By Megan Buerger, The Washington Post, May 2, 2012

If the Potomac River has gotten more attention than the Anacostia in the past 50 years, it’s partly because the Potomac supplies 90 percent of the region’s drinking water. That amounts to an average of 486 million gallons a day, according to the Potomac Conservancy. The Potomac watershed, which includes 14,670 miles of land that drains to the river, covers parts of West Virginia, Pennsylvania, the District, Maryland and Virginia. In the 1950s, reports of stench and dangerous levels of pollution clouded the Potomac’...

April 27, 2012, Boyce, VA: Dozens of complaints were lodged today by Shenandoah Riverkeeper with Virginia’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) requesting that the Shenandoah River be listed as impaired due to excessive algae blooms. These algae blooms which occur year-round on all segments of the river system violate Virginia’s nuisance aquatic plant life standard and interfere with the public’s recreational use of the river.

“In my role as Shenandoah Riverkeeper and as a professional fishing guide, I have witnessed severe algae blooms over several...

Are you tired of the algae in the Shenandoah River?  I know I am, and I need your help doing something about it.

Background: Every year I hear endless citizen complaints about murky green Shenandoah River water, snot-grass or filamentous algae covering the bottom and smothering native grasses in the river, and floating algae clumps that smell.  I’m told the algae ruins people’s time, and diminishes their use and enjoyment of the river whether they’re fishing, swimming, wading, paddling or just picnicing and walking their dogs. These algae blooms...

Congressman Goodlatte’s most recent bill, misleadingly named the "Chesapeake Bay Program Re-authorization and Improvement Act," is a failure of leadership.  Upon scrutiny, his bill is clearly intent on undermining the Chesapeake Bay Program not improving it. His bill attempts to remove federal oversight of Chesapeake Bay and local stream cleanup by dismantling bedrock principles of the Clean Water Act which a bi-partisan congress established 40 years ago and which has served as a worldwide model for water law. Federal oversight is a critical component of the law where...