E&E NEWS: CLEAN WATER RULE: Farm bill amendment would make Scalia opinion law
A pair of House Republicans are hoping to redefine which wetlands and waterways are covered by the Clean Water Act in an amendment to this year’s farm bill.
Reps. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.) and Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) would limit the scope of the Clean Water Act to include only “relatively permanent, standing or continuously flowing bodies of water” and “wetlands that have a continuous surface water connection” to them.
The House Rules Committee will meet this evening and decide whether to allow the proposal to the floor during consideration of the “Agriculture and Nutrition Act of 2018,” H.R. 2, this week.
Herrera Beutler and Gosar’s amendment closely hews to an opinion the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in the 2006 case Rapanos v. United States.
Scalia wrote that the Clean Water Act should protect only relatively permanent waters and wetlands with a continuous surface water connection to them.
“This amendment lays out the Scalia approach,” said Larry Liebesman, a former Department of Justice attorney who is now a senior adviser with Washington water resources firm Dawson & Associates.
