Clean air and clean water, healthy communities, and a
prosperous, clean- energy
economy—those are the goals Yeni Wong has been fighting for every day for so many
years. Wanting to make the world a better place, she joined the Interstate
Commission on the Potomac River Basin (ICPRB) in 2000.
During the celebration of the millennium in the year 2000,
President Clinton announced his intention to appoint Yeni Wong as a member of
the ICPRB. This key appointment was approved by the president and sent to the
desk of the executive clerk for appointment on October 5, 2000. Prior to
becoming a business owner and developer, she was a research chemist at the US
Department of Agriculture.
The following is an exclusive interview with Yeni Wong,
conducted at the Chinatown Garden in DC’s Chinatown. Some of the responses have
been edited and condensed for brevity and clarity.
First question: I wanted to explore your memory particularly
with regard to your involvement with the Interstate Commission on the Potomac
River Basin and its related issues.
I wanted to thank you again for this opportunity. I’ve
said it before, but, seriously, I’m thrilled to even have a chance to talk about
the Potomac River basin. In 1975, I moved to Washington, DC, and I toured
George Washington’s Mount Vernon home.
While there, I walked down to a pier
on the Potomac River. I was greeted with a sign that said, “Warning: Do not
enter river. Do not fish. Polluted. Hazardous to your health.” Dead fish,
plastic bottles, and other debris floated on the water.
Unfortunately, that is what I remember most about the
trip, and several years later, there are more warnings posted. There are those,
both representatives in Congress and their constituents, whose main concern is
the debt we will leave future generations. It makes me think of penny-wise and
pound-foolish—spending money on cheap fixes that don’t work, and
then being faced with an expensive fix later.
Would you really give a son, daughter, or grandchild a car
with bad brakes, a leaky radiator, or a bad
transmission? Or do you think if you ignore it long enough, it will be somebody
else’s problem? Instead of kicking the pollution can down the road to future
generations, federal and local governments should do
their job. In the past seven years, the halls of Congress have successfully
brought governing to a halt. They wanted and were elected for this job; now
they should do it. They should put their Republican and Democratic heads
together, shut out the lobbyists, and fix it. Why should future generations
inherit our pollution? Will this be the legacy of what they
leave future generations they say they are so concerned about?
The mission of the Interstate Commission on the Potomac
River Basin (ICPRB) was created to protect and enhance the waters and related
resources of the Potomac River bBasin
through science, regional cooperation, and education. Considered the “nation’s
river,” for more than six million basin
residents, the river plays an important role in the lives of all. Through
regional cooperation and partnerships, ICPRB is protecting the river and
improving the quality of life in the watershed. It was one of the first
organizations with a congressional mandate to consider water resources on a
watershed basis rather than along political boundaries. From there, I was
prodded to accept the president’s nomination to serve on this commission.
Take me back to the early years of the environmental movement.
Why was there such a thrust on environmentalism?
The conservation movement in the United States really goes
back even to the 1930s and ’40s. The movement at that time was all about
preserving places and landscapes. In the 1970s, there was an awakening of
pollution control problems in the United States. And so around 1970, we had a
country that waswhere people were
becoming more aware of the problems of pollution in their everyday lives. This
was about the health of their children and the food that they were getting. It
was about the rivers that they wanted to go and visit, and they didn’t want
them covered in oil pollution. And it was about the river that they were
swimming in and an understanding that America’s rivers waswere,
in fact, getting seriously polluted.
Talk for a moment about the Potomac River bBasin.
The river was declared to be a national disgrace by Lyndon Johnson. How bad was
the Potomac River bBasin at
its worst?
The Potomac River bBasin,
in many ways, is a microcosm for our country. It’s an amazing river. It goes up
to the mountains of Appalachia. It comes past our nation’s capital. It goes
through great falls and wonderful waterfalls, and then it enters the estuary of
the Chesapeake Bay. The Potomac itself is an estuary. It’s a river that is, in
fact, defined by a whole range of threats—.
These include threats tofrom the agriculture in its
headwaters and to the major urban areas, like
such
as the Washington metropolitan area, as well as a whole range of
other environmental threats from habitat loss. What we saw in the Potomac River
bBasin
in the 1970s was what was seen in many basins around the country,:
where
itthey smelled so bad, you
didn’t want to get anywhere near itthem.
