Bishop, Chaffetz join water fight in Congress

WASHINGTON — A frontier proverb said that whiskey is for drinking, and water is for fighting over. Holding true to that, a big water fight broke out in Congress on Wednesday.

Republicans howled that a new Democratic bill would orchestrate a federal takeover of all water regulation — from lakes to rivers to backyard ponds. Meanwhile, Democratic sponsors said they are merely trying to close court-created loopholes that have allowed companies to pollute without prosecution.

Currently, the federal Clean Water Act allows federal regulation only for waterways that are "navigable." But that word would be removed by a bill introduced Wednesday by House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman James Oberstar, D-Minn.

Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, chairman of the Congressional Western Caucus, quickly complained, "In the past year the federal government has taken control over our banks, cars and health care. Now they are seeking to gain control over every drop of water, from backyard puddles to the arid playas of the West."

Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, added, "Water is the life blood for western communities. Take away water and you take away life. The West continues to be in the crosshairs of outsiders."

Oberstar, however, said his bill seeks to overcome problems created by Supreme Court decisions that limited the waterways protected by the Clean Water Act generally to those that are permanently standing or continuously flowing, even if pollution from other water bodies could harm them.

He said he seeks to restore what had been the Environmental Protection Agency's practices as they existed in 2001 before the court rulings. Oberstar said Republican claims that the EPA might start seeking permits for action affecting any wet area is false.

"Simply put, if it was not regulated before 2001, it will not be regulated with the enactment of my legislation," he said. Oberstar charged that those opposing him are the same ones who "opposed the Clean Water Act for decades."

But it had members of the GOP Congressional Western Caucus, headed by Bishop, howling in mass.

"This expansion of the Clean Water Act isn't about cleaner water. It's a political giveaway to the environmental left in an attempt to stomp the last bit of life from rural Americans already struggling to survive within the existing regulatory and permitting framework," said Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif.