STATEMENT OF ADMINISTRATION POLICY
S. 1140 – Federal Water Quality Protection Act
(Sen. Barrasso, R-WY, and 46 co-sponsors)
The
Administration strongly opposes S. 1140, which would require the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of the Army
(Army) to withdraw and re-propose specified regulations needed to
clarify the jurisdictional boundaries of the Clean Water Act (CWA). The
agencies' rulemaking, grounded in science and the law, is essential to
ensure clean water for future generations, and is responsive to calls
for rulemaking from the Congress, industry, and community stakeholders
as well as decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court. The final rule has been
through an extensive public engagement process.
Clean
water is vital for the success of the Nation's businesses, agriculture,
energy development, and the health of our communities. More than one
in three Americans get their drinking water from rivers, lakes, and
reservoirs that are at risk of pollution from upstream sources. The
protection of wetlands is also vital for hunting and fishing. When
Congress passed the CWA in 1972 to restore the Nation's waters, it
recognized that to have healthy communities downstream, we need to
protect the smaller streams and wetlands upstream.
Clarifying
the scope of the CWA helps to protect clean water, safeguard public
health, and strengthen the economy. Supreme Court decisions in 2001 and
2006 focused on specific jurisdictional determinations and rejected the
analytical approach that the Army Corps of Engineers used for those
determinations, but did not invalidate the underlying regulation. This
has created ongoing questions and uncertainty about how the regulation
is applied consistent with the Court's decisions. The final rule was
developed to address this uncertainty.
If
S. 1140 were enacted, any revisions to the CWA regulations would
require the agencies to define waters of the United States in a manner
inconsistent with the CWA as interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court,
resulting in more confusion, uncertainty, and inconsistency.
S.
1140 would require the agencies to expend scarce resources to duplicate
the transparent rulemaking process just completed, which involved
extensive public outreach and participation, including over 400 public
meetings, and 1 million public comments. The agencies met with States,
municipalities, small businesses, farmers, ranchers, miners, foresters,
conservation groups, and many others to solicit input and reflect that
input in a final rule. A regulation as prescribed in S. 1140 would
raise costs for landowners and businesses seeking a CWA permit and
increase delays in the permit process. S. 1140 also would reduce
protection of the Nation's water quality and result in higher drinking
water treatment costs, increased contamination of fish and shellfish,
loss of recreational opportunities including hunting and fishing, and
more frequent algal blooms that choke rivers and lakes and make waters
unhealthy as a drinking water source or to swim and fish in. Wetlands
serve as a natural buffer to reduce flooding, and by ignoring this
important role, S.1140 also would lead to more frequent and more
damaging losses from floods. Families, communities, and businesses will
have no choice but to pay for increased flood protection that natural
wetlands currently provide for free.
If the President were presented with S. 1140, his senior advisors would recommend that he veto the bill.
Source: The Executive Office of the President, Office and Management and Budget
No comments:
Post a Comment