Federal waters rule repeal:
Much ado about (almost) nothing
The Hill,
by
Tony Francois
Original Article
Posted By: M2,
9/30/2019 7:24:51 AM
This month, Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) head Andrew Wheeler rescinded the infamous Waters of the United States (WOTUS) regulation. This rule, a case study in EPA regulatory overreach, asserted federal government control under the Clean Water Act over millions of acres of private property across the country, based on the absurd theory that these vast swaths of dry land were really the federal government’s “navigable waters.” When the Obama administration published the WOTUS Rule in 2015, it generated widespread intense opposition and more than a dozen lawsuits challenging it.
Reply 1 - Posted by:
JL80863 9/30/2019 8:06:44 AM (No. 193475)
I emphatically agree with OP. The regulation was an egregious over reach by federal bureaucrats. Congress created a monster when it made the EPA nearly autonomous because its members were too Lilly livered to take responsibility for regulating.
14 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
Strike3 9/30/2019 8:56:26 AM (No. 193531)
Obama didn't know a cornfield from a swath of jungle. We still puzzle at the Left making him a POTUS when he didn't know his arse from his elbow. He also saw that the EPA clowns were well armed if they had to go after some farmer for abuse of frogs. That's the dangerous part. The EPA office personnel near my place of work did nothing but smoke on the porch all day and that was fine with me. They were useless and they didn't hide the fact.
9 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
Skeptical1 9/30/2019 9:22:58 AM (No. 193567)
But the whole point of this article is that the old rules, now back in effect, are just as bad as the ones that were just rescinded. The famous legal battles over things like the guy who plowed his field were, apparently, based on application of the pre-WOTUS rules.
0 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
iraengneer 9/30/2019 9:31:11 AM (No. 193579)
Nice. I guess. So far as it goes. A rollback certain to be reissued by the next Dumbocrap or GOP-e administration. Assuming that some nitwit-in-black-robes doesn't issue diktats ordering it back in place.
No. Not enough.
The issue, the catastrophe, is that there IS a Federal E.P.A. at all, with unelected unaccountable Deep State bureaucrats issuing regard with force of law. Something not enabled under our tattered remnants of a Constitution.
ABOLISH the Federal E.P.A. completely.
Repeal the Administrative Procedures Act.
We need a long line of unhappy unemployed bureaucrats. The more the better.
9 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
wildcat1 9/30/2019 9:59:37 AM (No. 193616)
I'm a farmer, this was a horrible rule. It suggested that rural road ditches would be treated like navigable waters. It also had intermittent creeks and streams treated like navigable waters.
Any mud hole at the corner of a field after a normal rain was the same as a wetland.
Glad to see this mess rolled back
5 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
Ben Around 9/30/2019 11:57:44 AM (No. 193698)
It's one of Trump's greatest accomplishments. He is slowly dismantling lil barry's remaking of the country with all the regulations he passed while in office.
1 person likes this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
DVC 9/30/2019 12:34:10 PM (No. 193737)
A massive, illegal overreach has been removed from the regulations. This is great news for free Americans.
0 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
JHHolliday 9/30/2019 12:39:35 PM (No. 193747)
I have a house in a small lake community. The lake is spring-fed. Some years ago we dug out the spring to make a wading area for the kids. The spring is not much more than a good trickle. That would have been illegal under WOTUS since that act literally put every tiny bit of water in the US under federal control.
0 people like this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
lakerman1 9/30/2019 12:40:37 PM (No. 193748)
As I have previously noted, I believe the underlying motivation behind the Obola administration's 2015 rule change on waters, had nothing to do with water, and everything to do with population location. Controling population location is a part of the Communist Manifesto.)
Leftist loons want people to live in cities - that living in a rural area is inefficient - and the best way to stop country living is to deny building permits because no septic permit will be issued if the septic system is too close to water. Thus, urban sprawl is stopped in its tracks.
(In Pennsylvania, it is darned near impossible to0 obtain a septic permit unless it includes a sand mound, which is dreadfully expensive. All of those millions of old septic systems, without sand mounds, work just fine, and are safe against government over regulation, but one of the Kennedy brats, in NYS, wants to create a 10 year limit on septic permits, with mandatory re-inspections.)
There is often a sub-text to government regulations.
1 person likes this.
Reply 10 - Posted by:
worried 9/30/2019 2:26:04 PM (No. 193840)
Now, if Trump could just get the furry-tailed smelt or whatever it was off the endangered list, maybe Kalifornicatia could build a few dams and help solve their water crises.
1 person likes this.
Reply 11 - Posted by:
JackBurton 9/30/2019 3:15:24 PM (No. 193893)
The author is right. The latest rules were so bad, no one could be successfully prosecuted under them. Meanwhile, the PREVIOUS set of rules did ruin livelihoods and lives and THEY should ALSO be rescinded.
1 person likes this.
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This is a big deal. It’s another regulation, a much hated one, that Trump has just made go away. Good for him.