To the Editor:

Re “Latest Dirty Water Bill” (editorial, Nov. 16):

Clean air to breathe, clean water to drink: few things are more important for our leaders to conserve than those fundamental to the citizenry’s health and well-being.

While considerable resources are being spent sustaining iconic water bodies like the Great Lakes, the Mississippi River and Puget Sound, more can be done to improve water quality by turning our attention upstream.

There, in the thousands of pothole wetlands and miles of small creeks, the story of our clean water begins and ends.

Formerly protected by the Clean Water Act, these waters are now mired in administrative limbo and a thicket of conflicting Supreme Court decisions and are subject to drainage or pollution.