Twenty-nine
states, more than half the stars on the American flag, have filed lawsuits
against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for redefining the “Waters of
the United States,” or WOTUS. EPA rewrote the law, erasing “navigable” and
usurping states’ rights by including local seasonal streams, farm irrigation
ponds, roadside ditches, and even “connective” dry lands placed under authority
of the Clean Water Act.
The WOTUS rule,
published the morning of June 29, potentially subjects every food, energy,
transportation and manufacturing industry in the nation to high-handed
regulation by one of the most reviled and least trusted federal agencies,
dreaded for its cadre of “revolving door” officials hired from anti-industry
green groups.
The astonishing
response began on the afternoon of June 29: states teamed up in clusters to
file their lawsuits in U.S. District Courts. Utah and eight others filed with
Georgia in Augusta’s U.S. District Court; Alaska and eleven others filed with
North Dakota in Bismarck. Days later, Mississippi and Louisiana filed with
Texas in Galveston; Michigan filed with Ohio in Columbus; Oklahoma filed alone
in Oklahoma City.
Each state
lawsuit asked a federal judge to declare the WOTUS rule illegal and issue an
injunction to prevent the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers, co-administrators of
the rule, from enforcing it. Each state also asked the judge to order both
agencies to draft a new rule that complies with the law and honors state
authority.
The WOTUS rule
is so alarming because it enables agency bureaucrats to control virtually
anything that gets wet, including a desert dry wash that gets a “drizzle” –
actual EPA language criticized by House Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith
(R-Texas) at a Heartland Institute conference in Washington in June.
Heartland
Research Fellow H. Sterling Burnett, PhD, commented: “Farmers, ranchers,
developers, industries and individual property owners would now be subject to
the EPA’s arbitrary, unsound and often incomprehensible regulatory system. It
cannot be trusted.”
American Farm
Bureau Federation general counsel Ellen Steen announced the group’s lawsuit
with similar distrust: “When EPA and the Corps first proposed the rule in March
2014, they promised clarity and certainty to farmers, ranchers, builders and
other affected businesses and landowners. Instead, we have a final rule that exceeds
the agencies’ legal authority and fails to provide the clarity that was
promised.”
More than a
dozen national agricultural and production organizations also filed suit
against EPA, including the National Alliance of Forest Owners, American Road
and Transportation Builders Association, National Association of Home Builders,
National Association of Manufacturers, and Public Lands Council.
The non-profit
Pacific Legal Foundation sued on behalf of the state cattlemen’s associations
of California, Washington and New Mexico. When contacted for comment, the New
Mexico Cattle Growers Association’s president, Jose Varela Lopez, said what
many ranchers feel. He told The Daily Caller, “My family has been on our land
for 14 generations, each leaving it better for the next. Water is the source of
all life and after all our generations, our water is clear and the land lives
on. We have the history to prove that we are caretakers of the water and the
land without the help of the Environmental Protection Agency.”
The alarm over
WOTUS is not just about strangulation by regulation. Corruption has become a
primary issue: evidence has emerged that EPA officials unlawfully lobbied crony
green groups to send “one million comments” supporting the
rule, according to a May 19 New York Times article. The Army Corps of
Engineers examined the comments and the Senate found that 98 percent appeared
to be non-substantive mass mailings.
Three lawmakers
from the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Chairman Jim Inhofe
(R-OK) and two subcommittee chairmen, Dan Sullivan (R-AK) and Mike Rounds
(R-SD), immediately sent a letter to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy demanding
answers about rigging public input with YouTube videos, Twitter accounts and
many other social media marketing tools.
Although the
senators focused on misdirection of staff time and taxpayer funds, most of
their concerns – except for obtaining a legal opinion prior to campaigning –
can be sidestepped with the EPA’s powerful Left-green network, a fact that
emerged coincidentally when Heartland Institute researchers looked into Rep.
Lamar Smith’s “drizzle” remark.
The
million-member Natural Resources Defense Council has a long crony history with
EPA: it has had 33 employees on 21 highly influential EPA federal advisory
committees from 2001 to 2013. The Sierra Club had 21 people on 12 EPA
committees; National Wildlife Federation, 8 employees on 5 committees; National
Audubon Society, 7 on 4; Friends of the Earth, 6 on 4. And so on. Even the huge
NRDC couldn’t singly muster “one million comments” for WOTUS, but somebody
could. Who?
Those five
groups are among the 20 Left-green members of the Partnership Project, a
Washington, DC-based non-profit campaigning company that compiles and enhances
all 20 membership lists with detailed demographic data, keeps each precious
list secret from other members, and operates expertly managed collaborative
campaigns for multiple members that agree to pool resources for mega-projects.
Such projects are funded by massive foundation grants with no government money
involved.
Was the
Partnership Project actually involved with EPA’s WOTUS campaign? We don’t know.
We do know that several other high-dollar campaign powers are also available to
the Left-green movement. It’s time to shine some light into those shadowy
corners of American politics.
Ron Arnold is Executive Vice President of the Center for the
Defense of Free Enterprise. This article originally appeared in The Daily Caller.
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