MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
U.S. industries used to pollute rivers so much that one of them, Ohio's Cuyahoga, caught fire at least a dozen times. Federal law has helped some rivers bounce back, but challenges remain. Harvest Public Media's Celia Llopis-Jepsen reports.
CELIA LLOPIS-JEPSEN, BYLINE: The Spring River starts in the Missouri Ozarks, cuts through Kansas and ends in Oklahoma. It flows through a former mining region that left behind millions of cubic yards of toxic waste and abandoned mines. Pittsburg State University biologist James Whitney, standing in the water, says that's a problem.
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JAMES WHITNEY: After a rainstorm, it'll hit the tiles, or it'll hit these underground mine shafts and just dissolve that stuff and wash it into the nearest creek or river.
LLOPIS-JEPSEN: Hurting wildlife.
WHITNEY: The fish community was greatly reduced. There was basically no mussels at all.
LLOPIS-JEPSEN: And mussels are important because they feed many other animals and create coral-reef-like habitats. Then change came after the 1970s and '80s brought a series of landmark bipartisan federal laws - the Clean Water Act, mining regulations, the Superfund law for major environmental cleanups. For the Spring River, it meant plugging mine shafts and dealing with waste piles.
WHITNEY: Because of that - all those cleanup efforts, all that money spent at these EPA Superfund sites - there's less and less metals running off into the river every time it rains.
LLOPIS-JEPSEN: Mussels are rebounding. So are some species of fish. Other rivers across the country also started to rebound because of the new regulations on factory outflows and city sewage. For example, in two rivers in Chicago, there's been a decrease of certain manufacturing chemicals, fecal bacteria and ammonia. Fish populations are recovering.
AUSTIN HAPPEL: There's all these species that have come back.
LLOPIS-JEPSEN: Austin Happel is a research biologist at Chicago's Shedd Aquarium.
HAPPEL: At a survey at one site in the '80s, they might have found three species. But now at that same site doing the same survey 30 years later, they find 15 or 20 species.
LLOPIS-JEPSEN: In Texas, the Trinity River saw progress. In Indiana, the West Fork White River did too. And that's great news, says Scott Black, executive director of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation. But, Black says, it comes with caveats.
SCOTT BLACK: We've improved, but we haven't gotten to where we really should be.
LLOPIS-JEPSEN: In the science journal Global Change Biology, a 2022 study of rivers around the world found fewer than half of U.S. streams were in good condition, based on fish and invertebrate populations. But Black says current federal laws have their limits. For example, the Clean Water Act does not regulate chemicals on farms.
BLACK: Things like phosphorus and nitrogen that really mess up rivers, as well as pesticides, including insecticides that kill insects.
LLOPIS-JEPSEN: These get into rivers and cost utilities big bucks for drinking water treatment. Black also worries about the Trump administration's proposals to narrow protections for wetlands.
BLACK: We are definitely seeing an erosion of efforts to keep our aquatic systems healthy.
LLOPIS-JEPSEN: He's also concerned that staff cuts at the Environmental Protection Agency could mean less oversight of pollution laws. In a statement, the EPA says it has the staff it needs to enforce and carry out the Clean Water Act and Superfund efforts.
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LLOPIS-JEPSEN: Back in Kansas, James Whitney says when rivers get cleaner, people can enjoy them without worrying.
WHITNEY: Swimming, fishing in a nice, clean river is a lot more fun than doing it in a river filled with metals.
LLOPIS-JEPSEN: To him, the progress made on the Spring River is proof that cleaning up and restoring rivers is possible.
For NPR News, I'm Celia Llopis-Jepsen in Pittsburg, Kansas.
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