Posted May 12, 2014
Legislators in the United States Senate and House of Representatives are urging U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator, Gina McCarthy, to withdraw the proposed rule defining “waters of the United States,” according to an article by the Hill available here.
The comment period for the proposed rule is open and will close on July 21, 2014. The proposed rule would define “waters of the Unites States” under the Clean Water Act in an effort to reduce the confusion and complexity over where the CWA applies following U.S. Supreme Court decisions, Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 531 U.S. 159 (2001) and Rapanos v. United States, 547 U.S. 715 (2006). More information on the proposed rule is available herein a recent post from this blog.
Arizona Senators Jeff Flake (R) and John McCain (R) sent a letter to McCarthy, criticizing the proposed rule.
“Unfortunately, the current EPA proposal dramatically expands federal jurisdiction and will likely yield only the next step in an unnecessarily iterative process and create significant regulatory uncertainty,” said the Senators.
Flake and McCain “acknowledged the EPA’s decision to limit federal jurisdiction by excluding gullies, rills, and swales from the definition of ‘waters of the U.S.,’ but argued the agency should be more specific about what bodies of water would be subject to regulation.”
A majority of the U.S. House of Representatives also expressed opposition to the proposed rule in a letter available here, according to an article by Ag Professional here.
The lawmakers expressed concern that the EPA and the Corp chose to base the rule on the opinion written by Justice Anthony Kennedy in the 2006 case, Rapanos, rather than Justice Antonin Scalia’s plurality opinion in the 2001 case, Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County.
For more information on the Clean Water Act, please visit the National Agricultural Law Center’s website here.
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