Posted on 01/25/2020 5:46:05 PM PST by karpov
Another day, another barrage of hysterical reactions to a marginal regulatory reform. The latest cause for concern is the White House's finalized clean water rule that renounces the federal government's ability to regulate ponds, puddles, and (some) ditches.
Yesterday's regulation replaces the prior Waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule issued by the Obama administration in 2015. The Obama-era rule was controversial from the get-go, with multiple Red states filing legal challenges claiming it exceeded the federal government's authority to regulate water pollution. A slew of federal court rulings stayed the implementation of the rule in over half the states.
The new rule released yesterday is intended to pare back the federal government's regulatory powers to something closer to what Congress intended when it passed the 1972 Clean Water Act.
"All states have their own protections for waters within their borders, and many regulate more broadly than the federal government," said Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief Andy Wheeler at a homebuilding conference in Las Vegas today. Wheeler's department, alongside the Army Corp of Engineers, is responsible for writing and implementing the new clean water rule. "Our new rule recognizes this relationship and strikes the proper balance between Washington, D.C., and the states."
Most media outlets reporting on the rule change went with a different framing.
The Trump administration would "strip away environmental protections for streams, wetlands and groundwater, handing a victory to farmers [and] fossil fuel producers," wrote The New York Times. "California will be hit hard as Trump administration weakens clean water protections," warned the Los Angeles Times. "Trump erodes water protections," declared Politico.
"This will be the biggest loss of clean water protection the country has ever seen," Southern Environmental Law Center lawyer Blan Holman told the Times.
(Excerpt) Read more at reason.com ...
When I lived in Western Kansas, The Arkansas River was listed as a navigable stream. It was bone dry most of the time.
Good. That U.N. River Navigator nonsense was B.S. from the get go. I hope he slapped the snot out of all of it.
A wonderful improvement. The federal government has been asserting control over lands which have been totally and completely un-navigable since Noah’s Flood.
Some of these lands are indeed the very downtown districts of cities with 5, 7, even 10 story buildings!
Its been crazy as a bedbug on a bender
https://www.westernjournal.com/78-year-old-veteran-sent-prison-fined-130k-digging-ponds-property-obama-epa-ruling/
This man deserves a pardon as well.
Minorities, women and children hardest hit.
Later.
AND, his money returned to him!
A few more nonsense like that removed, and we might have a real economy...
Throughout N. California we have seasonal dry streams, that only have water flowing in winter and early spring.
The green eco nazis have used these seasonal dry streams to hammer and punish any land owner for daring to try and control seasonal flows.
They have made Vernal pools a no go for a whole year even if the vernal pools last a few weeks.
Below is the bs Goddess worship of these mud puddles:
wildlife.www.ca.gov
California’s Vernal Pools - Department of Fish and Wildlife
Jun 17, 2013 - Vernal pools are a type of temporary wetland, and are some of the most ecologically important and distinctive areas in California. Vernal pools .
>>AND, his money returned to him!<<
With interest; and any of his work they ‘restored’ redone.
It’s probably no coincidence that American wages began stagnating in the early 1970s when the EPA was created.
EPA red tape has seriously delayed and wholly prevented all sorts of businesses ever since. It’s one reason that manufacturing abandoned the US.
In California the EPA has prevented the use of Sacramento Delta water by declaring the Delta Smelt an endangered species.
It has worsened our fires by preventing the removal of fuel from forests.
My first two environmental cases were “WETLANDS” cases and were stupid in the government’s approach to resolving a resolvable issue (i.e, putting tunnels under constructed dirt/road bridges for something like “moving biological masses” (i.e, fish, frogs, turtles) to go thru to get to the waters on the other side (thru a tunnel that is filled with connecting water).
The Rapanos decision among others was purely a powergrab by the Obama regime to control the waters of the US, thus putting farmers at the mercy of government officials.
The crap that California did to Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) farmers (about 40,000 of them) was tragic. Many lost their farms due to having their water deliberately cut-off for diversion to the big cities.
PAYBACK’S A BITCH!!!
Time that we got some common sense back into environmental stewardship.
Wanna know just how DUMB the EPA wetland laws are?
In Florida, a developer wants to fill in some swampy area and build. To do that, the acres of wet land must be substituted someplace else. That place is Colorado. By flooding some land in Colorado, the developer in Florida can fill in some land.
That’s just how dumb the EPA and the liberals are.
The Az desert is full of dry washes that have been designated as wetlands.
I can only imagine how much desert is ‘wetland’ now.
If it even runs once a year during a flash flood rain it is now a wetland.
As a real estate agent I used to have to advise potential land sellers to drain and fill any mud puddles and rid themselves of any wetlands vegetation (not growing in true wetlands) on their properties before offering them for sale. I saw buildable properties declared wetlands by faceless bureaucrats, which rendered them of no value.
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