arts-attic.com

Obama was quick to add his personal endorsement to the rule, saying the measure is needed to protect vulnerable waterways and drinking water and to keep the economy going.

“This rule will provide the clarity and certainty businesses and industry need about which waters are protected by the Clean Water Act, and it will ensure polluters who knowingly threaten our waters can be held accountable,” Obama said in a statement after the EPA released a final version of the regulation. “My administration has made historic commitments to clean water, from restoring iconic watersheds like the Chesapeake Bay and the Great Lakes to preserving more than a thousand miles of rivers and other waters for future generations. With today’s rule, we take another step towards protecting the waters that belong to all of us.”

But House Speaker John Boehner accused the president of delivering yet another devastating blow to the economy.

“The administration’s decree to unilaterally expand federal authority is a raw and tyrannical power grab that will crush jobs,” the Ohio Republican said in a statement. “[T]he rule is being shoved down the throats of hardworking people with no input, and places landowners, small businesses, farmers and manufacturers on the road to a regulatory and economic hell.”

O-kay, now is the time to become suspicious about the motivation behind these words and to suspect a hidden agenda, an agenda other than making good law. Why? Good question. Because of the emotional language used the the Speaker. “A regulatory and economic hell.”

As an aside, OSHA has easy to follow rules for entry into enclosed spaces to protect worker’s health on the job. A short class and a simple procedure to follow. So what happened here to 3 men’s lives?

The agencies and their supporters say the safety of drinking water and stream health are threatened because of weak state and local regulation and a lack of enforcement. The rule is meant to make it clearer which waterways EPA and the Corps of Engineers can oversee under the 43-year-old Clean Water Act, which covers “navigable waters” such as the Mississippi River and Lake Erie but is vague on how far upstream protections must go to keep those water bodies clean.

In essence, the rule would establish whether antipollution laws are triggered if a farmer blocks a stream to make a pond for livestock, a developer fills in part of a wetland to put up a house or an oil pipeline has to cross a creek.

Now I’m in editorial mode again because this is important to me. I have seen developer’s destroy wet-lands because they were afraid or didn’t want to go through the permitting process. Sorry guys but that’s what we need to do when we can’t trust you to do the right thing. You may be spoiling some one else’s water supply and once it’s gone it’s gone.

“The only people with reason to oppose the rule are polluters who threaten our clean water,” senior White House adviser Brian Deese told reporters during a conference call. He added that the rule “is based on common sense. … The status quo is rife with unsustainable confusion over what’s protected and what’s not.”

The final rule ensures protections for tributaries that have physical signs of flowing water, even if they don’t run all year round, and ditches that “look and act” like tributaries, said Jo-Ellen Darcy, the assistant secretary of the Army for civil works. The rule also limits EPA regulatory oversight to any body of water within 1,500 feet of another water body already covered by the rule, unless they have a surface water connection.

This is a detail easily lost in the emotional talk. There are limits on legislation. In this case how far from an already protected water supply this rule expands protection.

EPA and the corps also decided to extend protections to regional water features, like prairie potholes and coastal bays in the Delmarva peninsula and the Carolinas, on a case by case basis.

Prairie Potholes are not the same thing as the pot holes in your local street. Google is your friend here, I’ve already found an academic description good for bed time reading. Let’s just say prairie potholes are big.

EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said the rule maintains long-held exemptions for agriculture and does not cover features like tile drainage systems, regular farm activities or the moving of livestock. The agency detailed many of the changes in a series of industry-specific fact sheets, also released Wednesday.

If some one tries to tell you that a cow walking through a stream triggers this rule, they’re flat out lying. Re-read the above.

Despite the changes, McCarthy added that the new rule would expand the reach of the Clean Water Act by only about 3 percent. The measure is expected to take effect 60 days after it’s published in the Federal Register.

Defining where a navigable waterway begins and ends has long spurred disputes among the government, environmentalists and industry. Supreme Court rulings in 2001 and 2006 added to the confusion, imposing a less-than-clear requirement that upstream water must have a “significant nexus” to a navigable waterway to fall under the federal government’s jurisdiction.

Groups that back the rule, such as the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club, Environment America and fishing organizations, want the definition to be as broad as possible, saying you can’t protect major lakes and rivers unless you protect their sources upstream. And they say the federal government needs an oversight role, argued that states lack the financial resources and manpower to keep water from becoming polluted.

Just a quick interjection on my part here. Water flows across state boundaries. Inter-state regulation is a Federal case.

Supporters of the rule were quick to herald Wednesday’s action.

“Small streams and wetlands provide drinking water to roughly 1 in 3 Americans and they must be protected from pollution at the source,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, the top Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee, in a statement.

On the other side are Republicans and some of the biggest spenders in Washington.

Now Jenny Hopkinson has gotten to the heart of the matter. For far too long we as a people have failed to pay attention to the money. Where does it come from and who does it go to. I’m pretty sure that “the biggest spenders in Washington” are not you and I.

“The administration’s cavalier attitude toward expanding the federal government’s authority into our backyards is absolutely outrageous,” said Sen. David Vitter (R-La.). “Not only were small businesses — who will be dramatically impacted by expanding of the definition of ‘waters of the United States’ — inappropriately excluded from the rule-making process, but the federal government shouldn’t be regulating puddles on private property in the first place.”

Now here are question you need to ask yourself, this is what I want you to learn to do every time you read non-fiction. “The administration’s cavalier attitude . . .” Really? Does the Administration really have a cavalier attitude or is this more chest beating and emotion. “(T)he federal government shouldn’t be regulating puddles on private property in the first place.” O-kay this is re-framing and I gotta say that the rule in question regulates tributaries to protected water ways, and not the puddle in our sidewalk. Big difference but emotion feels good doesn’t it?

The Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers have joined the American Farm Bureau Federation, Dairy Farmers of America, pesticide manufacturers, mining companies, home builders, state and local governments, water utilities, flood control districts, the timber industry, railroads, real estate developers and even golf course operators among the more than 230 organizations and companies that have listed “Waters of the United States” on federal lobbying disclosures since the administration proposed the rule in March 2014.

If you’re following me here, you’ll notice that this is a list of people and companies inconvenienced by the protection of the water wee need to live. BUt then again maybe there’s a company that wants to sell us purified water in bottles?

Many food and beverage giants have pitched their thoughts to lawmakers on the measure, too, including Tyson Foods, Perdue Farms, Land O’Lakes, the potato giant J.R. Simplot and Ocean Spray Cranberries. Also weighing in are about 40 energy companies, including Halliburton, BP, Shell, Chevron, Rio Tinto and the Oklahoma Independent Petroleum Association, in addition to two dozen power companies such as Duke Energy and Pepco.

Duke Energy. Why would they want rules on pollution eased? A Google search using the search term “Duke energy coal waste ponds” turns up a list of transgressions. For what it’s worth, there’s a lot of solid waste leftover from burning coal. I know. I love heating with coal stoves.