🚰 The future of clean water in the U.S.

Wednesday

Oct 19 2022

Yesterday marked 50 years since the passage of the Clean Water Act. The landmark legislation, passed soon after the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency, helped to ensure clean drinking water to millions of Americans and cleaned up countless waterways across the United States.

In the half century since its passage, we have data to show that the legislation was a success. For instance, studies show that water pollution has fallen dramatically and the percent of American waters safe for fishing has grown 12 percent in the last fifty decades.

But looking back on the Act as a whole, it wasn't entirely a success. The original goal of the Clean Water Act was to make all of America's waterways both "fishable" and "swimmable" by the mid-1980s, which is still unfinished business. As the climate warms, the U.S. will continue to face new and increasingly harder challenges when it comes to clean water. Here's a look back at what the Clean Water Act did and a glance forward into what we still need to do to ensure this vital resource is available to all Americans.

What's New

Feature

Science

50 years ago, the Clean Water Act promised to fix America’s water. Did it succeed?

In the summer of 1969, a floating oil slick on the Cuyahoga River, which cuts straight through the city of Cleveland, caught on fire. The burn wasn’t large and wasn’t deadly or even extremely costly. It was also bound to happen: Nearby manufacturing industries had been polluting the river to the point where dead rats regularly floated in its waters. But this trivial fire did something far more significant: It became a status symbol for the state of America’s water — and triggered a massive outcry that led the U.S. to clean up its waterways.

“The Cuyahoga River literally was on fire because of what was in the water,” Maria Lehman, Vice-Chair of the President’s National Infrastructure Advisory Council and President-elect of the American Society of Civil Engineers, tells Inverse. Lehman is also the director of U.S. Infrastructure for GHD, an engineering and consulting firm.

The result: the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which led to the passage of critical environmental legislation like the Clean Air Act in 1970 and the Clean Water Act in 1972. Millions of Americans can now safely turn on the tap every day. And that’s all thanks to the Clean Water Act, which turned 50 years old today.

But on its 50th anniversary, the legacy of the landmark legislation is under threat in many ways, ranging from a Supreme Court decision that may limit its scope to clean water issues that persist in communities of color and climate change. A half-century later, it’s worth looking at how the Clean Water Act ensured countless Americans can drink and swim in clean water — and how far we still have to go to protect our nation’s waterways.

Review

Movies

Black Adam reveals the powers and limits of Dwayne Johnson

Between Ezra Miller, Batgirl, and a merger with Discovery, the DC Universe needs a hero. It has one: Dwayne Johnson.

As Black Adam, the imposing Johnson embodies an ethically ambiguous anti-hero who wields the powers of gods and the rage of an enslaved man. Johnson’s main character energy as the rogue in onyx is magnetic. But as Black Adam laboriously strives to leave the audience with a sense of meaning, it’s clear the movie’s writers were perhaps too uninterested, even too cowardly, to engage with its themes of freedom, power, and anti-imperialism.

Ultimately, the needs of the DC Universe butt up against the overwhelming star power of Dwayne Johnson, and the film ends up losing many of the entertaining qualities it might have had.

Read our review

Feature

Superhero Issue

The unexpected psychological effects of Marvel’s strangest superpower

She-Hulk: Attorney at Law begins with a classic superhero trope: a training montage. After a car crash accidentally infuses Bruce Banner’s (Mark Ruffalo) blood into his cousin Jennifer Walters (Tatiana Maslany), Bruce takes it upon himself to teach her how to be an incredible Hulk — despite her claims that she just wants to live a normal life.

Eventually, Bruce says she can go back to her life as a lawyer if she wants. In response, Jen looks directly into the camera and says, “He doesn’t mean that.” Both Hulks register a moment of shock at Jen’s first fourth-wall break. She-Hulk seems to be discovering a new superpower, while Bruce is both confused and a little annoyed at what she said.

For fans of the comics, She-Hulk’s fourth-wall breaks are less of a surprise. She’s had the ability since as far back 1989’s The Sensational She-Hulk #1, which featured Walters on its cover openly taunting comic shoppers to buy her comic and threatening to rip up their X-Men issues if they don’t.

But She-Hulk still marks a major first for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. (Remember, Deadpool’s self-referential antics aren’t technically part of this shared universe yet.)

Sure, WandaVision felt self-aware in a way Marvel live-action usually isn’t, thanks to its show-within-a-show format, but Jennifer Walters injects a whole new level of meta self-awareness. And in the process, it could be pushing the carefully calibrated MCU past its breaking point.

PHONE HOME

Science

Astronomers search for signal from "interstellar internet" nodes

A team of astronomers recently used the Green Bank Telescope, a radio observatory in West Virginia, to check an important corner of our Solar System for signals from an alien probe. No, really.

Astronomers Nick Tusay and Macy Huston of Pennsylvania State University recently pointed the Green Bank Telescope at a patch of sky where, 500 times the distance of the Earth from the Sun (known as an astronomical unit, or AU), radio waves from Alpha Centauri might converge at a focal point after being curved and magnified by the effects of the Sun’s gravity.

They were hoping to eavesdrop on hypothetical aliens, who could — in theory — take advantage of this phenomenon, called gravitational lensing, to communicate with their interstellar probes.

Learn more

Apple

Gear

Everything you need to know about Apple’s new M2 iPad Pros

Apple has announced new iPads just in time to make it onto holiday shopping lists. At the top of the drop are the new 11- and 12.9-inch iPad Pros with M2 chip — this is the same second-generation custom silicon inside of the redesigned 13-inch MacBook Air and MacBook Pro.

Coming with the new M2 iPad Pros is the redesigned 10th-generation iPad, available in four colors, and — for the first time on an iPad — a webcam in landscape orientation.

So what’s new about the M2 iPad Pros? And should you upgrade if you own an M1 iPad Pro or older model?

Meanwhile...

This 4x4 e-scooter is the monster truck of electric mobility

Apollo 9 and more: Astronaut Jim McDivitt's legacy in 10 images

Why 'Rings of Power' Season 2 may feature a second wizard

'House of the Dragon' Season 2 will bring back Game of Thrones’ most iconic family

Today in history: The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted nearly 23 percent on October 19, 1987, the largest one-day percentage drop in the stock market's history.

Song of the day: "Delilah (pull me out of this)"

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🚰 The future of clean water in the U.S.

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