Wednesday, March 5, 2003
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Wednesday, March 5, 2003 |
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Clean Water changes will hurt in Fayette By DENNIS CHASE Not since the destructive assaults on the environment during the Reagan Administration have our environmental protection laws been threatened as severely as they are today. Almost from the first day of his term in office, President Bush has made it clear he intended to render ineffective as many of our environmental protections as possible. Laws which were crafted by Congress and then completed with thousands of hours of detailed work to establish implementing regulations are already being undermined by administrative maneuvering. The Clean Water Act is one of the primary environmental laws which protect our fragile environment. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency, at the behest of the Bush Administration, are proposing new rulemaking to define "waters of the United States". The Bush Administration has taken a very narrow decision by the Supreme Court concerning an issue in Illinois and is using that to eliminate protection of many isolated wetland areas and some small streams that do not flow year-round. The Environmental Protection Agency has estimated that as a result, as much as 20 percent of the remaining wetlands will lose federal protection. During the late 1960s and early '70s, a huge effort was taking place in this country to find a way to protect our wetlands and small streams. Hundreds of people with a wide background of expertise worked very hard to create workable regulations to make implementation of the Clean Water Act possible. Section 404 of this Act requires a permit to fill in wetlands or small streams. I was among the group that worked to establish the Section 404 Regulations and for over 25 years of my career, I helped with enforcement actions related to that regulation. The Reagan Administration damaged the process, but the most valuable aspects survived until now. Some of you may recall that a few years ago, Vice President Cheney led a group with a title related to the environment. That group tried to convince everyone that they had a new way of operating that would make the environment safer. When asked who these "environmental experts" on his committee were, he refused to divulge the information. He says we should just trust him! The Bush Administration, unable to convince everyone that they loved the environment, is trying a new tactic. So here they come again. This time, they are working through the regulatory agencies (Corps of Engineers and Environmental Protection Agency) by eliminating much of the budget for those agencies to enforce the law and by placing environmentally unfriendly directors in charge of those agencies. Here in Fayette County, we saw the result of that scaled-back enforcement when the city of Tyrone filled wetlands for their new ball fields. Those were small wetlands and the Corps of Engineers concluded that they didn't warrant protection. So now they are trying to make it an official position and all of us will lose. Most significant to Fayette County, the surrounding counties as well, is the possible loss of protection for our small streams. We obtain most of our drinking water from the larger rivers and creeks, but these bodies of water will not continue to flow during low-flow periods of the year if they are not supported by flow from the hundreds of small streams. We just completed a plan to protect the upper portion of the Perry Creek watershed in Fayetteville. That indicates that locally we have support to provide protection to similar-size streams. But the new rules will remove much of the enforcement ability for other areas where there is less support for such protection. I already mentioned one municipality that seems to think like the Bush Administration. Is the sky going to fall all around us as a result of this action? No, this won't be the end of our environment. However, when we look around us in beautiful Fayette County and see some really outstanding environmental attributes, the question is will it be there for our grandchildren? Without a strong Clean Water Act, I'm not so sure all of it will maintain those values we love so much. I am president of the Line Creek Association of Fayette County which is dedicated to maintaining our strong environmental values. On behalf of this group, I will be submitting comments to the Corps of Engineers and Environmental Protection Agency, opposing this rulemaking. You can help by making comments as well, or by letting your Congressional representatives know of your concerns. We can't let this administration destroy, through their political whims and political obligations, what so many people created for us. Contact me at dechase65 Details of the rulemaking, as well as copies of public comment to date, can be found on the Environmental Protection Agency website: www.epa.gov/owow/wetlands/swanccnav.html.
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