Clean Water Defense

Governments around the world have enacted laws to protect water quality and the communities that depend on clean water. Waterkeeper groups around the world work with those laws to restore and protect the world’s waterways. In the United States, there are local, state, and national laws designed to control pollution sources and restore our streams, rivers, lakes, and estuaries to drinkable, fishable, and swimmable conditions. Increasingly, however, these laws are being rolled back, or even eliminated, to serve powerful corporate interests.

Waterkeeper Alliance’s Clean Water Defense campaign and our international network of Waterkeeper groups:

• Work with communities to protect and restore waterways around the world
• Aggressively oppose the weakening or elimination of federal environmental statutes, regulations, enforcement, and funding in the United States and around the world
• Support clean and free-flowing rivers and waterways
• Mobilize resources through the Ocean Plastic Recovery Initiative to establish recycling infrastructure and plastic recovery efforts to stop plastic pollution from entering our oceans. 
• Restore and remediate distressed areas to provide justice, equality, and better health outcomes to correct decades of environmental damage inflicted upon the health and wellbeing of low-income communities, communities of color, and Indigenous communities

Aligned with the targets and indicators of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 6, Waterkeeper Alliance believes that strategic partnerships and strong, issue-based coalitions are essential to protecting and restoring waterways around the world. Waterkeeper groups combine a unique set of strengths that make them highly-valued assets in any coalition fighting for clean, safe water for all: a solid reputation for professionalism and courage; unique expertise in the scientific, policy, and legal issues in their watersheds; deep roots in and support from their communities; knowledgeable and skilled attorneys; and diverse partnerships with key organizations and experts in law, engineering, biology, hydrology, policy, and economics.