Congress Continues Pressure on EPA over Clean Water Act Jurisdiction

This week, both the House and Senate continued to apply pressure on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to reconsider the significant expansion of its authority to regulation wetlands and wet areas under the Clean Water Act (CWA). In the Senate, all eight Republican Senators on the Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee sent a letter to President Barack Obama regarding federal regulation of CWA jurisdiction, which the EPA and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) released in late March. The proposed rule, which has not yet been officially published in the federal register, would expand federal jurisdiction, defining ‘tributary’ for the first time. This would make any water that connects to a traditionally navigable body of water and has a bed, bank, and ordinary high water mark jurisdictional including roadside, stormwater, and irrigation ditches. Senators signing the letter included: Sens. Vitter (R-La.), John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), John Boozman (R-Ark.), and Deb Fischer (R-Neb.). In the House, the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee approved legislation to bar EPA from vetoing CWA Section 404 permits after the Corps has issued them. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled in favor of EPA's ability to retroactively veto the Spruce coal mine permit in West Virginia last year. AGC will continue to monitor legislative activity relating to the Clean Water Act and will continue to be active advocating for reasonable regulatory clarifications to CWA jurisdiction. For more information, please contact Scott Berry at (703) 837-5321 or berrys@agc.org