Posted on 12/04/2009 2:58:17 PM PST by markomalley
With the deletion of a single word from the Clean Water Act, some leading Democratic lawmakers are angling to greatly expand the federal government's authority to regulate water pollution.
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in June quietly approved legislation dropping the adjective "navigable" to describe the bodies of water covered under the 1972 law, vastly expanding its scope and prompting a lobbying campaign from business groups that fear the small editorial change would cost jobs during economic hard times.
The federal government regulates lakes and rivers large enough for ship traffic, but if the word "navigable" is deleted, the groups say, the government could have the authority to police everything from wetlands and lakes to backyard ponds and roadside ditches.
The law also would open the way to government regulation of 20 million acres of the nation's so-called isolated wetlands and 59 percent of the nation's streams that do not flow year-round. These are two types of water that are now largely exempt from federal oversight.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Anybody??
I’ve been watching this one. It also means the water in your wells which could be taxed. They tried it in NJ but it went nowhere.
It would be a simple matter to attach a meter to your pump and tax you accordingly.
And here you thought your property rights extended to what is under the surface of your property. Hah!
We received a tax bill today for trash. After wracking my brains, I realized it is for a recycling service that hasn’t started yet.
When the revolution comes, it will be because of taxes once again, but because over 50% of the public will be on the dole, how can a revolution succeed?
So if we have puddles of water in our yard after a rain, will that be a body of water?
If we have puddles of water in the driveway, which will mix with whatever is on the driveway, be a toxic waste site?
If they do this, then, won’t bureaucrats have way too much leeway to interpret the law, and selectively enforce it?
There is NOTHING, absolutely nothing, they do not want to REGULATE.
I would much rather see the EPA eliminated, and start over within Constitutional limits, than give it even more power.
The way that it cavalierly violates property rights and due process should be enough to eliminate it.
That is already the situation.
Liberals cannot stop taxing, spending, regulating, enforcing, suing or anyting that kills regular business and life.
Obama personifies this.
With cap and trade and healthcare, the totalitarian maggots will own everything you do, eat, drink or use electricity for.
Non-point source pollution will be regulatable under the CWA, as will streams all across the west which flow only after a heavy rain hits exactly the right place in the watershed.
A GOP majority Congress promises to repeal one legislative act every week it is in session.
Now, that's an agenda I could get behind. Might even insure a Republican majority for the next fifty years...
This seems set to give you far more work for your court.
If I hadn’t personally known about the following case I wouldn’t believe it, but it is true.
There was a property owner in Oregon (Columbia County) who had no septic system on her property. It was in a rural area near the Columbia River and the property had been in her family for over a century.
To be blunt, she had, and I mean this literally, a lake of sewage on her 100+ acres. The county was having a difficult time getting this woman, who was land rich but poor and almost illiterate, to rectify this situation.
We moved away before this was resolved, but I have to tell you that it is horrible cases like this that give County officials nightmares when it comes to water quality issues and drive the regulations on water quality.
The Communist Party in Russia had control of almost everything before the USSR collapsed.
The Dems are to the US as the Communists were to the USSR?
It appears they have not learned the lessons of the past or they do not care about our country.
With the deletion of a single word from the Clean Water Act, some leading Democratic lawmakers are angling to greatly expand the federal government's authority to regulate water pollution. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in June quietly approved legislation dropping the adjective "navigable" to describe the bodies of water covered under the 1972 law, vastly expanding its scope and prompting a lobbying campaign from business groups that fear the small editorial change would cost jobs during economic hard times.
I’ve been supporting the Pacific Legal Fund for years, trying to stop this kind of BS. The DIM-oc-RATS are asses.
The courts have interpreted “navigable” so loosely that the little puddle in your back yard is probably already covered if it will eventually make it into something that could loosely be called navigable.
“To be blunt, she had, and I mean this literally, a lake of sewage on her 100+ acres. “
May I ask how big the lake was and how many people were involved? A single person simply does not create much more waste than a single bear, and much less than a single cow or horse.
Perhaps she had a large extended family, and they all had a system where their elimination fed directly to the lake? I encountered a situation where the sewage from about 100 people was feeding directly into a pond that was about an acre, as I recall, and I had to search a bit to determine that the sewage was directly feeding into it. It was not at all obvious.
I was working as a temp in a land use planning office for Columbia County, Oregon, at the time this issue was discovered. I’ve related the facts as they were explained to me by the acting department manager. He described the situation out at the site as “nauseating”.
The ground at that particular site was odd. The topsoil is underlain several meters down with a layer of vesicular basalt called the Goble formation. The climate in northwestern Oregon is very wet and rainy but in western Columbia County it is only thirty or so miles to the Pacific Ocean and rain in that location can be measured in feet.
I don’t know if the woman had an extended family or owned cattle and pigs but that would not have been unusual in that area of Columbia County. The name of the area is Alston-Mayger, and it is between Rainier and Clatkanie in Oregon.
bingo and if they can't get enough power that way they will just tack on the commerce clause and have total control.
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