President Trump maintains that environmental regulation stifles economic development. He would be wise to get advice from one person he surely trusts: real estate developer Donald Trump.
The developer not so long ago profited from an improved environment spurred by the Clean Water Act, arguably the most consequential economic development legislation for the United States over the last half century.
Back in 2003, the New York developer joined other VIPs to dedicate beautiful new waterfront green space at the foot of his new Riverside South development. Trump described the tremendous apartments attracting hordes of buyers, using a string of superlatives now very familiar.
In Trump’s eyes, it was the unsurpassed quality of the design and construction that was the key to the buildings’ success. A civil servant stepped up to the podium to give a different take as to why people would now want to live along the Hudson.
Chris Ward, then the commissioner of city’s Department of Environmental Protection, recalls telling those assembled, including Trump, that the North River Wastewater Treatment Plant was the actual reason for the popularity of the new condominiums.
Just four miles up-river from Riverside South, the plant treats much of Manhattan’s raw sewage, piped in from neighborhoods from Greenwich Village to Inwood. Before the plant began operating in 1986, the effluent was dumped directly into the river, creating an odor hardly conducive to luxury apartment sales.
The underlying point made by Ward to the future President was that a clean river was a necessary condition for economic growth.
It’s a lesson that everyone in this city of islands should appreciate: The boom up and down the Hudson River, and the resultant jobs and tax revenue, was in fact spurred by the Clean Water Act, passed in 1972, which outlawed the discharge of sewage into open waters.
A study published by the Friends of Hudson River Park examined data from 2003 through 2008 and concluded that the value of property adjacent to the riverfront in Manhattan had increased by $200 million.
With the boom in real-estate development on both sides of the Hudson since then — some of which developer Donald Trump benefited from, either directly or indirectly — it is safe to say the wealth created by redevelopment is many, many multiples of that.
And this phenomenon is not unique to New York: from the Embarcadero in San Francisco to the inner harbor of Baltimore, cleaner waters have been a boon to the economy and an urban renaissance that has reshaped cities and towns across the nation, and created billions of public and private wealth.
Passed in an era when lakes and rivers burned and our waterways were bottomless receptacles for polluters — and no, it wasn’t that long ago — the Clean Water Act’s prime purpose was to protect the health of our waterways and the people that surrounded them. While we still have more progress to make to reach its stated goals to make our waters fishable and swimmable, the benefits to human health and environmental restoration have been undeniable.
According to Environmental Protection Agency estimates, when the act was passed into law in 1972, two-thirds of the waters in America were unfit for fishing or swimming. Today, that amount has been cut in half, to one-third.
We are hopeful not to expect a repeal of the Clean Water Act any time soon. But we have already witnessed several ominous steps backward. In one executive order, Trump directed the EPA to roll back an Obama administration Clean Water Rule, preventing regulatory oversight of smaller rivers and streams, which carry pollutants to larger waterbodies downstream.
And the White House’s budget blueprint for this year proposes a staggering 31% cut to the EPA, which would severely limit its ability to implement Superfund and brownfield cleanup programs that form an essential component of our clean water goals.
The Clean Water Act is a classic example of doing good and doing well. As the younger Donald Trump might have recognized several decades ago, the elder, more powerful President Trump needs to realize now: Environmental stewardship is good for the planet and good for business. In a different way and in a different time, laws like the Clean Water Act made America great again.
Lewis is president and CEO of the Waterfront Alliance.
