Take Action

The EPA, through the authority of the Clean Water Act, uses a system of checks and balances to review and adjust State water pollution controls, using this oversight to assure citizens of the United States that good, current scientific data and enforceable State laws will protect downstream water users in other States.

We are gravely concerned about the aggressive movement currently underway to dismantle federal laws and the federal agencies that protect our rivers, sounds, bays, lakes, estuaries and ourselves from pollution. The Clean Water Cooperative Federalism Act (H.R. 2018), which recently passed through the House of Representatives and is now pending before the Senate, proposes to gut the Clean Water Act and jeopardize the environmental health and economic engine of waterways across the country.

HR2018 does this by attacking two fundamental elements of the Clean Water Act: Water Quality Standards and the Dredge and Fill permit process.

In attempting to undermine National Water Quality Standards, HR2018 would:

• Restrict EPA's ability to revise an existing water quality standard or promulgate a new one, unless the state concurs.

• Prohibit EPA from rejecting a water quality certification granted by a state.

• Prohibit EPA from withdrawing approval of a state water quality permitting program (National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System), or from limiting federal financial assistance for the state program if a state is not in compliance with water quality standards.

• Prohibit EPA from objecting to a state's issuance of an NPDES permit that it believes does not comply with Water Quality Standards.

In an effort to gut national dredge and fill permits, H.R. 2018 would:

• Restrict EPA's ability to veto a Corps 404 permitting decision unless the state concurs with the veto.

• Allow a state to assume and administer only parts of the 404 permit program; under current law, states are required to assume the entire program or none of it.

• Limit the EPA, U.S Fish and Wildlife Service and other agencies to 30 days to submit environmental impact comments to the Corps on a proposed section 404 permit.

Proponents of H.R. 2018 wrongly claim the federal government shouldn't have oversight of the states and their water programs, which vary greatly in standards and enforcement. Individual states would be free to use and abuse our rivers returning us to the pre-Clean Water Act days when our rivers caught fire, sewage flowed untreated and beaches were littered with trash and hypodermic needles. They could choose to ignore the needs of those downstream and in neighboring states despite the consequences. No consideration is even given to the conflicts that would arise when rivers are shared between 2 states.

Furthermore, these same misguided proponents are claiming this rule would help "save taxpayer money." They claim this will streamline processes and make permitting move through faster.   We wish to point out that rivers shared by two or more states, where one state is polluting the river upstream and affecting the health and safety of residents in another state further downstream, will quickly be tied up in lengthy and costly legal battles costing, not saving, taxpayers' money.

The proponents of this bill are trying hard to protect their fiscal interests in coal mining projects, a goal which is clearly stated in their "determination of need for the bill." Their short-sighted desires to protect their monetary interests will effectively hog tie all of the progress happening on our rivers, and lead us down a path of state vs. state legal battles for years to come. It will be a race to the bottom as state after state agrees to lower their water quality standards to attract new industries.  This bill is cronyism at its worse, and we, the citizens, are the ones that are going to lose. Please work to defeat HR 2018 and make sure it does not pass the Senate.