Right to know bill out of committee

Healthy Rivers, my favorite blog for such matters, reports that:

Congress just moved a little closer to establishing your right to know for sewage spills. Last Thursday, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee voted to pass the Sewage Right to Know bill (HR 2452) and send it to the full House for consideration. The bill now has the support of over 150 groups, including the National Association of Clean Water Agencies, who represent many of the nation’s biggest sewer utilities.
USA Today ran a great story last week highlighting our crumbling infrastructure and the need for increased investment (for more about our views on this, see my earlier story). Right to know for sewage spills is a straightforward idea whose time has come and will allow us to enjoy and appreciate our local streams and rivers, while staying healthy. This sort of recognition of the problem will get people to realize that continued investment in our water infrastructure is needed. Instead of paying high prices for bottled water (pdf), let’s pay to protect our streams and rivers that provide many of us with reliable drinking water in the first place.

Water and our need to consider basic infrastructure cost have not been in the headlines except for highways and bridges. Water shortages tend to be discussed in relation to agriculture.

We made the investment in water and sanitation in an earlier day. Probably the issue won’t be part of the election campaign, but the costs of renewing our committement to basics are certainly greater than some of the issues front and center.