Clean Water Restoration Act Gains Detractors

June 17, 2009

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Advocacy groups representing utilities, industry, agriculture and landowners are mounting an offensive against the proposed Clean Water Restoration Act, which is coming up for committee vote in the Senate.

The act, S 787, would broaden regulation of the nation’s waterways, most notably removing the requirement that regulated waterways be “navigable.”

In so doing, the government would essentially be able to regulate everything from standing water in floodplains to creeks that run behind business and residences.

In a letter to Senate Environment and Public Works Chair Barbara Boxer and ranking member James Inhofe, the American Farm Bureau Federation said that the proposed law would “extend to all water — anywhere from farm ponds, to storm water retention basins, to roadside ditches, to desert washes, to streets and gutters, even to a puddle of rainwater,” stated the letter. “For the first time in the 36-year history of the act, activities that have no impact on actual rivers and lakes would be subject to full federal regulation.”

Agricultural operations would be subject to civil lawsuits that currently are not possible, the Farm Bureau stated. If un-navigable waterways are added, businesses and farms would be subject to civil lawsuits from organizations and individuals who don’t like the way the business or farm is using property, reports Wilson County News.

The Heritage Foundation calls the act “troubled waters for property owners.”

The foundation says, “The CWRA is an invitation for federal regulators (or environmental organizations filing lawsuits) to shut down any use of land that they don’t like so long as there is a little water somewhere in the vicinity. If the past is any guide, this law will be used to stop a tremendous amount of economic activity.”

The act has the support of conservation groups including Ducks Unlimited, the National Wildlife Federation, the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, and Trout Unlimited, states Ammoland.com.

The Clean Water Restoration Act calls for regulation over “all waters subject to the ebb and flow of the tide, the territorial seas, and all interstate and intrastate waters and their tributaries, including lakes, rivers, streams (including intermittent streams),” including “mudflats, sandflats, wetlands, sloughs, prairie potholes, wet meadows, playa lakes, natural ponds….”

The act may come up for vote in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee June 18.

The National Center for Public Policy Research has created a Web site with links about the act.

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Reader Comments

From the Great Lakes to Puget Sound, from the Mississippi River to the Everglades, and from Chesapeake Bay to the Colorado – we can only protect the great waters of America if we safeguard the countless streams that feed them and the millions of acres of wetlands that help keep them clean. Perhaps that is why today, the Senate EPW committee rejected the spurious arguments of the powerful polluters cited in your article, and instead voted to restore protections vital to America’s great waters. As its name indicates, the Clean Water Restoration Act does no more than restore the original scope of the Clean Water Act that our nation adopted some 37 years ago – to protect all the waters of the United States.

John Rumpler | June 18th, 2009

John Rumpler is Senior Attorney for Environment America, a network of environmental advocacy organizations in 27 states.

John Rumpler | June 18th, 2009

Just wait until some greens don’t like the puddles in your driveway. lawsuits for everyone!!!!

Just Blaze | June 29th, 2009

Thank you for your article on the CWRA. Here’s how it works: The trust agency for the CWRA (currently USACE & EPA under current CWA) would issue guidance on what would be determined jurisdictional under the new CWRA, and current methods for delineation would be employed in the field. Tying a wetland to a navigable water body would not be a component of the jurisdictional determination, but could be a factor. Important to differentiate stream beds (bounded by ordinary high water marks) and wetlands (boundary determined in the field using delineation techniques). In practice, you’d probably see more isolated wetlands regulated, but under current Significant Nexus Test guidance for streambeds, I doubt that more streams would be regulated under a CWRA because the current SNT guidance is easily broadly applicable. In summary, as far as extent of regulation, you’d see a jurisdictional determinations resembling pre-SWANCC decision (which removed jurisdiction for isolated wetlands) for wetlands and streambed jurisdictions similar to what we have now post Rapanos decision (which provided for the SNT).

Taylor Houston | August 19th, 2009

Who wrote this article and what are his/her credentials

Adam | September 24th, 2009