Lesson plan Grade 11 Social Studies & Civics
The 1899 Refuse Act and the Search for Federal Pollution Power
A grade 11 US history lesson tracing how an 1899 navigation statute became a pollution enforcement tool and comparing five instruments of policy change.
Objectives
- Students will explain how an 1899 navigation statute came to be used against industrial water pollution.
- Students will compare instruments of policy change on speed, reach, durability, and who may use them.
- Students will evaluate why Congress replaced the Refuse Act permit program in 1972.
Vocabulary
Key words: navigable waters, refuse, informer provision, executive order, permit program
Teacher overview
Before 1972 the federal government had no comprehensive water pollution statute, so lawyers looking for federal authority reached back to a navigation law written in 1899. Section 13 of the Rivers and Harbors Act, later called the Refuse Act, barred the discharge of refuse into navigable waters without a permit from the Army, and it carried a provision paying an informer half of any fine a court imposed. This lesson follows that statute from a shipping-channel rule to an enforcement tool and then to its replacement. The misconception to address early is the common student belief that the Clean Water Act created federal authority over water pollution out of nothing; the authority existed for seventy years in a statute written for another purpose, and the argument in 1972 was about whether that authority could be made to work.
Procedure
Hook (5 min): Write one sentence on the board without its date: it is unlawful to throw or deposit refuse of any kind into a navigable water without a permit. Ask students to guess the year it was written and to name the problem they think it was meant to solve. Reveal 1899, and reveal that Congress was thinking about sandbars and sunken cargo rather than chemicals.
Timeline reading (12 min): Students read the five short summaries in the document set and mark each with the instrument of change it represents. Establish the sequence: the statute in 1899, the Supreme Court's broad reading of the word refuse in 1966, the citizen use of the informer provision in the late 1960s, the permit program created by executive order in 1970, and the 1972 amendments that replaced it. Confirm the sequence with a quick oral check before moving on.
Document analysis (15 min): In pairs, students answer three questions for each summary in writing: who acted, what authority they used, and who could have stopped them. Require students to quote no more than one phrase from each summary and to write the rest in their own words. Circulate and press pairs who answer the third question with a name rather than an institution.
Comparison chart (13 min): Groups of four build the comparison chart from the handout on chart paper, rating each of the five instruments on who may start it, how quickly it produces a result, how far it reaches, and how durable it is. Each rating must be defended with one fact from the document set. Groups post their charts.
Discussion (6 min): Ask one question and hold the class to it: if the Refuse Act already prohibited industrial discharges, why did Congress write a new statute in 1972 and pass it over a veto? Steer students toward the difference between a prohibition enforced case by case and a permit system that sets numeric limits for every discharger in advance.
Formative check and exit ticket (4 min): Students write one sentence naming the instrument of change they judge most durable and one sentence naming its main weakness. Collect at the door. If more than a third of the class names durability without naming any weakness, open the next class by revisiting the executive order summary.
Student Handout
Document set: five summaries written for this lesson.
Summary A. The statute, 1899. Section 13 of the Rivers and Harbors Act made it unlawful to throw, discharge, or deposit refuse matter of any kind into a navigable water, or into a tributary from which it would float or wash into a navigable water, without a permit from the Secretary of War. Liquid sewage flowing from streets and sewers was excepted. Congress was protecting the shipping channels that carried the nation's commerce. The statute also allowed a court to pay half of any fine to the person whose information led to the conviction.
Summary B. The Supreme Court, 1966. In United States v. Standard Oil Company, the Court considered whether commercially valuable oil that spilled into a river counted as refuse. The company argued that refuse means waste, and that oil worth money is not waste. The Court held that the word covered the discharge anyway, reading the statute broadly in light of the harm it was meant to prevent. The decision opened the 1899 law to use against industrial discharges of many kinds.
Summary C. Citizen enforcement, late 1960s. With the informer provision available, individuals and conservation groups began gathering evidence of industrial discharges and bringing it to federal prosecutors, sometimes seeking the informer's share of the fine. The strategy required no new legislation. It also depended on prosecutors choosing to act and on courts imposing fines large enough to matter.
Summary D. The executive order, 1970. The President established a permit program under the 1899 statute, administered by the Army Corps of Engineers with review by the newly created Environmental Protection Agency. Dischargers were required to apply for permits. The program placed a seventy-year-old prohibition on a modern administrative footing without waiting for Congress. It was quickly caught up in litigation and was overtaken within two years.
Summary E. Congress, 1972. The Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments, later known as the Clean Water Act, passed over a presidential veto. The amendments created a national permit system administered by the Environmental Protection Agency, with numeric limits based on available treatment technology and with a citizen suit provision written into the statute itself. The new permit system displaced the Refuse Act program.
Comparison chart. Build a five-row chart with one row for each summary and these columns: who may start this instrument, how quickly it produces a result, how far it reaches across the country, how durable it is against reversal, and what can stop it. Defend every rating with one fact from the document set.
From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.
Differentiation
Support
Give students a partially completed comparison chart with the first row filled in for Summary A, including a model justification sentence. Provide a short glossary card defining navigable water, refuse, and permit in plain language before the reading begins.
Extension
Have students write the one-paragraph argument a 1971 industry lawyer would make against the permit program and the one-paragraph answer an agency lawyer would give, each using only the document set.
ELL supports
Pre-teach "navigable," "refuse," "informer," and "veto" with a definition, a sketch, and a sentence in which the word appears. Provide a chart frame with sentence starters: "This instrument can be started by ___. It works quickly or slowly because ___. It can be stopped by ___."
Extensions
Students trace one more step in the sequence by comparing the citizen suit provision written into the 1972 statute with the informer provision in the 1899 statute, and explain which one gives an ordinary person more control over the outcome.