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SEN. LARRY E. CRAIG (R-ID): Madam Chairman, thank you very much.
And Carol, it's great to have you back and before the committee. And I appreciated the relationship we had over the years, so when you were administrator.
Madam Chair, let me first ask unanimous consent that my full statement be a part of the record.
SEN. BOXER: Without objection, so ordered.
SEN. CRAIG: I have been listening very closely as to what you're saying and what others are asking. And so I'm not going to repeat nor follow that line of questioning. I'll make a brief comment because there are other witnesses to be before us.
We know the distinctions and the differences that the great Mississippi River makes not as a body of water, but as a legal boundary line between different water laws, Eastern water, Western water.
In fact the senator from Georgia, while talking about it is now his state and others are embroiled in the absence of good state relationships and water laws that the West has and has had now for a century.
And the reason was always quite simple. In the West, water was scarce, it was an arid place. In the East, water was almost always a problem more than it was an asset. We worried more about managing it for human safety than we did about managing it for human survival.
And the Chairman's state and mine, and others are perfect examples of phenomenal systems built over the years, whether you criticize it or praise it with Cadillac Dessert, Idaho and California bloom and are phenomenal places to live today because of man's ability to manage and shape water resources, some not so good, most very good. And as a result of that when law changes Western states, especially become very frustrated as to what it means.
You are telling us that it really means nothing. It clarifies. So the ultimate question is who clarifies it in the end? I do believe that we will go through a period of time in the courts, and with fights all over again as to what it really means. Because we know what it means today and what it doesn't mean. And we've fought that battle out.
And you were right out there on the front, no dispute about that, doing your job as administrator as you saw the law and interpreted the law at that time. And pushback, you bet, there was a lot of pushback. As it related to who had the authority on them. Whether the Army Corps of Engineers was appropriately defining what a wetland was blah- blah-blah-blah-blah-blah.
None of us dispute the value of water. The great debate in the West today is, what are we going to do? We're populating at a higher rate than we ever have before, and we're going to have to reallocate water.
I want that allocation and that relationship primarily to reside in Laramie or Boise or Sacramento and not Washington, D.C. and not with the administrator of the EPA, period. End of statement. But having said that none of us dispute water quality.
And as we fight over water quantity we know that water quality is very, very important more so than ever before.
We understand the intermittent relationships of wetlands, and aquifers, and filtering systems, and riparian zones, and all of that much more so than we ever did before.
And probably the Clean Water Act has helped us do that. I don't dispute that. Here is my greater frustration with this reauthorization. I think the senator for Wyoming used the old adage; it is very typically Western about water and whisky in his opening comments.
I'll take it a step further. I really do believe that this change from "navigable" to "waters of the U.S." will put us in a situation where any "puddle," and I will use that word that can float a legal brief is now in question. And don't think it won't be tried in the courts.
And environmental groups, groups of good cause will determine they can shape and control water more than ever before. And the clarification will not come from the administrator of EPA. It will come from a judge.
And whether the Chair and I disagree on occasion about the Ninth Circuit, it is an act of this court. And we know it to be that. And it will make these determinations and judges will become water masters in the West --
(Sounds gavel.)
SEN. CRAIG: -- instead of the State. Therein lies my greatest frustration. Let me close -- my time is up -- by suggesting this, water quantity --
(Sounds gavel.)
SEN. CRAIG: -- that you say is Western Water Law that Malcolm Wallop talked about, who determines will become a factor of water quality under this definition more than ever before in my humble lay opinion.
Thank you very much.
SEN. BOXER: Thank you.
Let me say this. Given the time, we're under, there's a constraints because we have a very good panel to hear from. What I'm going to do now is, before Carol Browner leaves, some of us have some documents to place into the record. This will be the moment to explain those documents.
So Senator Craig, you want to say what you're document is?
SEN. CRAIG: I just would ask unanimous consent. It's a letter from a county commissioner and a board of county commissioners in the State of Idaho, Lemhi County and I ask unanimous consent it be part of the record.
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