WETLANDS

Clean Water Authority Restoration Act

SUPPORT

This legislation reaffirms the original intent of the Clean Water Act to protect all of the nation's waters from pollution. The Clean Water Authority Restoration Act (CWARA) would reaffirm Clean Water Act protections to millions of acres of wetlands, streams, ponds, lakes and other waterbodies that have been made vulnerable to destruction due to EPA and the US Army Corps of Engineers January 2003 policy directive. The Clean Water Authority Restoration Act would reaffirm and restore the broad scope of protection intended by Congress to ensure that our waters were restored and maintained to make them valuable for drinking fishing, swimming, and a host of other economically vital uses by:

1. Adopting a statutory definition of "waters of the United States" based on the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers' longstanding regulatory definition of waters;
2. Deleting the word "navigable" from the Clean Water Act to clarify that the Act is principally intended to protect the nation's waters from pollution rather than just to sustain the navigability of waterways;
3. Including a set of findings that provide the basis for Congressional assertion of constitutional authority over the nation's waters, including those that appear to be hydrologically "isolated."

This legislation does not broaden or add any new category of waters to the scope of the Clean Water Act. It would simply restore the regulatory status quo that has existed for 30 years.

Farm Bill

SUPPORT

One of the most successful federal wetlands conservation programs is the Farm Bill's Wetlands Reserve Program, which provides a voluntary, non-regulatory, incentive-based program for private landowners, farmers and ranchers to protect and restore the functions and values of wetlands on their property. The program is authorized to enroll up to 250,000 acres annually; however, at the current rate of enrollment, WRP will cease to exist beyond 2006 unless it is reauthorized and the acreage cap increased.