Biden sets goal to protect wetlands, rivers and streams

The White House on Tuesday announced a new goal to protect millions of miles of wetlands, rivers and streams. 

As the White House hosts a “water summit,” it announced it wants to set a new national goal to protect 8 million acres of wetlands and 100,000 miles of rivers and streams. 

The quantities of water outlined in Tuesday’s announcement, while more specific, do not appear to be more ambitious than an existing goal of protecting 30 percent of the nation’s lands and waters. There are 75.5 million acres of wetlands and more than 2.5 million river miles in the U.S.

But to achieve the new goal, the administration announced that it was launching a “Freshwater Challenge” that calls on states, tribes and cities to put forward their own policies for conserving and restoring fresh water. It said that 10 states, eight tribes and 24 local governments have signed onto the effort. 

Brenda Mallory, chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, framed these measures as an effort to protect drinking water. 

“President Biden understands that securing clean water for all people means conserving and restoring our rivers, lakes, wetlands, and streams,” Mallory said in a written statement. “Now is the time to work together to use all the tools and resources available – at the national, state, and local level – to protect waters that are under threat.”

The White House fact sheet particularly described the waters as being under threat following a 2023 Supreme Court decision that limited the federal government's authority to protect wetlands via regulation. 

In addition, the White House announced $1 billion in funding to improve tribal access to water. This includes $700 million from the Indian Health Service and $320 million from the Bureau of Reclamation to speed up the delivery of drinking water and water infrastructure . 

Currently, more than half of tribal households either do not have clean water or adequate sanitation. 

The new effort seeks to “leverage [the Bureau of Reclamation's] engineering capacity to accelerate the delivery of Tribal water projects,” the fact sheet said.