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Tell Congress to Keep Sewage Out of Our Drinking Water!

Target: The U.S. Congress
Sponsored by: League of Conservation Voters

Two phrases you never want to see in the same sentence: drinking water and "sewage blending." And yet, that's the Bush Administration's new plan for your water supply!

Incredibly, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is about to relax restrictions on dumping sewage into our waterways. Their plan would allow water treatment facilities to release sewage filled with human wastes, toxins, bacteria, viruses, parasites and other pollutants into our drinking water.

"Sewage blending" poses a serious threat to our health and our communities. Sewage that has not been fully treated carries diseases such as cholera, hepatitis, respiratory infections, and others which can be life threatening for those with weakened immune systems.

In addition to the health hazards, sewage dumping will have adverse, long-term environmental and economic consequences. Sewage in our waterways forces beach closings, increases the cost of drinking water filtration, damages coral reefs, shuts down shellfish beds, and robs the water of oxygen that fish need to breathe.

This proposal is so outrageous, we've got to get EVERYONE to take action to defeat it. Urge Congress to support the Save Our Waters from Sewage Act (H.R. 1126) to protect our families, children and communities from unsafe drinking water!

A vote on this bill could come as soon as May 19th, so please act today! Your help is critical to LCV as it works to protect our families from unsafe drinking water and to shape a pro-environment Congress and White House.

UPDATE: On May 19th, by a vote of 329-89 the House of Representatives approved a $7.57 billion buget for the EPA for fiscal year 2006.

In an important environmental victory, the House barred the EPA from adopting a policy that would have permitted the blending of partially and fully treated sewage into our water supply after heavy rains and snow melts. At the same time, lawmakers rejected amendments to increase spending for specific EPA programs dealing with wastewater and Superfund cleanup.

We could not have achieved this victory against "sewage blending" without the huge outpouring of letters and comments from concerned citizens like you. A heartfelt thank you to all who spoke out against this outrageous policy proposal that threatened our drinking water!

deadline: 5-12-2006
goal: 25,000

17,614
signatures!

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Dear [your Congressperson],

As your constituent, I strongly urge you to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from relaxing its policies on discharging inadequately treated sewage into our waters.

Sewer authorities have been misled to believe that the solution to insufficient maintenance of aging sewer systems is to dump sewage that has been diverted around secondary treatment units, allowing sewage that has had no biological treatment to remove pathogens and pollutants to reach our water systems.

This process, known as sewage blending, would not only fail to address the maintenance of the sewer systems, but would also fill our rivers, lakes and coastal waters with wastes, bacteria and viruses that will make more than eight million Americans sick every year from exposure to polluted waters.

I encourage you to support the Save Our Waters from Sewage Act (H.R. 1126) to protect our families, children and communities from unnecessary illnesses.

Sincerely,
[your name]

We signed the “Tell Congress to Keep Sewage Out of Our Drinking Water!” petition!

# 17,717:

4:09 am PDT, Mar 22, Art Deco, Maine

# 17,716:

1:06 pm PDT, Mar 18, James Herald, Indiana

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12:40 pm PDT, Mar 18, Shannon Sultan, Wisconsin

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1:15 pm PST, Mar 1, Darlene Davis, Michigan

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12:06 pm PST, Feb 25, Daniel Amon, South Carolina

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2:17 pm PST, Feb 23, Suzie Gordon, New Hampshire

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12:44 pm PST, Feb 23, BiLL Fowlie, Maine

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6:12 am PST, Feb 22, Linda Dazey, Missouri

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7:23 pm PST, Feb 21, Jennifer Gray, California

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4:44 pm PST, Feb 21, Angela Ramsey, California

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8:47 am PST, Feb 21, Name not displayed, California

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8:38 am PST, Feb 21, Desiree Robison, California

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9:53 pm PST, Feb 20, Nikki Eberhart, California

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5:47 pm PST, Feb 20, Abigail Doyle, California

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5:37 pm PST, Feb 20, Delores Doyle, California
NEVER!

