Status of Clean Water in the United States

• Forty-two percent of the nation’s stream length is in poor biological condition, due primarily to excess nutrients, sediment, and the alteration of adjacent land and vegetation.
• In 2004, approximately 35 percent of the nation’s lake acres and 24 percent of the nation's river miles were under fish consumption advisories. Forty-eight states and the District of Columbia issued advisories in 2004.
• Eighty percent of sampled streams in a national clean water survey contained drugs, hormones, pesticides, or other chemicals. Three-quarters of those streams contained more than one chemical.
• About 1 billion pounds of pesticides are used in the U.S. every year, and many of the harmful chemicals in pesticides end up in our waterways. A national study found pesticides or their degradates, in every sampled stream, even those in undeveloped watersheds. Fish from a majority of streams contained pesticides, including persistent pesticides that had been banned years earlier.
• During 2002 and 2003, in just Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, and Missouri, pollution in rivers and streams killed 3.5 million fish.
• Natural wetlands provide valuable wildlife habitat, cleanse water, and control flooding, but are disappearing at the rate of nearly 100,000 acres annually. 119 million acres of natural wetlands have already been drained or destroyed.
• More than 2 million miles of streams in the U.S. about 60 percent of total stream miles do not flow continuously, but still make an enormous contribution to clean water and water supply.
• Forty percent of America’s rivers and 46 percent of our lakes are too polluted for fishing, swimming or aquatic life.
• Every year more than 860 billion gallons of untreated sewage are discharged into U.S. waters through sewer overflows. 
• Up to 3.5 million people become sick each year from contact with sewage contaminated water.
• The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency warns that sewage levels in our rivers could be back to 1970s levels by the year 2016.