Ronald Reagan’s Clean Water Lesson
Ronald Reagan taught me a lesson that refocused my career and helped generate billions in environmental spending. I was at a White House ceremony by special invitation and watched the President veto the Clean Water Act. He said while slamming the document on the desk, “I asked Congress for a law to clean up the nation’s waters. This bill is a budget buster.”
I left the White House wondering why a bill that had so many good policies and bi-partisan support got vetoed. Along with other environmental advocates, I’d spent considerable effort getting the law passed and cared deeply about its overdue policies to clean up stormwater and urban pollution.
If money mattered such much to Ronald Reagan, it mattered to me too. I shifted my efforts from environmental policy advocacy to the veto override campaign and then to securing appropriations of the dollars the President objected to. Within weeks my grassroots organization joined forces with what we then called the “concrete coalition” — state and local governments and the construction industry. They wanted the billions of dollars promised in the Clean Water Act to rebuild sewage systems and create construction jobs. We wanted money for new programs that would reduce urban and farm runoff.
We won when Congress voted to override the veto and then fund the Clean Water Act including the new money for local runoff pollution projects. Not surprisingly, by 1988 Vice President George Bush was using clean water as an issue against his election opponent Michael Dukakis by claiming not enough was being done to clean up Boston Harbor.
Lobbying for federal appropriations helped me land a job with The Nature Conservancy, which sent me out to organize state and local campaigns for land conservation dollars. Voters repeatedly and overwhelmingly supported and passed water and land protection measures. Since those heady days of running referendum campaigns and finding revenue sources for state and local bond issues, I’ve never lost sight of the importance of financing environmental work. Billions of dollars later it still seems President Reagan was right on the money. When it’s a question of clean water, it’s always about the money.
