Citizen acts to protect America's waterways from obliteration

Floating to Save the LA River

by: Heather Wylie, The Los Angeles Times

Heather Wylie is a biologist with the regulatory division of the L.A. District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The opinions expressed are her own and do not reflect the official views of the corps.

A kayak trip I took this summer may cost me my job.

I am a civilian biologist working for the Army Corps of Engineers. On my personal time, I joined a trip down the Los Angeles River to protest actions by my own agency to undermine the Clean Water Act.

My superiors scoured the Internet for proof and found two photos of me on a blog. Claiming that my "participation undermined [its] authority," the corps has proposed suspending me for 30 days, a punishment one step below termination. More than two months after advocating this penalty, it has yet to make a decision.

In July, a dozen kayakers took a three-day journey down the 52-mile L.A. River; I joined them for 20 miles. The purpose of our regatta was to show that the entire river is "navigable-in-fact" -- a classification that is crucial to preventing the rollback of Clean Water Act protections throughout the watershed -- and to highlight similar threats facing waterways across the nation.

More than 30 years after its enactment, the Clean Water Act is now in legal turmoil. A 2006 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Rapanos vs. United States, first muddied the waters. The court held that to continue to regulate pollution under the Clean Water Act, the government has to prove there is a "significant nexus" between the wetlands in question and "navigable-in-fact" waters.

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