollution play out at different economic levels or across races. Educating local leaders on these issues—and empowering them to train others—became a cornerstone of our work for decades and was supplemented with the Clean Water Act Owner’s Manual, first published in 1999, the same year our trainings began.

Read more from Gayle Killam on River Network’s impact with the Clean Water Act.