This article just came over my email.  I think it is worth a mention that not all people working in government are too happy at recent Supreme Court decisions and the current fallout from EPA.  Many rivers in the United States are being reclassified as non-navigable, when indeed, they are navigable-in-fact.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-wylie30-2008oct30,0,712832.story

There is a fix for this.  It’s call the Clean Water Restoration Act. It simply removes the word “navigable” from the Clean Water Act, thus solidifying the CWA’s original intent to protect ALL waters of the nation.  I think the word appears something like twice in the act.

Now here’s what the detractors say.

“This act will increase enforcement activities by the Feds.”  No so. This does not touch the enforcement sections of the CWA.

“People will be regulating bird baths and puddles.”  I hear this one a lot.  I cannot believe someone would actually utter it.  It is by far the most stupid argument against this legislation I have heard yet.  Give me an argument with umph. PLEASE!!! As if the Feds have time to do something like this.  Ridiculous.

“Farmers will have to comply with the CWA.” Again, not so.  Agriculture is exempt from the CWA except when they have heavy equipment in a stream.

Unfortunately, not too many of our federal representatives support this legislation.  Neither of our Senators support it and only three of our representatives - Gordon, Cooper and Cohen are co-sponsors.  Many thanks to the three of them.

Please give the remaining delegation a call and tell them that you want them to co-sponsor this legislation.  Call us and we’ll give you the low down, fact sheets and everything you need to state your case.

RvH

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 30th, 2008 at 6:41 am and is filed under Legislative Updates. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.