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6:02 pm PST, Feb 17, Laura Zanoli, Italy

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1:29 pm PST, Feb 11, Roxie Schliesmann, Wisconsin

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2:36 am PST, Feb 8, Laurel Burns, Maine

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5:17 pm PST, Feb 4, Mary Peterson, Idaho

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10:16 am PST, Feb 4, Anton Oscar Iorga, Canada

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3:13 am PST, Jan 31, Patrick Ronan, Ireland

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9:22 am PST, Jan 22, Jennifer Posanka, Illinois

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6:21 pm PST, Jan 18, John Edwards, Texas

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11:12 am PST, Jan 17, Lee Butt, Texas
YUCK!!!

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9:42 am PST, Dec 29, Christine Conti-Cole, Massachusetts

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2:42 pm PST, Dec 21, Name not displayed, Wisconsin

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6:33 pm PST, Dec 19, Sharon Dickenson, Kentucky

# 17,690:

6:27 pm PST, Dec 18, Jennifer Alaggio, New Jersey

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5:54 pm PST, Dec 18, Courtney Boeck, Michigan

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8:52 am PST, Dec 17, Curtis Fortin, Wyoming

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10:10 pm PST, Dec 15, Nikita Somers, South Carolina

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1:03 pm PST, Dec 15, Daisy Torres, Florida

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10:20 am PST, Dec 11, Kevin Brady, Pennsylvania
Are you kidding me? It would be absolutely bizarre were our legislators to allow this!

# 17,683:

11:49 am PST, Dec 8, Cara A, Alaska

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2:30 pm PST, Dec 2, Holly Swint, Florida

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9:53 pm PST, Nov 27, Name not displayed, Maine

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1:56 pm PDT, Oct 18, Ashley W., Pennsylvania

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1:24 pm PDT, Oct 7, John Miller, Illinois

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2:37 pm PDT, Oct 6, M S Polanco, New York

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7:17 pm PDT, Sep 23, Annette Leary, New York

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12:56 am PDT, Sep 21, Michelle Chua, Georgia

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11:27 am PDT, Sep 18, Kyna Crain, Montana

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4:43 pm PDT, Sep 14, JoAnne Perdue, Florida

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3:34 am PDT, Sep 2, Kaytie Irvine, California

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7:36 pm PDT, Aug 28, Stephanie Rodriguez, New York

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5:35 pm PDT, Aug 4, Joshua Neese, Indiana

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11:12 am PDT, Jul 13, Randy Hubbell, Florida

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1:47 pm PDT, Jul 4, R R, Washington

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5:27 pm PDT, Jun 26, Cris Colombi, Argentina

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6:21 am PDT, Jun 23, Dianne Martin, Australia

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1:34 pm PDT, Jun 13, Juliana Farah, Lebanon

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7:34 am PDT, Jun 11, Jon M. Jr, Alabama

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8:58 pm PDT, Jun 8, Name not displayed, Canada

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11:17 pm PDT, Jun 5, Orlin Larsen, California
Congress; It doesnt take a whole lot of brain power to figure out why anyone would oppose this plan. Why is it even a plan?

# 17,662:

12:09 pm PDT, Jun 1, Casey Marshall, Alabama

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4:49 am PDT, May 30, Carol Olah, Virginia

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4:29 pm PDT, May 26, Anthony Montapert, California

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4:08 pm PDT, May 25, Lynn B Price, California

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9:17 pm PDT, May 23, Gerri Ricciardi, New Jersey

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4:19 pm PDT, May 23, Mimi Steddom, Texas

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7:30 am PDT, May 23, Beverly Dixon, Pennsylvania

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7:20 am PDT, May 23, Juliaanna Jones, Australia

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9:53 pm PDT, May 22, Vincent Troilo, Connecticut

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5:03 pm PDT, May 22, Kayla Philbrick, Maine

# 17,652:

10:59 am PDT, May 22, Jason Massey, North Carolina

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Tell Congress to Keep Sewage Out of Our Drinking Water!

This petition has been closed.