Clean Water Cooperative Federalism Act of 2011
Floor Speech
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Mr. MICA. Mr. Chair, I thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Gibbs) and also the ranking member of the full committee, the gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. Rahall), for their leadership on this issue. I am pleased to be a sponsor of this legislation.
I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 2018. We call this the Clean Water Cooperative Federalism Act of 2011. It is, indeed, a bipartisan effort. It has broad support from both Republicans and Democrats. It is a measure to restore some balance between the EPA, our Federal regulatory body that oversees the Clean Water Act, and our States, which are responsible for implementation of some of the important work that ensures that we have clean water.
Now, I know there is no one that wants to in any way degrade the quality of clean water, that wants to lower standards for emissions, you know, that is not a good steward of our environment. But there is no question that the action that we've seen from EPA has unleashed an unprecedented backlash. Everyone has called this a huge power grab by EPA. And EPA has indeed created a regulatory nightmare that affects almost every State in the Union.
Our goal here is to assure that the Federal Government sets standards and that we do have a proper role for implementing the Clean Water Act. And once States have taken action, have their plans approved, that there can be some sense of reliability and stability in the decision that EPA has concurred with. What we've seen now is EPA changing the rules after States have had a commitment and outline of the protocols that they must follow, raising complete havoc. In fact, the agency's actions could jeopardize more than $220 billion worth of annual economic activity which is subject to the Clean Water Act section 402 and 404 permits.
So again, this is almost an unprecedented regulatory grab, creating a potential nightmare, leaving projects on hold. And these projects have not only an environmental impact, but they also have a job and employment and economic impact in the United States at a very difficult time for our economy.
This bill has been very narrowly drafted to preserve the authority of States to make decisions about protecting water quality in their States, and to again impose some restrictions on EPA in this overreach and to try to prohibit some of the second-guessing or delays of actually implementing a State's water quality permitting process and the standards and decisions that they have made under the Clean Water Act. This is also all done after, again, EPA has already approved a State's program. So we have great concerns about what's taking place.
The impact isn't just Florida. I have a couple of articles here I will refer to. The reaction in the Sunshine News, which is published throughout Florida, our former U.S. Representative who served in this House, who is now the agriculture commissioner in Florida, he released a statement saying that EPA essentially ignores concerns about the effect implementation would have on Florida's economy. He supports a bipartisan effort to again back up the new rules with sound science.
So whether it's Florida, or--here's a Fox News report relating to Appalachia that says, ``Appalachian Coal Miners Say EPA Rules Are Killing Their Jobs.'' Another article in The Florida Times-Union, ``Scientists: EPA `Race' to Protect Florida Rivers Could Leave Science Behind.''
So we join a chorus of numerous organizations. Mr. Gibbs talked about them. We have, again, a huge number of organizations, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, American Farm Bureau, the National Mining Association, Associated Equipment Distributors, the Associated General Contractors of America, National Association of Manufacturers, groups from labor and others who also believe that this is an EPA overreach and will have a negative effect, both--and what we are hoping to achieve, again with having the States properly implement clean water regulations--but also a very negative impact on employment at a very precarious time in the economy of this Nation.
So I urge support of our bipartisan effort, and I ask my colleagues to support this bill.
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