Authors:

  • Richard Lazarus

Excerpt

August 11, 2023, Paper: "In 1972, Congress passed the Clean Water Act1 by overwhelming bipartisan majorities. The initial vote in the Senate in favor of passage was 74 to 0.2 The House vote was 366 to 11.3 When President Richard Nixon vetoed the bill, both the House and the Senate overrode the presidential veto the next day. The Senate vote was 52 to 12 and the House vote was 247 to 23.4 The Act has since been one of the United States’ great environmental success stories, making great strides toward achievement of the Act’s overriding objective stated in its very first section: to “restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Nation’s waters."