THE CLARION-LEDGER: Trump’s EPA head visits Mississippi, talks deregulation in water, energy
[Pruitt] The question, at first instance, is the Clean Water Act gives the EPA authority to regulate waters of the U.S., so we have to determine what Congress, the case law, the legislative history, what did they mean when they put that term in the Clean Water Act? We can’t just simply make it so broad because we want to. We can’t just re-imagine authority and stretch it so far, because the courts will come in like they did here, and say it can’t mean that. Because clearly Congress did not intend for you to have jurisdiction over every water body, whether it’s got navigable characteristics or not, dry creek beds or puddles, or drainage ditches. I mean that is clearly not within the confines of the Clean Water Act. We have to provide that kind of bright line test and objectivity and then as we do that, states will come in and do what? They’re various programs they administer through the Clean Water Act already. It’s more jurisdictional than it is anything else.