That odor was, in large part, created by poorly treated sewage.
Was there a sense of urgency? Outrage? Was the public
engaged?
Back in the 1970s, we had problems of river pollution in
some small parts of the country. We had emerging threats of pesticides. But I
don’t think we had quite the broad-scale
sense of urgency that we do have today in our country because
of the issues of climate change, the ozone layer, and problems of our drinking
water and even our food safety. Today I think there is a much broader and
deeper sense of the problems that we have facing the environment.
What kind of a report card would you give American
environmental protections over the years you served on the Interstate
Commission on the Potomac River Basin?
We have done a very good job of controlling the major
sewage pollution from cities like the District
and Baltimore, but we still haven’t done enough to actually restore the
ecological integrity of our nation’s Rriver. So what we
know today is that cleaning up places like the Potomac River bBasin,
in fact, requires a whole host of actions that isn’taren’t
just about controlling the most obvious sources of pollution. And so here we
are today. I can tell you that the overall quality of water in our river is
really much better than it was years ago. I testified in the year 2000 that, in
fact, roughly 40 percent of the Potomac River bBasin
did not meet our goals. While we do not have the data going back in time, I
would roughly estimate that that number has been improved significantly over
the years.
And how does it look today? Is that a success story?
Today many parts of the river are open to swimming, and in
many ways, it is a tremendous success story. We have seen development in
Washington, DC, along the Potomac River in what we call Georgetown,
that wouldn’t have happened had the river smelled the way it did in the 1960s.
Interestingly, the Potomac River bBasin
has become a microcosm for some of these new potential threats that we are
seeing. In fact, there’s been some government research in the headwaters of the
Potomac about hormone-mimicking pollutants and, in fact,
their effects on fish populations. The question is and
whether or not fish are capable of reproducing—whether, in fact, some fish take
on characteristics of both male and female fish. Many scientists today
attribute these reproductive problem is to
pollution that we didn’t even focus on many years ago—pollution that is also in
our wastewater, and pollution that might come from
prescription drugs. It might come from birth control pills, or
other
sources of chemicals from other sources that
get into our wastewater thatand then go
through these wastewater treatment plants untreated and into our streams.
How important is the Potomac River bBasin
as an indicator and a case study of the state of environmental protection and
the dangers of environmental pollution for America as a whole?
I think the Potomac River bBasin,
in fact, is hugely important. Our base of knowledge in the Potomac River bBasin
about what it takes to save an estuary, and
to clean up a water body, far exceeds that of anywhere else in
the world. There has been so much investment in science, and in
modeling, and in monitoring. We know today precisely what is necessary to save
the Potomac River bBasin, and
now it’s very clear: Iit comes
down to the question of political will. Some people say that if we simply
enforced the Clean Water Act properly, we could clean up the Potomac River bBasin.
Do you agree, and, if so, how long would it take?
If we were to aggressively enforce the Clean Water Act, I
firmly believe we could clean up the Potomac River bBasin
in between ten and fifteen years, perhaps twenty years. The question really is
how aggressive can we be in enforcing the Clean Water Act? Do we need to
augment the Clean Water Act in some ways?
Why is it important to protect our nation’s river?
The Potomac River bBasin
is continually challenged by population growth and unsustainable land-use
practices. The river is much better than it was several decades ago, but
multiple threats persist. Solutions require not just funding and innovation,
but the active concern and involvement of the basin’s residents. A strong
stewardship ethic is a powerful tool in preserving the river’s many values.
Stewardship comes in many forms, all of which can help the river. Residents can
support or join local and regional environmental groups, join discussions of
issues that can inform and provide ways to effect change, communicate with
elected and appointed officials about issues, or participate in projects that
improve local waterways.
Author’s note: As the United States grapples with serious
environmental issues, we need serious advocates like Yeni. She understands not
only the risks we face but also the opportunities to grow the economy while
fighting the problems of river pollution and also protecting public health and
the environment. For the years she served on the ICPRB, she exuded
perseverance, courage, and hope and took on her tasks with poise and
pragmatism, finding common ground and commonsense solutions. During the time of
challenge and opportunity, she is what our nation needs.