As a member of Waterkeeper Alliance, Mobile Baykeeper is one of 199 organizations working across the globe to protect its local waterways.  Waterkeeper Alliance is the leading voice for the world’s waters with roots dating back to 1966, when a concerned group of commercial and recreational fishermen mobilized to reclaim the Hudson River from polluters.  Riverkeepers, Baykeepers, Soundkeepers and others popped up around the country when they saw this successful method of protecting and restoring water quality.  In 1999, the group formalized into an Alliance to protect our world’s waterways.

The Clean Water Act is the cornerstone of our work, but this year several pieces of legislation have been introduced with one intention – to weaken the Clean Water Act.  If we allow this to happen, it would undermine clean water protections that our streams, rivers, lakes and estuaries have been afforded over the past 40 years.  The Clean Water Act has truly impacted our ability to have clean water for fishing, swimming and drinking in the United States. In developing countries 80% of all diseases are caused by contaminated water.  If we did nothing other than provide access to clean water worldwide, without any medical intervention, we could save 2 million lives a year.

There are three things you can do today to help protect clean water:

• Call your congressional leaders and ask them to restore the Clean Water Act’s original intent to protect all waterways by passing the Clean Water Restoration Act.
• Sign this petition to protect the Clean Water Act for the health of our communities and the environment. .
• Tell us YOUR clean water story by going to the Waterkeeper Alliance facebook page and uploading a 30-60 second video that tells why clean water is important to you.

Waterkeeper Alliance will be collecting these stories until October, when they will put together a documentary style video to show the importance of the Clean Water Act.  Join Mobile Baykeeper and Waterkeeper Alliance as we celebrate 40 years of water protections, and work with us to ensure those protections continue for our future.