Published: Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2009 / Updated: Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2009 08:39 AM
Clean Water Act meeting Thursday
Public invited to hear talk live online
LAKE WYLIE --
New rules impacting land and water nationwide can be heard Thursday online.
The federal Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure will host a meeting Thursday about a new bill that looks at the Clean Water Act of 1972.
Catawba Riverkeeper David Merryman says changes could have far-reaching impacts for Lake Wylie and the Catawba River.
“I'm not positive it has enough legs on it to move through committees in the House and Senate this year,” Merryman said. “What I do know is this act, if unchanged, would reinstate some of the original Clean Water Act protections that have been subverted through court decisions over the past decade or so.”
American Land Rights Association, an environmental public policy group, argues a Clean Water Restoration Act could give all waters in the country, “from bathtubs to baptismal founts,” to the Environmental Protection Agency.
“It defines ‘waters of the United States' with such breathtaking scope that federal agencies would be required to regulate use of every square inch of the U.S., both public and private,” said member Tom Randall.
to obtain comment from Heath Shuler and Howard Coble of North Carolina and Henry Brown of South Carolina, three of 72 participating members of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure from the Carolinas, by press time Monday were unsuccessful.
For Randall, all eyes will be on the computer screen Thursday in hopes a new bill will not hurt landowners at the expense of waterfront property owners.
“We are concerned with anything like this that it could infringe upon individual liberties and individual ways of life, and whether they're based on good science,” he said.
Merryman hopes for new legislation.
“The Clean Water Restoration Act would once again protect our nation's headwater regions, as well as wetlands,” he said, “both of which are vital to water quality protection and happen to be rapidly disappearing due to development pressures, as well as natural resources and fossil fuel extraction activities.”
The meeting begins at 10 a.m. Thursday in the Rayburn house Office Building in Washington, D.C. To watch live, visit republicans.transportation.house.gov.
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