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Reckless Abandon: How the Bush Administration is Exposing America's Waters to Harm
On January 15, 2003, the Bush administration instructed its agencies not to enforce Clean Water Act protections for many wetlands and small stream without first obtaining permission from headquarters. As a result, many waters are at risk of losing longstanding protections. According to EPA’s own analysis, at least 20 million acres of wetlands (20 percent of U.S. wetlands) could become vulnerable. The Bush administration’s directive replaces a 25-year-old rule defining the scope of the Clean Water Act. The policy has had the effect of denying safeguards for wetlands, ponds and small streams that the law has previously protected from unregulated pollution and filling. Every region of the country contains unique types of aquatic ecosystems — some so rare that they are found only in part of a single state. These wetlands, ponds, lakes, and streams support a wide variety of life, supply clean drinking water, sustain imperiled species, provide natural flood control, and perform a host of other functions important to both human and wildlife communities. These waters are varied in their names and descriptions — including arroyos, prairie potholes, intermittent and ephemeral streams, bogs, playa lakes, forested vernal pools, and desert springs — but all are an important part of our natural and cultural heritage. This report illustrates how federal officials are using the January 2003 policy directive to deny Clean Water Act jurisdiction over waters that had been included in the Clean Water Act’s protective scope for over thirty years. The case studies in the report provide several examples of the Corps declining to enforce federal restrictions against water pollution in lakes, rivers, streams and wetlands across the country, such as a 150-mile-long river in New Mexico, thousands of acres of wetlands in one of Florida’s most important watersheds, headwater streams in Appalachia, playa lakes in the Southwest, a sixty-nine-mile long canal used as a drinking-water supply, and even an eighty-six-acre lake in Wisconsin that is a popular fishing spot. The implementation of the Bush administration’s policy has effectively left all of these waters — and many, many more — without the Clean Water Act to protect them. As the examples in this report demonstrate, the Bush administration’s policy has given developers and other polluters a green light to ignore the Clean Water Act where it legally applies. The administration must immediately withdraw the January 2003 policy directive and replace it with clear instructions to Corps and EPA staff that they shall enforce existing Clean Water Act limits on water pollution to the full extent of the law. In addition, Congress should act to ensure that the nation’s waters remain protected. In June, 2007, the EPA and Corps issued additional guidance without rescinding the old, 2003 guidance. Instead of categorically protecting many rivers, streams, and wetlands that have been protected for the last three decades, the new policy will leave continued Clean Water Act coverage of many streams, rivers, and wetlands up to an unworkable, speculative, case-by-case analysis by the EPA and Corps. Under this guidance, the agencies can only consider each headwater stream segment and its associated wetlands in isolation – ignoring the very significant ombined impact of all headwater streams and associated wetlands in the “region” on the rivers or lakes downstream. This will make it vastly more difficult to protect many small streams with intermittent or ephemeral flow and their associated wetlands. The “case-by-case” the new policy calls for no longer guarantees protections for many streams and rivers that do not flow all year long – streams and rivers that have long been protected by the Clean Water Act. Heavy reliance on case-by-case determinations for which waters should be covered will virtually guarantee further litigation, administrative delays, and confusion amongst regulated industries and the public.
Download the Report (3mb PDF file, 32 pages)
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