Tu Opposes Bill Attacking Clean Water Act

[Tim Smith]

Got this from Trout Unlimited today:

http://www.tu.org/press_releases/2011/us-house-of-representatives-interior-and-environment-appropriations-bill-cuts-co

They're asking for anglers to contact their congressmen to oppose this bill.

http://takeaction.tu.org/c.ntJSJ8MPIqE/b.7547145/k.4EA9/Protect_our_streams_and_rivers/siteapps/advocacy/ActionItem.aspx

The EPA and environmental regulations as a whole are currently being attacked as "job killers". Fishing in any kind of natural environment is going to pay a steep price for that outlook if it isn't turned back immediately.

[gotmuddy]

After reading that I know I wont be signing. I won't support anything that takes away states rights'.

[Tim Smith]

After reading that I know I wont be signing. I won't support anything that takes away states rights'.

Yes it does.

HR 2018 would cut large holes in the safety net. It would give the states veto authority over water quality standard revisions implemented by EPA, and of the use of EPA authority to block harmful projects that destroy fish habitat, such as the Pebble Mine in Bristol Bay Alaska.

And I might agree with your position if water and fish and pollution would just sit tight in one state. Unfortunately, they don't.

[Al Agnew]

Let's see...the Missouri River flows through or along the border of seven states before getting to Missouri, and has tributaries coming out of two or three more states plus Canada. The Mississippi comes through four states before getting to our fine state. Of smaller, more often fished streams and lakes...the Osage comes out of Kansas and into Truman and Lake of the Ozarks. The White comes out of Arkansas and into Table Rock and Taneycomo. And of course, it goes the other way...the White goes back into Arkansas after flowing through Missouri. The North Fork, Spring, Eleven Point, Current, Black, and St. Francis all come out of Missouri and into Arkansas.

So as Tim says, to make this a states' rights issue is to basically be unable to do anything to protect one state's interests when another state wants to relax regulations. Except through long, expensive (paid for by taxpayers) lawsuits between states, as we've seen already in management of the Missouri and Mississippi.

And in the end, all waters except totally unconnected potholes are tributaries of waters that eventually get to other states. Well, except for Alaska and Hawaii, anyway. To allow states to do their own regulations is a return to the bad old days when waters were a lot more polluted than they are now. Especially in an economic recession, because the temptations to reduce or ignore regulations in the name of attracting polluting industries to your state are so much greater. Now is the time when there should be MORE uniform and well-enforced regulations, giving everybody a level playing field, rather than an "arms race" among states to see who can drop enough regs to be the most "business-friendly" environment.

Environmental regs are not job-killers in themselves. If the demand for a good or service is there, it will be supplied no matter what the regs. The regs just pass on more of the TRUE costs of that product to the consumer. But environmental regs implemented by one state that are more strict than other states' regs ARE job killers for that state, because the demand will be supplied more cheaply and easily by companies in the states that have the most lax regs. So worrying about states' rights on this issue pretty much insures there will be winners and losers, and the biggest loser will be clean water.

[3wt]

I'm no expert, but my understanding is that the EPA would still be the approver/disapprover for standards, but implementation would be left to the states. If so, this would be a far cry from the free-for-all mentality being alluded to.

There's a reality that large federal organizations through "rule making" can essentially be lawmakers when that is not really allowed. Thuse the efforts to allow them to regulate but not legislate. We've seen it already, if you can't get a bill passed, just use the EPA to make a new rule in lieu. We can argue about whether the new rule is right or wrong, but this type of process allows the executive to stack his deck in the EPA or whichever administration, and then get the rules he want's passed out there without debate. And it could go both ways. A less environmentally minded president could stack the EPA up any which way and go to town slashing rules.

I know that regardless of how the EPA runs, this will be the case, but for the sake of checks and balances, it might be a good idea to let them be in a cooperative relationship with states and other government entities, and not centralize them with more power than actual elected officials.

[Tim Smith]

I'm no expert, but my understanding is that the EPA would still be the approver/disapprover for standards, but implementation would be left to the states. If so, this would be a far cry from the free-for-all mentality being alluded to.

There's a reality that large federal organizations through "rule making" can essentially be lawmakers when that is not really allowed. Thuse the efforts to allow them to regulate but not legislate. We've seen it already, if you can't get a bill passed, just use the EPA to make a new rule in lieu. We can argue about whether the new rule is right or wrong, but this type of process allows the executive to stack his deck in the EPA or whichever administration, and then get the rules he want's passed out there without debate. And it could go both ways. A less environmentally minded president could stack the EPA up any which way and go to town slashing rules.

I know that regardless of how the EPA runs, this will be the case, but for the sake of checks and balances, it might be a good idea to let them be in a cooperative relationship with states and other government entities, and not centralize them with more power than actual elected officials.

I haven't looked closely enough at this bill or really do more than forward TU's opposition to it so I'm going to stick to some limited comments until I do that.

Each state already has its own EPA administration which answers to the federal agency.

Here's a hypothetical.

The Kankakee River is one of the premier smallmouth fisheries in Illinois. Indiana, which owns the headwaters of the Kankakee has many more miles of quality smallmouth streams than Illinois, treats the Kankakee like an agricultural ditch and loads it with sediment. Currently, the perception among Illinois anglers is that sediment is impairing their fishery.

The EPA is currently working on sediment TMDLs. Eventually they will get around to the Kankakee River. If there is no federal oversight, Indiana could easily adopt weak sediment regulations and the Indiana impairment to the Kankakee will go on forever. If Indiana must answer to Illinois (through Federal oversight), the problems there can be fixed.

Some of this is reminds me of the MDC over-sight debate. Congress and the president have oversight over the EPA. What they don't control is the basic facts and information about environmental impacts.

[3wt]

I get that argument and agree that it has to be taken seriously.

Good luck reading the bill. It's kind of ammending and changing existing law, so without both in front of you it reads pretty choppy. i.e. "Paragraph 1 line 22 will be changed to read as follows..." kind of stuff. Tough to follow out of context.

Try the executive summary if you can find it (I found it on the GOP site - yeah I know) but if it's to be believed, there are some good reasons to limit the EPA.

Bottom line is that there is a balance. We can allow any and all impact studies, regardless of merit, to slow any permit process, or we can eliminate that as an option or we can find the right balance of taking legitimate arguments seriously, but not just using any argument as an excuse to stop progress.

[Tim Smith]

Bottom line is that there is a balance. We can allow any and all impact studies, regardless of merit, to slow any permit process, or we can eliminate that as an option or we can find the right balance of taking legitimate arguments seriously, but not just using any argument as an excuse to stop progress.

That's reasonable, yes. In the case of the Clean Water act, the standard and balance is supposed to be achieved over the language of "fishable waters". That puts anglers in the middle of the debate.

Unfortunately, there is a huge demographic in the angling community that hasn't yet appreciated the value of some of their angling resources (free flowing waters, wild lands, native fish, supporting species and biodiversity) and I fear that demographic is what makes the disintegration of Federal authority so dangerous. Some people just don't care if they wipe out species or native stocks of fish if they can replace them with stocking or exotics from a hatchery. The chance that outlook rises to the fore in some of the 50 different states is much greater than in a single federal agency. Once that happens, we all miss out to some degree.

As the recent hatchery/budget debate showed, the input from those hatcheries is not a guaranteed and short-sighted outlooks about sustainable fisheries could have us trade in our birth rights for messes of porridge.

Once I get a minute I'll try to wade through the bill.