Wow, do you actually think rainwater never makes it in to drinking water?
I know rainwater makes its way to the rest of water.
I also know the earth does a remarkably fantastic job at cleaning up after its self and others.
I also know, that despite the best efforts of demonstrably false rhetoric in the media, regulations have done very little in regard to improving the environment. Education and concerned people are required, not laws designed to cripple people and business.
You don’t think there has ever been a regulation that has improved the environment?
I am willing to read any of the proven, cited benefits you post.
Super high level. From a Nat Geo article (I teased out some points):
5 Reasons to Like the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
1. Air (Clean Air Act)
Complying with EPA’s air pollution rules has been costly—they’re the biggest burden the agency imposes on the economy. But the federal Office of Management and Budget, analyzing data collected from 2004 to 2014, estimates that the health and other benefits of the rules exceeded the costs by somewhere between $113 billion and $741 billion a year.
2. Water (Clean Water Act)
The Clean Water Act led to tens of billions of federal dollars being invested in municipal sewage treatment plants. The law’s simple goal is to make every river, stream, and lake in the U.S. swimmable and fishable. We’re not there yet: The Cuyahoga “is not on fire anymore, but I wouldn’t swim in it,” William Suk of the National Institutes of Health told National Geographic a few years ago. But people do swim in Boston Harbor and the Hudson River. And the toxic cesspools that literally catch on fire have largely become a thing of the past.
3. Pesticides
Beloved birds like the bald eagle and peregrine falcon teetered toward extinction. A colorless, nearly odorless insecticide, DDT had been a valuable weapon against disease-carrying mosquitoes and also a boon to farmers. People had so little notion of its dangers they let their children play happily in the spray.
In 1972, The EPA effectively banned the use of DDT in the U.S., except in limited cases where it was needed to protect public health. That same year Congress passed the Federal Environmental Pesticide Control Act, giving EPA more clear authority to regulate pesticides in general based on their impact on health and the environment.
4. Hazardous Waste
Until the 1970s, hazardous chemical waste was general disposed of like ordinary trash—at best in an unlined municipal landfill from which toxic chemicals could seep into groundwater, at worst in open dumps, where runoff from corroded barrels might contaminate streams. The country was dotted with thousands of such dumps.
As of 2014, nearly half of the more than 1,700 Superfund sites have been fully addressed—but even many of them have to be monitored indefinitely. It’s a project for the century and a lesson for the future. Some 49 million (or nearly one in six) Americans live close to a Superfund site.
5. Climate
In August 2015 the agency finalized its Clean Power Plan, which for the first time sets a national limit on carbon pollution from power plants. The goal is to reduce their emissions by 32 percent by 2030, relative to 2005 levels.
Full text here:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/12/environmental-protection-agency-epa-history-pruitt/