The White House said that it had finalized a major clean water regulation on Wednesday, May 27 that would restore the federal government’s authority to limit pollution in the nation’s river, lakes, streams and wetlands.
Environmentalists praised the widely-expected rule, calling it an important step that would lead to significantly cleaner natural bodies of water and healthier drinking water.“With today’s rule, we take another step towards protecting the waters that belong to all of us,” said President Obama in a written statement.
“With today’s rule, we take another step towards protecting the waters that belong to all of us,” said President Barack Obama in a written statement.
The new rule has attracted fierce opposition from several business interests, including farmers, property developers, fertilizer and pesticide makers, oil and gas producers and even a national association of golf course owners. Opponents contend that the regulation would “stifle economic growth, and intrude on property owners’ rights.”
Republicans in Congress, anticipating the rule, have said it is yet another example of what they call executive overreach by the Obama administration. Even before the announcement, they were advancing legislation on Capitol Hill meant to block or delay it.
Top officials from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Army Corps of Engineers, which co-authored the rule, are expected to announce the details of the rule later on Wednesday.
“For the water in the rivers and lakes in our communities that flow to our drinking water to be clean, the streams and wetlands that feed them need to be clean too,” said EPA administrator Gina McCarthy in a statement. “We’re finalizing a clean water rule to protect the streams and the wetlands that one in three Americans rely on for drinking water. And we’re doing that without creating any new permitting requirements and maintaining all previous exemptions and exclusions.”
McCarthy and other White House officials sought to emphasize that the rule is about increasing clarity for businesses, helping make it easier for them to determine which waterways are subject to the pollution rules of the Clean Water Act of 1972.
“This rule is about clarification, and in fact, we’re adding exclusions for features like artificial lakes and ponds, water-filled depressions from constructions and grass swales,” she said. “This rule will make it easier to identify protected waters and will make those protections consistent with the law as well as the latest peer-reviewed science. This rule is based on science.”
“Today’s rule marks the beginning of a new era in the history of the Clean Water Act,” said Jo-Ellen Darcy, assistant secretary for the Army Corps of Engineers. “This rule responds to the public’s demand for greater clarity, consistency, and predictability when making jurisdictional determinations.”
“The result will be better public service nationwide,” she added.
The new water regulation is part of a broader push by President Obama to use his executive authority during the final year of his term to build a major environmental legacy, without requiring new legislation from the Republican-controlled Congress.
This summer, for instance, the EPA is expected to release a final set of rules intended to combat climate change by limiting greenhouse gas pollution emitted from power plants. Obama is also expected to announce within the next year that he will make vast areas of public land off-limits to energy exploration and other natural development.
But even as EPA employees worked this month to finish the water rule, the House passed a bill to block it. The Senate is also moving forward with a bill version that would require the agency to fundamentally revamp the rule.
“The administration’s cavalier attitude toward expanding the federal government’s authority into our backyards is absolutely outrageous,” said Senator David Vitter, a Republican of Louisiana and senior member of the Environment and Public Works Committee. Vitter is a strong opponent of the measure.
“Not only were small businesses—who will be dramatically impacted by expanding of the definition of ‘waters of the United States’—inappropriately excluded from the rule-making process, but the federal government shouldn’t be regulating puddles on private property in the first place,” he stated. “I will continue to work with my colleagues to reverse and withdraw this rule before the economic devastation begins.”
Other industry groups, led by the American Farm Bureau Federation, have also waged an aggressive campaign challenging the rule, calling for a withdrawal or overhaul.
“It’s going to cause a nightmare for farmers,” said Don Parrish, the senior director of congressional relations for the American Farm Bureau Federation. “Our members own the majority of the landscape that’s going to be impacted by this. It’s going to make their land, the most valuable thing they possess, less valuable. It could reduce the value of some farmland by as much as 40 percent.”
“If you want to build a home, if you want to grow food, if you want a job to go with that clean water, you have to ask the EPA for it.”
The EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers jointly proposed the rule, called the Waters of the United States, last spring. The agency has held over 400 meetings about it with different groups, and has read more than one million public comments as it wrote the final language.
The rule is being issued under the 1972 Clean Water Act, which gave the federal government broad authority to limit pollution in major water bodies such as the Mississippi River and Chesapeake Bay, as well as streams and wetlands that drain into larger waters.
But two Supreme Court decisions related to clean water protection, in 2001 and in 2006, created legal confusion about whether the federal government had the authority to regulate the smaller streams and headwaters, and other water sources like wetlands.
EPA officials say the new water rule will clarify who has authority, allowing the government to once again limit pollution in those smaller bodies of water. It does not, however, restore the full scope of regulatory authority granted by the 1972 Clean Water Act.
The EPA also contends that they will not have the authority to regulate additional waters that had not been covered under the 1972 law. People familiar with the rule say it will apply to about 60 percent of the nation’s waters.
“Our rivers, lakes, and drinking water can only be clean if the streams that flow into them are protected,” said Margie Alt, executive director of Environment America. “That’s why today’s action is the biggest victory for clean water in a decade.”
(With reports from the New York Times, The Hill)
