What do Lindsay Whalen and the Redwood River have in common?
Answer: Their success can be linked to landmark legislation that turns 40 years old this year.
While the fall campaign season inevitably will target government regulations as obstacles to progress, sometimes we need to stop and recognize: "Wow, that was really the right thing to do." So it is with the Clean Water Act and Title IX, both of which were enacted in 1972. This is noteworthy because younger generations take the progress created by these laws for granted. They have to know it was not always this way.
I thought about the significance of marking anniversaries earlier this summer at a Lynx game. Lindsay Whalen was particularly fierce, scoring 25 points, with eight assists. It also happened to be the game where all WNBA teams paid special tribute to the 40th anniversary of Title IX, the federal law that bans gender discrimination in education.
While Title IX applies to more than sports opportunities, the federal law is credited with launching the rapid expansion of girls' participation in many sports that were previously for boys only. Girls like young Lindsay Whalen now happily spend hours on basketball courts, soccer fields and hockey rinks, likely unaware that there was a time that those skill- and character-building opportunities weren't widely available to girls.
So, too, the Clean Water Act (CWA) turns 40 this October. The CWA is the backbone of water protection at every level of government. The CWA moved sewage treatment from a novelty and luxury to an absolute public-health expectation.
It is stunning to remember how common it was just four decades ago for raw sewage to flow untreated into rivers like the Mississippi and Minnesota. Industrial discharges led to travesties like the Cuyahoga River catching fire. A 1964 fish survey of the Mississippi between Hastings and St.Paul showed two fish -- just two! The CWA set out the fundamental regulatory framework to not only clean up past water pollution, but also to prevent future water from becoming polluted. It seems so obvious now, but truthfully it was very ambitious.
In 2002, the Redwood River in southwestern Minnesota became the first of a dozen water bodies in Minnesota to be taken off the impaired-waters list, having been successfully remediated for dissolved oxygen. Although it still has ongoing pollution and sediment issues, the Mississippi River today is "fishable and swimmable," which are core standards found in the CWA.
