INSIDE EPA: EPA, Corps Ready ‘Supplemental Proposal’ To Boost Repeal Of CWA Rule
EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers have sent for White House review a “supplemental proposal” to boost their pending repeal of the Obama-era Clean Water Act (CWA) jurisdiction rule that will seek a new round of input on scrapping and replacing the rule, an unexpected step that could potentially delay any final rule on the CWA standard.
The agencies do not appear to have formally announced the new proposal in prior Unified Agendas of upcoming rules. However, an EPA spokesperson confirmed to Inside EPA on April 12 that the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has begun review of the agencies’ joint action, following an OMB notice that it received a new proposed rule on April 11 that deals with repealing the 2015 CWA standard.
In 2017, the agencies first proposed to repeal the Obama-era rule and took public comment — but are yet to finalize that rule. Instead, “EPA and the Army heard from hundreds of thousands of stakeholders about the agencies’ proposed plans to repeal the 2015 definition of ‘waters of the United States’ and put the long-standing definition back in place. After reviewing this input, EPA and the Army have decided to issue a supplemental proposal to provide the public with additional clarity on the scope of the agencies’ efforts,” the EPA spokesperson said.
Comments on the 2017 proposal included attacks on the economic and policy basis for a repeal from Democratic states and environmentalist groups. Industry and GOP states, however, broadly supported the rollback and offered a legal defense of the proposal alongside calls for the administration to go farther and promulgate a new, narrower standard for CWA jurisdiction.
