Congressman defends federal water program

By Bob Williams | The Daily Journal

Published 12:00 p.m., June 25, 2007

John Schadl, communications director for Rep. Jim Oberstar (D-Minn.), said this week that comments from lobbyists about upcoming changes to the Clean Water Restoration Act are mischaracterizations of the legislation.

In Friday’s Daily Journal, Don Parmeter, executive director of the American Property Coalition (APC) said, “If enacted, (changes to the Clean Water Act) will dramatically alter the extent to which the federal government will be able to control our lives and our property.”

Schadl said that was “very inaccurate.”

Schadl insists that state regulations typically are already tougher than the Clean Water Act. He said the objective of the act is to restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Nation's waters.

Some states, like Minnesota, have tighter wetlands protection rules than the Clean Water Act. Thus, the federal legislation will have no impact on statewide wetlands regulation in the state.

“This provides a nationwide minimum standard for clean water protection,” Schadl said. “We've learned water flows downhill. If you wait until pollution gets in navigable waters, it’s too late. You have to stop pollution at its source.”

The bill removes the word “navigable” from the definition of “waters of the U.S.,” in the current legislation, according to legal analysis provided by National Association of Counties (NACo) Associate Legislative Director Julie Ufner.

Two decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court, Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County v. Corps of Engineers (“SWANCC”) and Rapanos et ux., et at. v. United States (“Rapanos”), have now called into question the federal government’s ability to regulate waters beyond traditionally “navigable waters.”

This has thrown the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers into a state of limbo as it attempts to divine the meanings of these two rulings and create guidance for issuing wetlands permits.

Despite the efforts of the Corps to develop a new web-based permit screening process to be released in mid-May, the SWANCC and Rapanos decisions have severely complicated the permitting process.

For example, the online form that prior to these decisions could be as short as two pages, may now be as long as seven pages and its processing will add another two to three months to the permitting process, directly as a result of the confusion surrounding these decisions.

Under current rules the Corps expends significant resources to determine if a property is covered by federal rules or not. This act will remove that step and allow the Corps to focus on permit approval, mitigation issues and conservation.

Rep. Oberstar is introducing the Clean Water Authority Restoration Act of 2007 (CWARA) to correct the problems caused by these two Supreme Court rulings.

“This is an important bill nationally because 30 states nationwide have no wetland legislation,” Schadl said. “What this legislation does is gets us back to where we were in the 90’s in terms of clean waters.”

According to Schadl, the United States has lost half of its wetlands since 1900 and currently five states have no pollution standards whatsoever.

“This bill prevents a race to the bottom,” he said.

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