Obama Plans New Rule to Limit Water Pollution
The
Obama administration is expected in the coming days to announce a major
clean water regulation that would restore the federal government’s
authority to limit pollution in the nation’s rivers, lakes, streams and
wetlands.
Environmentalists
have praised the new rule, calling it an important step that would lead
to significantly cleaner natural bodies of water and healthier drinking
water.
But
it has attracted fierce opposition from several business interests,
including farmers, property developers, fertilizer and pesticide makers,
oil and gas producers and a national association of golf course owners.
Opponents contend that the rule would stifle economic growth and
intrude on property owners’ rights.
Republicans
in Congress point to the rule as another example of what they call
executive overreach by the Obama administration. Already, they are
advancing legislation on Capitol Hill meant to block or delay the rule.
The
water rule is part of a broader push by President Obama to use his
executive authority to build a major environmental legacy, without
requiring new legislation from the Republican-controlled Congress.
This summer, the Environmental Protection Agency is expected to release a final set of rules intended to combat climate change,
by limiting greenhouse gas pollution from power plants. Mr. Obama is
also expected to announce in the coming year that he will put vast areas
of public land off limits to energy exploration and other development.
“Water is the lifeblood of healthy people and healthy economies,” Gina McCarthy, the E.P.A.’s
administrator, wrote in an April blog post promoting the water rule.
“We have a duty to protect it. That’s why E.P.A. and the U.S. Army Corps
of Engineers are finalizing a Clean Water Rule later this spring to
protect critical streams and wetlands that are currently vulnerable to
pollution and destruction.”
But
even as E.P.A. staff members worked this month to finish the rule, the
House passed a bill to block it. The Senate is moving forward with a
bill that would require the agency to fundamentally revamp the rule.
“Under
this outrageously broad new rule, Washington bureaucrats would now have
a say in how farmers, and ranchers, and families use their own
property,” said Senator John Barrasso, Republican of Wyoming and the
chief author of the Senate bill.
“It
would allow the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate private
property just based on things like whether it’s used by animals or
birds, or even insects,” he said.
“This
rule,” he added, “is not designed to protect the traditional waters of
the United States. It is designed to expand the power of Washington
bureaucrats.”
The
E.P.A. and the Army Corps of Engineers jointly proposed the rule, known
as Waters of the United States, last spring. The agency has held more
than 400 meetings about it with outside groups and read more than one
million public comments as it wrote the final language.
The
rule is being issued under the 1972 Clean Water Act, which gave the
federal government broad authority to limit pollution in major water
bodies, like Chesapeake Bay, the Mississippi River and Puget Sound, as
well as streams and wetlands that drain into larger waters.
But
two Supreme Court decisions related to clean water protection, in 2001
and in 2006, created legal confusion about whether the federal
government had the authority to regulate the smaller streams and
headwaters, and about other water sources such as wetlands.
E.P.A.
officials say the new rule will clarify that authority, allowing the
government to once again limit pollution in those smaller bodies of
water — although it does not restore the full scope of regulatory
authority granted by the 1972 law.
The
E.P.A. also contends that the new rule will not give it the authority
to regulate additional waters that had not been covered under the 1972
law. People familiar with the rule say it will apply to about 60 percent
of the nation’s waters.
“Until
now, major bodies of water were protected under the law,” said
Elizabeth Ouzts, a spokeswoman for Environment America, an advocacy
group. “But they can’t be fully protected unless the streams that flow
into them are also protected.”
The
rule will also limit pollution in groundwater and other sources of
drinking water. Polluted groundwater is now chemically treated before
being used as drinking water.
“We
could spend a lot of money to massively treat the water that we drink,
but it makes a lot more sense to protect the source,” Ms. Ouzts said.
A
coalition of industry groups, led by the American Farm Bureau
Federation, has waged an aggressive campaign calling on the E.P.A. to
withdraw or revamp the rule.
Farmers
fear that the rule could impose major new costs and burdens, requiring
them to pay fees for environmental assessments and to obtain permits
just to till the soil near gullies, ditches or dry streambeds where
water flows only when it rains. A permit is required for any activity,
like farming or construction, that creates a discharge into a body of
water covered under the Clean Water Act or affects the health of it,
like filling in a wetland or blocking a stream.
“It’s
going to cause a nightmare for farmers,” said Don Parrish, the senior
director of congressional relations for the American Farm Bureau
Federation.
“Our
members own the majority of the landscape that’s going to be impacted
by this,” he said. “It’s going to make their land, the most valuable
thing they possess, less valuable. It could reduce the value of some
farmland by as much as 40 percent. If you want to build a home, if you
want to grow food, if you want a job to go with that clean water, you
have to ask E.P.A. for it.”
The lobbying fight over the rule has also generated a public-relations battle over social media.
In
its protest of the rule, the American Farm Bureau Federation started a
social media campaign, using the Twitter hashtag #DitchTheRule, to urge
farmers and others to push the E.P.A. to abandon or revamp the rule. The
E.P.A., in response, created a campaign with the hashtag #DitchTheMyth,
urging people to speak out in favor of the rule. But some legal experts
contend that campaign might have tested the limits of federal lobbying
laws, which prohibit a government agency from engaging in grass-roots
lobbying for proposed policies or legislation.