Clean Water Act

[KaiB]

I'm currently very busy and have not looked into this, but I understand that new language is being proposed for the Clean Water Act.

This all has something to do with the word "navigable", its intrepretation and/or deletion. As I understand it, the new Bill would give the USEPA and the Corps access to almost any puddle on anybodys place as well as open up doors for all kinds of headaches for property owners.

Has anyone been following this?

 

[Toiyabe]

Here's my understanding:

The clean water act of 1972 applies to "navigable waterways". The EPA and Army Corps have held that this also gives them regulatory authority over anything that drains into a navigable waterway, as to protect water quality in that waterway you have to control what's upstream.

So up untill recently, the Army Corps and EPA did have regulatory authority over just about every puddle in the US.

Last year, this definition was challenged in the Supreme Court, and the Court ruled that the Army Corps and EPA interpretation of the Clean Water Act was overly broad. The Court said that they only have authority over waters that have a "significant nexus" to a navigable waterway. Nobody is quite sure what that means, except more money for lawyers.

So there's been a bill introduced into congress to ammend the Clean Water Act to state clearly that it applies to every bit of surface water in the US. Essentially this is getting us back to the situation that existed before the Supreme Court ruling.

 

[KaiB]

Well said; as I see it, however, the new language will give the Feds authority over everything and open a Pandora's box for land owners. Here is the text:

`(24) WATERS OF THE UNITED STATES- The term `waters of the United States' means 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), mudflats, sandflats, wetlands, sloughs, prairie potholes, wet meadows, playa lakes, natural ponds, and all impoundments of the foregoing, to the fullest extent that these waters, or activities affecting these waters, are subject to the legislative power of Congress under the Constitution.'.

This is what's replacing the term "navigable waters".

This scares me.

 

[Toiyabe]

Interesting, I didn't see that. Based on that language, it is going pretty far beyond the scope of the Clean Water Act prior to the Supreme Court's ruling.

For example, I have a small stream on my property that most years dries up a few miles below my property. It never connected to a navigable waterway, even during the last Ice Age. Wasn't subject to the Clean Water Act previously, but it would be under the new legislation.

I better improve my stream crossing before that law takes effect!

 

[mjarrels]

Yikes... I have cows using my creek!

mark

 

[Toiyabe]

Yikes... I have cows using my creek!

I do too, and they're not even mine! They belong to a former BLM ranger who drops his cattle off on private land in the middle of the night (my neighbors have caught him doing it) when he's not consulting for the Sierra Club on range managment issues.

 

[KaiB]

Yikes... I have cows using my creek!

mark

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