At White House Water Summit, Biden-Harris Administration Announces Bold National Goal to Protect and Restore Freshwater Resources, Delivers Over $1 Billion for Tribal Clean Water Projects
Today, during Earth Week, the White House is convening state, Tribal, and local leaders from across the country for a White House Water Summit where the Administration will announce a new national goal and partnership to conserve and restore freshwater resources. The America the Beautiful Freshwater Challenge: A Partnership to Conserve andRestore America’s Rivers, Lakes, Streams, and Wetlands sets a bold, new national goal to protect, restore, and reconnect 8 million acres of wetlands and 100,000 miles of our nation’s river and streams.
To achieve the new national freshwater protection goal and to ensure that our freshwater resources are protected for current and future generations as part of the America the Beautiful Freshwater Challenge, the Biden-Harris Administration is also launching a new initiative that calls on all states and other governments and entities, including Tribes, interstate organizations, cities, and local communities to advance their own policies and strategies for conserving and restoring America’s freshwater systems. Over 100 inaugural members from across the country have already signed on to support freshwater restoration in their communities, including ten states, eight Tribes, and 24 local governments.
To bring safe, clean water to Tribal communities, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Indian Health Services (IHS) and the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) are announcing over $1 billion from the President’s Investing in America agenda and a new partnership. Roughly half of Tribal households lack access to clean drinking water or adequate sanitation. Today’s announcement includes $700 million from IHS and $320 million from BOR to accelerate the delivery of drinking water and community sanitation infrastructure projects in Indian Country. In addition, IHS and BOR are announcing the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the two agencies to leverage BOR’s engineering capacity to accelerate the delivery of Tribal water projects.
Our nation’s lakes, rivers, streams, estuaries, and wetlands are fundamental to the health, prosperity, and resilience of our communities and are held sacred by many Tribal Nations. They are not only the sources of clean drinking water that flows into the taps of our homes, but also economic drivers supporting jobs and outdoor recreation across the nation. By absorbing and storing carbon, our nation’s waterways and wetlands – and the forests, grasslands, and farmlands they nourish – play a critical role in the fight against climate change.
Although critically important to both people and nature, our freshwater resources are at increased risk. Through 2019, the U.S. wetlands loss rate increased 50 percent over the prior decade. That was before the U.S. Supreme Court’s Sackett decision last year, which dramatically reduced federal protections for wetlands in one of the largest judicial rollbacks of environmental protections in U.S. history. Despite this, Congressional Republicans are continuing a decades-long effort to undermine Clean Water Act safeguards.
Many states are already using their own authorities and resources to better protect America’s freshwater systems. For example, North Carolina recently set a goal to protect one million acres of natural lands, with a special focus on wetlands, and to restore one million acres of forests and wetlands within the state. New York state recently enacted statutory changes to its Freshwater Wetlands Act that will safeguard an additional million acres of valuable wetlands. And Washington recently protected almost 1,000 miles of rivers as Outstanding National Resource Waters, one of the highest levels of protection afforded to our freshwater resources.
At the White House Water Summit and throughout Earth Week, the Biden-Harris Administration is making additional announcements to build resilience to climate change and ensure every community has access to clean water: