Posted on 05/27/2015 8:09:58 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
The Environmental Protection Agency announced a rule Wednesday that critics say would expand federal reach over U.S. waterways, but that the Obama administration contends will clarify which farming, development and other practices are subject to regulation.
The battle over the "Waters of the U.S." rule has been brewing for months and will continue both on and off Capitol Hill. The regulation attempts to define Clean Water Act regulations as stretching to bodies of water that have a "significant nexus" with "navigable waters" to prevent pollution of drinking water.
The EPA told various media outlets that the rule asserts the agency's ability to regulate waters connect to those flowing into drinking water supplies, thus enabling regulation of upstream pollutants. The Washington Examiner and several other news outlets that cover the EPA regularly were not informed of the media call or of the release of the new regulation.
Republicans and rural Democrats are determined to roll the regulation back because they say agricultural and other interests fear the rule could halt virtually all development near water. They said the regulation would add features that only contain water when it rains and hit streams with limited flow.
"I am hearing from too many different sectors that this is not clarification. This is limitation not only on our ability to move, but to breathe," Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said at a recent hearing.
Democratic supporters in Congress and environmental groups say the regulation would clear up confusion about whether permits are needed for activity near certain waterways. They defended the rule, saying it would protect drinking water from pollution carried by streams and other bodies of water.
"Small streams and wetlands provide drinking water to roughly one in three Americans and they must be protected from pollution at the source. The Obama administration listened to all perspectives and developed a final rule that will help guarantee safe drinking water supplies for American families and businesses and restore much-needed certainty, consistency and effectiveness to the Clean Water Act," said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., the top Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee.
Opponents of the rule, however, are readying a fight on the floor. Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., agreed to hold off on an amendment at the Senate Appropriations Committee blocking the rule on the Energy and Water spending bill because he was assured by Murkowski and others that it would be addressed on the floor.
The House version of the Energy and Water spending bill, meanwhile, includes language blocking the rule. The White House has threatened to veto the bill, partly because of that policy rider.
"This rule will provide the clarity and certainty businesses and industry need about which waters are protected by the Clean Water Act, and it will ensure polluters who knowingly threaten our waters can be held accountable," President Obama said in a statement.
Navigable to the EPA means that a microscopic single cell organism may traverse the boundary or your project.
You have been warned... everything on the EPA website regarding this is misrepresentation at the least, outright f***ing LIES otherwise.
For Christ sake, if you go to the Press Release, you see it is in English AND Spanish... but there is NO GOD DAMNED DATE ON IT!
The EPA budget needs to be cut to $0.00. They are taking Taxpayer money and giving it to Ecoactivist outfits so they can go collect biased data for the public comment period. They are lying and saying 90% of the people LOVE THIS PROPOSED RULE.
please see my guidance on “navigable” in post 21
I’ve noticed the new “no date” phenomenon on a lot of things.
“Release Date: 05/27/2015”?
I think after I posted the link I had seen they revised the link to go to a legit page and not just the bilingual non-dated P.R.
Could be.
It looks they fixed the link to go to a page with only the English version with a date and a separate link to get the Spanish one.
I received a "courtesy call" yesterday letting me know that I owe $250 for a 3 mile ambulance ride when they responded to my 911 call when I injured my hand in March. I advised the nice lady that, yes, I had recently received that "bill or invoice or statement or whatever you woud call it" and I saw that document gave plenty of instruction on how to make the payment... but there was nowhere on it A DUE BY DATE! I asked if the call was to tell me that I was past due and when she said no, I asked her, "Well? When is it due, then?"
She had no answer, but said that she did understand... and I asked her to pass my formal complaint onward to someone that will correct the problem.
I have a feeling they don't say when it is due so when you lose track it can go to collections and the IRS and the NSA and Social Security and your 7th grade Geography teacher, get written up in the police blotter or the Society Page or WHATEVER.
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