Editorials

Here’s a deal for any of Alabama’s neighbors: Alabama will show how we recruit world-class industry to the state, if you’ll show us how you keep your water clean.

On Friday, the Alabama Environmental Management Commission lived down to its anti-environment reputation by declining to institute tougher water-quality standards for the state. Instead, it decided to study the matter and then reconsider it this October.

This page is always looking for ways to (a.) save the state money and (b.) bolster Alabama’s reputation. With that in mind, allow us to cut to the chase on this water-quality study.

• Alabama has the most lax standards for water quality in the nation.

• If it were to join the rest of the nation, Alabama would cut by 90 percent the amount of cancer-causing agents poured into state waterways.

• Alabama’s water isn’t unique compared to other states; it contains no superhero H2O molecules that beat back carcinogens.

• It’s not like water quality is a virgin territory for study. The Environmental Protection Agency has spent parts of four decades scientifically examining public health and water quality. The other 49 states, looking out for the best interests of their residents, have taken the EPA data and said they could do better than the minimum.

• Business interests like Alabama Power and industrial advocates argue tougher measures are bad for the bottom line. Somehow, though, businesses in other states, including neighbors Florida, Tennessee and Georgia, manage to thrive despite more stringent clean-water rules.

David Ludder, an attorney advocating for cleaner water, tells the Mobile Register, “Good intentions and hopeful words don’t prevent people from getting cancer. As this commission pursues more study, more people are going to get cancer, and more people are going to die.”

OK, study complete. All those against cleaner water line up over there. The rest of us will adopt tougher standards.