Water

Cleaning up and cooling down waterways

Water is essential to the survival of life, elemental in the maintenance of stable ecosystems, and itself a habitat for aquatic species. Water quality is a cornerstone environmental issue, and Earthrise Law Center is committed to its protection and improvement.

Earthrise works to clean up and cool down waterways on a regional and national scale by strengthening and ensuring enforcement of existing laws like the federal Clean Water Act. Earthrise has been working to curb vessel pollution, including the discharge of invasive species that travel from port to port in ships’ ballast tanks. Earthrise is using advocacy and litigation to strengthen the water quality standards, or goals, for waterbodies, including those waterbodies that are the home to the Pacific Northwest’s iconic and imperiled cold-water species such as salmon and bull trout. Earthrise has brought numerous legal actions against industrial facilities that discharge pollutants into waterways.  These cases are preventing the addition of mercury, lead, and other toxic pollutants into waters in which people regularly swim and recreate.  Earthrise has recently begun taking its enforcement work beyond the Northwest, by tackling water pollution problems in Wisconsin, New Jersey, Arkansas, and the Chesapeake Bay.