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I also serve as the Chair of the Polluted Runoff Workgroup of the 

 Clean Water Network. The Network is a collection of over 450 

 organizations of diverse interests-- including environmental, 

 fisheries, labor, and religious — united in the cause of strengthening 

 the CWA. Although the Network has an extensive CWA 

 reauthorization agenda, strengthening polluted runoff prevention 

 and wetland protection provisions of the CWA also are two of its 

 highest reauthorization priorities. 



A. POLLUTED RUNOFF PREVENTION 



Polluted Runoff Is a Major Water Quality Priority 



Polluted runoff is the pollution of our waters caused by rainfall or 

 snowmelt moving over and through the ground. As the runoff 

 moves, it picks up and carries away natural pollutants and pollutants 

 resulting from human activity, depositing them into the nation's 

 waters. Prominent sources of polluted runoff include sediment from 

 timber harvest (and supporting road construction) operations, 

 manure and pesticides from agricultural activities, and sediment and 

 hydromodification from urban development and highway 

 construction. Polluted runoff kills fish, reduces the biological 

 productivity of our waters, and represents a threat to public health 

 in the form of runoff-born pathogens, such as Cryptosporidium , 

 which caused last year's Milwaukee drinking water contamination 

 causing over 400,000 people to get sick. 



More specifically, TU and the Clean Water Network are critically 



concerned about poor status of the nation's fisheries resources. 



Polluted runoff is a substantial contributing factor to the drastic 

 decline of many of our nation's fisheries: 



• Hundreds of our Pacific salmon stocks are in jeopardy of 

 extinction throughout the range of their habitat; 



• A number of our other native salmonids are imperiled, 

 threatened or endangered throughout the Intermountain West; 



• In all, one-third of all our native freshwater fish species are 

 threatened or endangered and one-fifth of all our aquatic species are 

 now threatened; and 



