GOP-run House targeting environmental rules
While the news out of Washington is dominated by the political stalemate over the debt limit, the Republican-led House has been busy trying to limit federal environmental regulations.
The House voted 239 to 184 Wednesday to bar the Environmental Protection Agency from imposing water-quality standards over a state's objections. The measure also would prohibit the federal agency from objecting to pollution discharge permits issued by a state.
The "Clean Water Cooperative Federalism Act" was prompted by backlash to EPA imposing nutrient-pollution standards in Florida and limiting mountaintop coal mining in Appalachia, but it drew support from others chafing over federal mandates.
Maryland's two Republican House members, Reps. Roscoe Bartlett and Andy Harris, voted with the majority. The state's five Democrats opposed it, and Rep. John Sarbanes warned that if the House-passed bill became law, it could undermine prospects for cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay.
According to a Sarbanes aide, the bill would take away EPA's ability to object if a state sets water-quality standards that federal regulators do not believe are protective enough of human health or fish and other aquatic life. So if one of the six states in the Bay watershed set a water-quality standard that EPA feared would undermine the "pollution diet" it recently set for restoring the Bay, the agency would be powerless to force the state to revise it.
Likewise, stripping EPA of permit oversight would take away the federal government's leverage to see that states don't sacrifice clean water for favored industries, the aide said. EPA has on several occasions objected to what it believed were lax permits approved by Bay region states, and the agency has said it would use that permit override power if states didn't stick to the bay diet, bureaucratically known as a "total maximum daily load."
The bill stands little chance of passing the Democrat-controlled Senate, and EPA officials have indicated they'd advise the President to veto it if it did get through.
The clean-water bill is the tip of the regulatory rollback House members are pushing. Earlier this week, environmental activists said that nearly two dozen bills and "riders" to spending legislation had been proposed to limit federal regulation of coal ash and hazardous air pollutants, or to expand federal protection of endangered species.
An effort to block the phase-out of inefficient incandescent light bulbs got a majority vote in the House this week, but failed to get the two-thirds margin needed to pass it on an expedited basis under House rules. Those who contend - wrongly, according to critics - that the federal government is about to ban all incandescent bulbs have vowed to try again under regular House procedures.
The standards adopted in 2007 with support industry and signed by President Bush, phase out starting next year the inefficient incandescent light bulbs that we've been using for more than a century and require new bulbs to use 25 to 30 percent less energy. Opponents of the "light bulb ban" have argued consumers should have the freedom to buy standard bulbs if they want to.
But defenders have pointed out that there are more light bulb choices now than ever - including high-efficiency incandescent bulbs, as well as energy-sipping compact fluorescent and light-emitting diode (LED) ones. Supporters of the phaseout say that even if the new bulbs cost a bit more up front, they save consumers $100 to $200 a year through lower electricity bills.
Comments
Andy Harris is ignoring his hippocratic oath. He makes me sick.
Posted by: Ron | July 14, 2011 12:52 PM
In stead of repealing the Clean Water Act, members should hold EPA accountable for never having implemented the CWA, by correcting an essential water pollution test that caused the failure of the Act. EPA used this test incorrectl¬y and as one of its many negative consequences, ignored 60% of the ‘oxygen exerting’ pollution in sewage and especially ignored all the pollution caused by nitrogenous (urine and protein) waste, while this waste not only exerts an oxygen demand, but also is a fertilizer for algae, contributing to eutrophication, resulting in dead zones. (www.petermaier.net)
In 1984 EPA officially acknowledged the problems with the test, but never corrected the test and in 1987, of the record, stated that the test and regulation¬s should be corrected, but at the same time claiming that this would be impossible as it would require a re-education and retooling of an entire industry, happy with the status quo. The fact that EPA already in 1978 acknowledged that not only much better treatment was available, but also at much lower cost, may influence EPA’s refusal to even discuss this issue.
Since States and the entire water pollution industry have been aware of this and has done nothing to correct this, what do people expect will change if States take over the responsibility to clean up our open waters?
Although this ‘testing’ issue can be verified in an hour, nobody in the media seems to be willing to spend this time, instead they keep parroting what they are told by the EPA and State Agencies intended to hide this mistake. Unfortunately, when an issue is ignored by the media, so will it be ignored by politicians, who should hold EPA accountable for not having implemented the CWA, they authorized.
Posted by: Peter Maier | July 14, 2011 6:34 PM