There’s a paper mill near me, on a river, and the one and only interesting thing about it is that it discharges water that is cleaner than it takes out.

Now, this isn’t because they just care so much, or try so hard.. it’s actually because the river is so horribly polluted from other shit upstream, even after decades of cleanup projects, that doing the bare minimum is actually a net positive…

What a shitty world we live in. It could have been so much better.

3M has fucked up the water in my area pretty bad for decades. I have to use Zero water filters for everything. Been thinking of installing a large under sink filter/reverse osmosis system.

It is the cost of doing business. They just wanna make the rest of us pay it.

That was the intent of the system for water at least. The acronym for water discharge permits is NPDES. National Pollution Discharge Elimination System.

Then profit driven companies, their soulless lobbyists, amoral lawyers kept bending that.

Like just about any environmental regulation in the US - most of them are heavily influenced by the industries that are regulated. All US laws prioritize commerce and profits first and everything else second. Including the environment, workers rights, etc.

Gotta get lobbying and money as speech out of the equation. Then everything would have some chance of improving or kind of aligning with citizen expectations.

Also, most of government workers would love to have more effective regulations so we can be more effective. Despite most people shitting on them as lazy or ineffective. The ineffective is by design and under funding.