Is water quality protection only worthwhile where humans are involved?

This link from the Oregonian highlights a conundrum that I have often pondered.  (EPA may fund mine cleanup)  While this particular situation appears to be getting a fix, there are so many others that are not being fixed because there is not that grand conjunction between an environmental crime and impacts on humans.   At what point is it stupid to say that, just because humans aren't immediately affected, we shouldn't fix a problem?  Hmmmm, I have to admit, on retrospect, that my own question smacks of one of those legendary stupid questions in light of all the problems that do have an effect on humans that don't get fixed.

For example, check out the red dots on the map on this site:  http://www.deq.state.or.us/wq/onsite/nitrate.htm.  While this particular web page focuses on the headwaters of the Deschutes River, the map is a statewide view of groundwater contamination in the state by one contaminant, nitrate, for which there is a federally established drinking water standard of 10 mg/L nitrate as N.  All the little red dots show where groundwater resources exceed that standard.  I know of the voluntary groundwater management programs that Oregon DEQ has undertaken in the southern Willamette, Umatilla and Malheur regions  (see the map at:  http://www.deq.state.or.us/wq/groundwater/gwmas.htm) and am somewhat skeptical of real progress in those areas, but at least there is DEQ attention.  After all this is our state agency that is concerned about environmental protection.  But what about all the other clusters of red dots in Oregon?  Many of these dots are are located in areas of much higher population densities than where GWMAs have been designated and, by extension of the line of reasoning with which I began this post, there would be a greater conjunction between environmental contamination and impacts on humans.

But of course, more humans means more politics and we have witnessed the politicizing of DEQ over many, many years.  To be fair, I will point out that the story with which I began this post related to the EPA's Superfund program to deal with hazardous waste and the red dot map relates to nitrates and not toxic substances.  However, it is interesting to note that EPA gives priority where there is the contamination/human impact conjunction, whereas in a very broad brush look, it appears, merely based on active groundwater management programs, that DEQ's first priority is vague to say the least.  And while I do not say that DEQ acting on groundwater issues in less densely populated regions is a measure of their backbone in protecting the environment in general, I would have to poke a thorn firmly in the side of the DEQ for not taking action on these other areas of the state, particularly in those areas where the problem has been studied for decades.