New Clean Water Rule will Benefit Pennsylvania Resources
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
27 May 2015
By Don Hopey
Pennsylvania wetlands and small streams, along with millions of
people who get their drinking water from sources connected to
them, will benefit from the extended protections of controversial
new federal clean water rules, according to federal agencies and
environmental organizations.
The finalized Clean Water Rule, announced Wednesday morning by the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers, places science-based protections on wetlands and
high-in-the-watershed headwater streams that the agencies say
“form the foundation of the nation’s water resources.”
According to the EPA, the rule clarifies Clean Water Act stream
and wetland protections that were muddied by two U.S. Supreme
Court decisions a decade ago, and more precisely defines the kind
of waters covered by federal regulations. One in three Americans,
about 117 million people, the agency said, get drinking water from
waterways that were not clearly protected prior to the rule.
“For the water in the rivers and lakes in our communities that
flow to our drinking water to be clean, the streams and wetlands
that feed them need to be clean too,” said EPA Administrator Gina
McCarthy, in a statement released shortly after the new rule was
announced. She said protecting water sources is a critical
component of adapting to climate change, as well as providing for
a strong economy.
Myron Arnowitt, Pennsylvania director for Clean Water Action, an
environmental organization, said that while the state’s water
regulations are good, the federal rule will help protect small
stream flows that are the foundation of local drinking water
supplies.
“Pennsylvania does have state rules and programs that address some
of the waters that are the subject of the new federal rule, but
the value of the federal rule is that it ensures that pollution
problems have federal consequences and we are not just reliant on
the state enforcement,” said Mr. Arnowitt, who added that state
environmental enforcement has been negatively affected by budget
cuts.
John Quigley, acting secretary of the state Department of
Environmental Protection, said the department’s budget was cut 14
percent under the Corbett administration — other state department
budgets were reduced an average of 6 percent — but Gov. Tom Wolf’s
proposed budget would provide more money for water enforcement
operations.
“We are still evaluating the federal rule to determine what its
impact will be in the state,” Mr. Quigley said. “But in many
respects our laws and regulations go beyond the federal
requirements, and we take the responsibility to protect the waters
of Pennsylvania very seriously.”
A statement issued by the DEP said the evaluation will include “an
assessment of how this will impact DEP’s regulated community, such
as unconventional drilling and agriculture.”
The EPA, which received more than 1 million comments during an
extended feedback period, said the new rule defines and protects
wetlands and tributaries that connect to and have significant
impacts on larger streams and rivers, many of which are used for
public drinking water supplies.
The rule protects water in ditches that are constructed in streams
or that function as streams to carry pollution to larger
tributaries or rivers, but imposes no new regulations on
agricultural water uses.
Ms. McCarthy said in a phone-in news conference Wednesday
afternoon that the economy, from tourism to manufacturing, depends
on clean water, and noted that businesses in Toledo, Ohio,
suffered in August last year when the city’s public water supply
was contaminated by neurotoxins from an algae bloom caused by farm
fertilizer runoff into Lake Erie.
Despite the EPA’s assurances, agriculture, business, home builders
associations, and oil and gas interests that opposed the new rule
in statements submitted during the public comment period,
continued to voice concerns Tuesday, as did Republican leaders,
who criticized the EPA for regulatory overreach.
Tom Woods, chairman of the National Association of Home Builders,
said EPA’s final water rule will needlessly raise housing costs
and add more regulatory burdens to landowners and industries, and
would likely end up being challenged in court again.
Environmental groups, fishing and hunting organizations, and
watershed conservation organizations, including the Chesapeake Bay
Foundation and the Healing Our Waters-Great Lakes Coalition,
issued statements supporting the implementation of the new water
rule as good for the environment, drinking water consumers and the
economy.
“Now that the rule is in place,” said William Baker, president of
the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, “it is our hope that all of us
working for healthy, safe water everywhere will have a common
understanding and can work together to deliver what Congress
promised us in 1972 when it passed the Clean Water Act — fishable,
swimmable waters.”
The new rule becomes effective 60 days after its publication in
the Federal Register.
Don Hopey: dhopey@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1983 or on Twitter
@donhopey.