In a blockbuster front-page report today, the New York Times reports that polluters nationwide are routinely violating the Clean Water Act, and states and the Environmental Protection Agency have repeatedly failed to enforce the law.

The result: Human health problems, because "an estimated one in 10 Americans have been exposed to drinking water that contains dangerous chemicals or fails to meet a federal health benchmark in other ways."

The story by Charles Duhigg found that in the past five years, "chemical factories, manufacturing plants and other workplaces have violated water pollution laws more than half a million times. The violations range from failing to report emissions to dumping toxins at concentrations regulators say might contribute to cancer, birth defects and other illnesses.

"However, the vast majority of those polluters have escaped punishment. State officials have repeatedly ignored obvious illegal dumping, and the Environmental Protection Agency, which can prosecute polluters when states fail to act, has often declined to intervene."

The paper even built a nationwide database of violators -- something the EPA did not have -- and made it available to readers. The list for Florida includes more than 34,000 polluters, including phosphate mining companies, wastewater treatment plants and power companies.

The story leads off with a poignant anecdote from West Virginia, where the tap water is so polluted it causes skin rashes and eats the enamel off children's teeth. Asks a parent: "“How can we get digital cable and Internet in our homes, but not clean water?” The answer: nobody is enforcing the law.

Duhigg found that regulators wanted to carry out the law, but "good intentions could not compete with intimidating politicians and a fearful bureaucracy." The EPA's own internal memos acknowledged the agency's failure to prod the states to enforce the law or to prosecute polluters.

"We were told to take our clean water and clean air cases, put them in a box, and lock it shut," one EPA insider told the reporter. "Everyone knew polluters were getting away with murder. But these polluters are some of the biggest campaign contributors in town, so no one really cared if they were dumping poisons into streams.”

Our book, "Paving Paradise", focuses only on the wetlands permitting -- Section 404 of the Clean Water Act -- but our findings and Duhigg's are strikingly similar. The way the government has carried out the Clean Water Act has created "a taxpayer-funded program that creates the illusion of environmental protection while doing little to stem the destruction of precious natural resources.”