Maine’s waterways have long defined our state’s identity, supported our livelihoods and shaped our communities. From Moosehead to the Magalloway, to the thousands of ponds, streams and bogs that dot and crisscross our landscape, we have much to be proud of and much to protect.

Beyond the rivers and lakes where we go to swim and fish, clean water has always been the lifeblood of Maine’s economy and industries, including farming. As the original conservationists, farmers know that clean water is vital to healthful and productive crop production, and essential to Maine’s brand. You can’t have healthy food without healthy soil, and you can’t have healthy soil without clean water.

Indeed, Maine has a long history of national leadership in protecting our waterways. Maine’s Sen. Edmund Muskie, motivated by the severely polluted Androscoggin River that he grew up alongside in Rumford, crafted and organized passage of the landmark Clean Water Act in the early 1970s.

The impact of the Clean Water Act in restoring the health of our nation’s waterways – from our iconic lakes and bays to our small, unnamed streams – cannot be overstated. We need only look to our backyards to see the impact it’s had.

The Androscoggin once sported a layer of toxic foam described by a Maine farmer as “too thick to paddle, too thin to plow.” Within five years of the passage of the Clean Water Act, oxygen levels in the river had rebounded to the point that the river was supporting aquatic life. Today the river supports an active sport fishery.

Unfortunately, after 40 years of protections for all of America’s waterways under the Clean Water Act, a set of polluter-led lawsuits in the 2000s opened up loopholes in the law that “muddy the waters,” so to speak, on those protections.

The problem here is clear: The waterways we love and depend on are only as clean as the small streams, tributaries and wetlands that feed and clean them.

For years now, these loopholes have left 55 percent of Maine’s streams, and thousands of acres of wetlands, vulnerable to pollution. Over one in three Mainers get their drinking water from sources that depend on these streams – and all of Maine’s farmers rely on clean water to grow healthy crops.

Agricultural practices over several decades also have left a mark on waterways. The U.S. Geological Survey tells us that 90 percent of all fish, 100 percent of all streams, 33 percent of major aquifers and 50 percent of shallow wells contain one or more pesticides at detectable levels.

That’s why we’re celebrating the Environmental Protection Agency’s recent step to close these loopholes through a final rule. The rule restores Clean Water Act protections to critical streams and wetlands, helping to fulfill Sen. Muskie’s vision, and will provide healthy returns for farms, consumers and ecological systems across the country.

Regrettably, polluters and their allies in Congress have been telling outright lies in hopes of blocking or repealing these protections, claiming that the EPA is attempting to regulate every birdbath and ditch in America. This type of over-the-top rhetoric is not helpful – and simply not accurate. For farmers, the proposed rule preserves existing Clean Water Act exemptions for certain agricultural activities.

In a speech before Congress in 1966, Sen. Muskie said, “High-quality water is more than the dream of conservationists, more than a political slogan; high-quality water, in the right quantity at the right place at the right time, is essential to health, recreation and economic growth.”

Now that the EPA has finalized these long-awaited protections, the Clean Water Act can once again fully protect many of the essential waters we all depend on. But a bill in the U.S. Senate would repeal these protections and send us back to the uncertainty we had before. We need Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King to stand up to polluters and fight for clean water. Maine’s waterways are too precious to our state – to our environment, our economy and our food system – to leave them at risk.

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