Solutions
The Healthy Waters Coalition is working to make the restoration and protection of the Ohio River Basin a national priority to ensure that the region’s clean water priorities are elevated in federal policy and investment decisions.
The first step is securing a strong regional restoration plan. Many members of the Healthy Waters Coalition have been participating in, and are supportive of, a regional planning process being led by the Ohio River Basin Alliance and National Wildlife Federation that has produced a draft report chronicling the numerous threats to local waters, including toxic pollution, sewage contamination, habitat loss, runoff pollution, invasive species, and flooding. The report also identifies solutions to tackle these vexing and serious problems. The restoration plan, which is yet to be finalized, will be essential to make the case for strategic and robust new federal investments to restore local waters in the region.
The second step will be to implement the plan. There is an extensive body of work demonstrating how federally led ecosystem restoration investments across the country are helping to clean up and restore great waters such as the Chesapeake Bay, Everglades, Gulf Coast, Great Lakes, Long Island Sound, Puget Sound, and others.
Members of the Healthy Waters Coalition are excited to be working with bipartisan members of the U.S. Congress to help create a similarly focused, science-based, and regionally coordinated federal investment initiative for the Ohio River Basin that can help accelerate progress in addressing the many environmental challenges across the Ohio River Basin.