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New Clean Water Legislation Seeks to Undo Bush Era Changes

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Submitted by PSmall on Fri, 04/03/2009 - 08:14

Legislation from 2007 to restore the scope of the Clean Water Act (CWA) has been reintroduced, and it appears to have a good chance for passage. The CWA was narrowed by court rulings and recent federal guidance. The Clean Water Restoration Act (S. 787) would return CWA jurisdiction to intermittent streams and isolated wetlands.

Accordng to a Press Release from Sen. Feingold, the sponsor:

The CWA was enacted in 1972 to clean up and protect our nation’s waters, including isolated wetlands and headwater streams, which are critical to our environment and economy. However, two controversial, closely decided U.S. Supreme Court cases, Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County v. Army Corps of Engineers in 2001 and Rapanos v. United States in 2006, greatly reduced the scope of the CWA, undermining decades of clean water protections.

According to Scientists in Support of the Clean Water Restoration Act

Many small streams and wetlands have already lost Clean Water Act protections due to recent Supreme Court decisions that called into question the scientific relationship between these waters and larger navigable rivers downstream. We can say with certainty, however, that there is no scientific dispute about this relationship. Long-standing and robust scientific evidence demonstrates that these waters are interconnected and that small streams and wetlands are essential to the health of downstream waters. We cannot protect our mighty rivers unless we also protect our vast array of small streams and wetlands. It is equally clear that they must be protected if we are to achieve the Clean Water Act’s goals of restoring and maintaining the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Nation’s waters.

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