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Report seeks federal funding for preserving Ohio River Basin, including Tennessee River • Tennessee Lookout [1]
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Date: 2025-06-09
A coalition of environmental groups and researchers released a draft plan Thursday aiming to harness federal funding and state relationships to protect the Ohio River — a drinking water source for 30 million people — from pollutants and habitat destruction.
Middle and East Tennessee are part of the 204,000-square-mile Ohio River Basin that includes portions of 14 states and more than 40 Tribal Nations. The Tennessee River is the Ohio River’s largest tributary, flowing from Knoxville into the Ohio in Paducah, Kentucky. The Cumberland River also feeds the Ohio River.
Though states have made independent strides to improve river health, the report argues that a piecemeal approach is not sufficient.
“It’s absolutely (unacceptable) that in the year 2025, we still have men, women, families and communities that do not have access to clean, safe, affordable water. That we still have toxic waste sites that have yet to be remediated. That we still have warnings about eating contaminated fish. That we still have warnings about recreating in local waters,” Jordan Lubetkin, senior director of Ohio River Restoration for the National Wildlife Federation, said.
“The bottom line is this: with so many communities seeing health-threatening pollution, we need to be doing more to protect the waters that we all rely on, and this report makes a bold case for action. Action needs to happen now,” Lubetkin said.
The report — compiled over three years by the Ohio River Basin Alliance, the National Wildlife Federation, the University of Louisville Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute along with dozens of collaborators from government, nonprofit, educational and industry entities — will ultimately be delivered to Congress.
Pollution, habitat loss, flooding pose threats
The river, it states, is threatened by toxic pollution, agriculture and urban runoff, sewage contamination, invasive species, habitat loss and severe flooding. All of these are deteriorating water quality, ecosystems and negatively impacting local economies by threatening public health and limiting recreation, according to the report.
Ted Smith, director of the Center for Healthy Air, Water and Soil at the University of Louisiana, said hundreds of unremediated sites recognized as toxic by the Environmental Protection Agency lie in the Ohio River Basin, and many are within a flood plain. This becomes a bigger problem as flooding becomes more frequent, he said.
“Without the cleanup of those kinds of sites, we’re really putting our entire water system at significant risk every year,” Smith said.
Work toward securing federal attention and funding for the protection of the basin has been ongoing since 2009, according to Harry Stone, past chair of the Ohio River Basin Alliance. And the need is acute: 69% of assessed stream miles and 64% of lakes within the Ohio River Basin do not meet water quality standards, he said.
The bottom line is this: with so many communities seeing health-threatening pollution, we need to be doing more to protect the waters that we all rely on, and this report makes a bold case for action. – Jordan Lubetkin, National Wildlife Federation
The solution to this litany of threats lies in securing more federal funding for restoration programs, ramping up research and monitoring, building more regional coordination and providing more technical help to local communities, the report states.
Chris Lorentz, a professor of biological sciences at Thomas More University and chair of the Ohio River Basin Alliance, said this is a proven combination.
“We’ve seen elsewhere that comprehensive basin-wide collaborations, combined with federal investments, have produced strong returns economically, environmentally and socially,” Lorentz said, citing the restoration of the Great Lakes as an example.
Effort faces ‘political winds’
The report’s release comes at a fraught political hour for environmental regulation and spending.
Tennessee lawmakers passed a statute in April removing regulations for an estimated 80% of the state’s non-federally protected wetlands. Kentucky similarly passed a law this year limiting the state’s authority to regulate water pollution. On the federal level, the budget reconciliation bill currently under Senate consideration would slash the EPA’s budget by 54%, and the Trump administration is working to scale back Clean Water Act oversight.
Lorentz and Lubetkin were careful to emphasize that the plan does not present recommendations for a regulatory program, but rather makes a case for additional funding, resources and coordination for tangible actions like remediating toxic sites and giving incentives to incentivizing farmers to reduce runoff from their fields.
Then, Lorentz said, demonstrating the benefits of such investments may “gain stronger support for tighter regulations.”
This effort is 16 years in the making, Lorentz said.
“We couldn’t control the timing, certainly, but we will reiterate the bipartisan, broad support for (clean water),” he said. “Who doesn’t want a win like that in this hyper-partisan climate … We make a strong argument on improving the economy, increasing (and) safeguarding public health, and increasing the quality of life. These are things that cut across the aisle.”
Lubetkin said NWF is “in it for the long haul,” though they’d prefer to make progress sooner rather than later.
“Even in an environment where cost-cutting seems to be the mantra of the day, cutting funding or delaying funding absolutely will not save this nation one penny, because every issue we’re talking about here today is not going to get better on its own,” he said. “It’s only going to cost more money, and it’s only going to create more problems.”
“We’re not naive, there are some political winds out there that are in our face, but we’re going to cut through them,” Lubetkin said.
The Ohio River Basin Alliance is accepting feedback from the public on the draft report through July 18.
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