There's a new president in the United States and he intends to clean up the country's water. And no, I don't mean he's coming to your house to clean our your pool or septic tank either.
With the aim of "reversing eight years of environmental neglect", 29 different environmental groups, including Greenpeace, the National Audubon Society, the World Wildlife Fund and Clean Water Action, were invited to propose policies for green development and environmental reclamation to the President-elect's transition team.
What resulted from this historic collaboration is known in popular culture as the "Green Plan" and covers everything from creating green jobs by installing solar panels on federal buildings to treating toxic runoff from streets and highways.
Most of the Green Plan's proposals for water center around cleaning up available water resources, preserving existing clean water, and further harnessing the incredible power of water to create green electricity to power the nation.
Green infrastructure for clean water will see the government investing money at the federal, state, and local level into communities for the purpose of creating jobs and preserving public health by constructing green sewers and storm water runoff. A company says a higher level of sewage and wastewater purification is called for, along with a reduction in the amount of raw sewage that is allowed to enter rivers and oceans untreated. Recommended expenditure on such projects is in excess of three billion dollars.
A portion of the 150 billion dollars set aside for the development of private ventures into clean energy will also involve water, as hydroelectric power is one of the few already tried and tested methods for generating clean energy. The goal is to have ten percent of the nation's energy coming from renewable sources like water by 2012 and one quarter by 2025.
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