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CLEAN
WATER ACT ENFORCMENT UNDERMINED
The Washington Post recently reported
that the Rapanos guidance is undermining enforcement of the Clean
Water Act. According to the
story, a March 4 memo
written by the Environmental
Protection Agency's chief enforcement officer concluded
that in all, the Supreme Court decision and the subsequent guidance
document "negatively affected approximately 500 enforcement
cases" in nine months.
As a result, Two House committee chairmen are questioning the
effectiveness of U.S. EPA's clean water enforcement program in the
wake of a Supreme Court case they say improperly narrowed the Clean
Water Act's definition of "navigable waters." Transportation and Infrastructure
Chairman James Oberstar (D-Minn.) and Oversight and Government Reform
Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) sent a letter to EPA Administrator
Stephen Johnson yesterday asking for more information about the
agency's enforcement protocols following the Supreme Court's 2006
Rapanos-Carabell decision.
Click
here to read the Washington Post article “EPA Enforcement Is Faulted”
Read the letter: http://oversight.house.gov/documents/20080707150814.pdf
Read the memo: http://oversight.house.gov/documents/20080707150838.pdf
NEW
CAMPAIGN FOR WETLANDS PROTECTION AND RESTORATION
We
Are Wetlands is a new campaign launched this spring by the
Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. The campaign's
goal is to gather 80,000 petition signatures - one for each acre of
natural wetlands lost this year - to call for restored wetlands
protections. Among other things, the petition states, "A
series of recent rollbacks in legal protections now threaten to
accelerate our nation's already appalling rate of wetlands loss.
Leadership is needed to restore federal protections that are crucial
to maintaining clean water and healthy wetlands." For more
information and to sign the petition, please visit www.WeAreWetlands.org.
From the Corps Reform Network
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