I hate floaties.

You know what I’m talking about? Those little pieces of flotsam and jetsam that end up in your bath water, your club soda, whatever. You don’t really ever know what they are; they could be random flakes from your own scalp, bits of the bartender’s lunch fallen from his gums, something that came out of your date’s beard…whatever. I hate them. If I see floaties in my bathwater, I grab the cup my kid uses to rinse out her hair when she takes a bath and I scoop them all out before I even get in the water. I know, it’s anal, but it’s just one of my quirks.

And the thing is, I’m completely aware of the fact that there are millions, if not billions, of other things in the water that I can’t see that are probably worse for me than the floaties. Tons of different germs and pollution are just waiting to enter my crevices, which sounds really invasive because, well, it is!

And the Clean Water Act isn’t helping my bath or drinking water any these days. Streams, rivers, and lakes are left in “legal limbo,” according to American Rivers. During 2006, the Supreme Court ruled that the Clean Water Act could have certain exemptions, which leaves about 60% of America’s streams at risk for pollution. These streams are how about 117 million of us get our drinking water in the first place—so we’re not just getting floaties, but other harmful substances from dumping, polluting, and general water mayhem.

Plenty of businesses are claiming that they are exempt from the Clean Water Act because of the Supreme Court ruling, resulting in their ability to—yes—dump waste into the streams. Doesn’t this just make your blood boil? To save businesses a few bucks, American lives are considered less important. In short, the wastes aren’t good enough to be disposed of properly—but they’re perfectly good enough to pour into our very bodies.

Like many Americans, I use a water purifier in my home for this very purpose. But the water purifier is only in one sink, and doesn’t cover bathwater. And even with this in my home, why should I have to worry about my family—my little girl—ingesting harmful pollutants so some corporation—which is not protected under the U.S. Constitution as a citizen, as we have to continually remind our politicians who seem to think it is—can save a few bucks?

Uh-uh. I don’t buy it. And neither should you. If you want to pass legislation to close these loopholes, restoring full protection to our streams, rivers, and lakes, you can click here to ask Congress to extend the Clean Water Act to the capabilities it should already encompass. It’s a disgrace to allow some businesses to dump their toxins into our water supply legally. Let’s stop this daily poisoning of our families today.