Industries rampantly flout new groundwater regulations implemented last year. They do not like the limitations on the size of their operations, the limits on how much groundwater they can contaminate, or the restrictions on the chemicals that they use. The fact that these regulations were never intended to be so onerous is the primary reason that they are being ignored. These industries don’t like the limitations because it costs them money to comply with them and they don’t want to pay for additional environmental testing that would determine whether or not their use of groundwater is causing harmful effects to the environment. This is a government bureaucracy that just doesn’t want to get out of their way to help the public get health and the environment back to normal.
It’s important to remember what the regulations were intended to do. They were enacted in response to the threat of contaminants seeping into ground water supplies. Groundwater is the source of drinkable tap water for millions of Americans. Regulations were put in place in an attempt to protect the public from the negative effects of pollutants entering the ground water.
If we don’t know what is in the groundwater, we cannot protect ourselves and our families from dangerous side effects of the pollutants. Regulations weren’t just passed because of the threat of contamination; they were also passed because of the threat of drinking water without safe levels of fluoride and other toxic substances. There was also the fear that industrial waste water would leak into the groundwater supplies and cause contamination in the rivers and streams. These and many other reasons caused these regulations to be put into action.
Many industries don’t care about the new groundwater regulations because they see no problem with how they are operating their operations now. They don’t care because they continue to dump their refuse, pollute, and operate in a way that causes serious damage to the environment. They ignore the fact that these practices are illegal. They don’t care because they have money to continue polluting and dumping their toxic waste, ignoring the damage that they are doing to the earth.
As a result of the regulations put into place, these industries have reduced their environmental damage and have improved their public health, but not at the expense of profits. Environmental advocates have celebrated the implementation of the new laws because they are good for business and good for the economy. Profits for companies that operate on such a large scale are falling and this has had an adverse affect on many businesses. These companies have responded by reducing their pollution and waste output so that they can better afford to comply with the new regulations.
When it comes to companies, if they want to be successful, they have to comply with the new groundwater regulations. The cost to them of not doing so is nothing compared to the cost to society, which would suffer without healthy water and the effects that it has on public health and the environment. If you want to protect your groundwater and ensure that it remains healthy for future generations, then you need to make sure that you are taking all reasonable steps to do so. This means making sure that you are not polluting our already fragile ecosystems and causing further damage to the earth when you produce your product.
