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 here
in 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.
