The Healthy Waters Coalition is committed to ensuring that everyone in the region has access to clean, safe, and affordable drinking water, fish that are free of toxic contaminants, and outdoor recreation opportunities stemming from restored ecosystems.
To do that, the Coalition is working to tackle the serious problems that threaten the region’s waters, including toxic pollution, sewage contamination, habitat loss, runoff pollution, invasive species, and flooding. The Healthy Waters Coalition supports manageable solutions to restore local waters, protect public health, improve recreational opportunities, and support local economies. There is an urgency to this work: Inaction will only allow problems to get worse and more costly to solve.
To achieve its vision, the Health Waters Coalition has two main goals:
- Securing a regional restoration and protection plan to address threats to local waters; and,
- Securing the federal funding and policy solutions to implement the plan.
Over the last four years, the National Wildlife Federation and several members of the Healthy Waters Coalition have been working with the Ohio River Basin Alliance to craft a regional restoration strategy. That plan, which was released for public comment in June, will provide a solid foundation to restore the region’s waters.
In carrying out our work, the Healthy Waters Coalition recognizes the importance of supporting solutions that benefit the hardest-hit communities. We know from U.S. EPA data that low-income communities suffer disproportionate harm from pollution. In the Ohio River Basin, approximately 50 percent of people in the region live in counties considered economically distressed or at risk. Residents who live in distressed or at-risk communities have shorter life expectancies, higher incidences of heart disease, diabetes, mental distress, and more drug-related deaths than people who reside in more economically advantaged communities.
The Healthy Waters Coalition is committed to ensuring that the communities that have been harmed the most by pollution are prioritized when it comes to cleanup, and that the people who live in those communities have a voice in the solutions.