This has been a huge month for the Clean Water Campaign! Several students and our leading directors from WashPIRG along with Environment Washington advocates met with the staff of Senator Patty Murray to show our support for returning the Clean Water Act to its initial strength. We’re excited that student voices are being heard!

On May 5, we met with Senator Murray’s outreach director, Richard, to present 10,000+ Washington signatures in support for closing loopholes in the Clean Water Act. We hope that Senator Murray sees what her district wants and decides voice her strong support for the rule! While 10,000 signatures was a huge accomplishment, we are still hoping to diversify our support by gaining signatures from small- and medium-sized farmers, so as to include the agricultural sector in this fight too.

For those of you who aren’t caught up with what we’re working on – here’s the spiel: the Clean Water Act was passed as a method for establishing regulations on water pollution. While this protects most large bodies of water, smaller rivers and reservoirs are excluded from protection by a few loopholes. We’re working on closing those loopholes by showing our support for this cause and advocating for state representatives like Patty Murray to to vote in support and encourage other Senators and representatives to do so as well!!

We accomplished so much this week, and the support we get from the students of UW truly shows our commitment to environmental issues like this. This meeting showed that working with Senator Murray is achievable and we hope to call her an ally by the end of the quarter.”

We’re working hard on finishing up this campaign, and keeping our eye on the prize – to learn more about this campaign, feel free to follow us on Facebook or Twitter or email us at washpirg@uw.edu to get in contact!

— Laura Heckenlively