Clean Water Needs Your Help!
congresswatch | Water
Contact Senator Baucus today and urge him to help keep Montana's rivers and streams clean and protected, by supporting this important legislation. Montanans depend on high quality headwater streams and rivers for our drinking water, farms, ranches and blue ribbon fisheries.
The Clean Water Restoration Act (S. 1870) and its companion bill (HR 2421) would clarify Congress' intent for how the 1972 Clean Water Act (CWA) should be enforced. This legislation is critical because of recent U. S. Supreme Court decisions and interpretations of this landmark Act that have called into question how protection of our nation's rivers and streams is enforced.
As reported by the Western Organization of Resource Councils, (WORC) here in Montana, we have 136,002 of miles of streams that are considered "intermittent" or headwater streams. Under recent interpretations by the Supreme Court, the CWA may only be enforced in streams that are perennial and have traditionally been navigable. Without passage of the Clean Water Restoration Act, Montana could lose federal CWA protection of our streams that are considered intermittent or headwater.
WORC emphasizes that this issue is particularly important today, as Montana is currently battling with Wyoming over that state's dumping of unregulated wastewater pollution from coal bed methane development into several streams (including intermittent streams) that flow into Montana. Without passage of the Clean Water Restoration Act, Montana may lose its ability to defend our good quality water from coal bed methane wastewater pollution because of the recent Supreme Court decisions.
S.1870 and H.R. 2421 will clarify Congress' intent for how the Clean Water Act should be enforced - it will reiterate that all our nation's rivers and streams are to be protected from pollution.
The passage of this common sense bill will provide regulators the ability to enforce interstate violations of the Clean Water Act, and provide Montana the ability to protect itself against Wyoming's coal bed methane discharges.
But passage of this bill needs your help! On Wednesday, April 9, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee held a hearing on this bill. Senator Max Baucus, who sits on this committee, was present, but he is one of three fellow Democrats on the committee who has not yet signed on in support of this bill.
As stated by the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) the original Clean Water Act has successfully protected America's rivers, lakes, streams, wetlands and other waters for over 35 years, stopping polluters from dumping dangerous chemicals into our drinking water.
Unfortunately, over the last several years, the Supreme Court and the Bush Administration have sided with big polluters to strip vital protections from the original Act. The proposed Clean Water Restoration Act seeks only to restore that landmark law to its original state and guarantee clean water for the next generation.
Big polluters are spending millions to defeat this bill, because they don't want to take responsibility for dealing with waste chemicals, oil spills, and other pollution. Without the Clean Water Restoration Act, there will be no legal framework to prevent polluters from dumping e-coli bacteria, mercury, dioxin, oil and other chemicals into many streams, lakes and other water bodies that directly feed into the drinking water of more than 110 million Americans.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
Please contact Senator Baucus and ask him to sign onto this bill.
Contact Senator Jon Tester and ask him to support this bill when it comes to the Senate floor for a vote, which is expected sometime this summer.
Call Senator Baucus (202) 224-2651 and Senator Tester (202) 224-2644 and ask them to keep our western waterways protected by supporting the Clean Water Restoration Act:
WHAT YOU CAN SAY WHEN YOU CALL
The Clean Water Restoration Act (S.1870 and HR 2421) will clarify in statute what has been the regulatory norm for 20 years in determining which waters were entitled to protection from pollutants under the Clean Water Act. Several recent Supreme Court rulings threaten to eliminate intermittent and ephemeral streams from Clean Water Act protections. Please help protect Montana’s rivers and streams by supporting the Clean Water Restoration Act.
BACKGROUND
For most of the 30-year history of the Clean Water Act, the two agencies primarily responsible for enforcement - the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers - have broadly defined the waters covered by the statute to include:
". . . waters such as intrastate lakes, rivers, streams (including intermittent streams), mudflats, sandflats, wetlands, sloughs, prairie potholes, wet meadows, playa lakes, or natural ponds, the use, degradation or destruction of which could affect interstate or foreign commerce including any such waters."
In two court rulings - one in 2001 and one in 2006 - the Supreme Court has suggested that the language in the original Clean Water Act of 1972 was not so broad and did not incorporate headwaters and intermittent or ephemeral tributaries. These rulings present a dangerous challenge to water quality in the semi-arid Western United States, where the vast majority of stream miles are non-perennial. (For more detail, see WORC's "Background Briefing")
The crux of the controversy hinges on the use of the term "navigable" in some parts of the 1972 statute. At that time, the legislative history of the Act asserted that the term "waters" should be given its "broadest possible constitutional interpretation," which courts have done up until the last few years.
Recently, several landowner groups including the Pacific Legal Foundation, The American Farm Bureau, and National Cattleman’s Beef Association have been advocating against this bill because they feel it will expand federal regulation of the Clean Water Act. The truth is, this bill will not change how the law is currently implemented nor will it place undue regulations on landowners. Instead, this bill will clarify Congress’ intent on how the Clean Water Act is enforced. It will also help federal regulatory agencies protect states like Montana against Wyoming’s coal bed methane pollution.
Passage of the Clean Water Restoration Act is not designed to change the way in which the Clean Water Act has been implemented over the past 30 years but rather to continue the practices in effect for so many years for future generations.
Other Resources:
- When Americans were recently asked by Gallup to rate their level of worry about each of 12 environmental concerns, their top four concerns relate to water quality, with pollution of drinking water the top overall concern. The poll results are available at:
- Guest Opinion: Court rulings require water law clarification by Richard Parks
For More Information:
League of Conservation Voters
http://www.lcv.org/
Western Organization of Resource Councils http://www.worc.org/
Northern Plains Resource Council
http://www.northernplains.org
