See LETTER below that calls on Senators to keep the Farm Bill free of Clean Water Act attacks:
American
Rivers * Chesapeake Bay Foundation * Clean Water Action * Clean Water Network *
Defenders of Wildlife * Earthjustice * Environment America * League of
Conservation Voters * National Audubon Society * Natural Resources Defense
Council *
Sierra
Club * Southern Environmental Law Center
June 13, 2012
RE:
Don’t Include Toxic Attacks on the Clean Water Act In the Farm Bill
Dear Senator,
Our organizations and our millions of
members and supporters urge you to oppose amendments being offered to the 2012
Farm Bill that would undermine, overrule, or otherwise shred one of our
nation’s most important public health safeguards, the Clean Water Act. Please vote against any anti-Clean Water Act
amendments as well as any other anti-environmental amendments offered when the
Farm Bill is considered on the Senate floor.
Americans
want and deserve clean water. They do
not want the U.S. Senate to gut their clean water law.
As you know, the Farm Bill is one of
the most important policies affecting U.S. agriculture. It funds nutrition programs, land and water
conservation, crop insurance, and energy projects. The Farm Bill should not be larded up with
reckless attacks on the Clean Water Act that add needless controversy while
undermining the bill’s conservation goals.
Among the most damaging attacks on
clean water and health is an amendment Senator Barrasso is offering that would block the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Army
Corps of Engineers from better protecting
small streams and wetlands as well as the rivers, lakes, streams, and
bays they flow into and help keep clean. The streams the EPA and Corps policy
will safeguard serve as sources of drinking water for 117 million
Americans. They are also where our
families fish, swim, and boat and serve as vital habitat for fish and
wildlife. When the policy that the
Barrasso amendment would block was published in the Federal Register last May,
over 230,000 Americans responded, and over 90 percent favored the policy.
In another attack on the Clean Water
Act, Senator Paul has an amendment that effectively repeals the Clean Water
Act. The provision is poorly drafted and
confusing, except in its clear goal of excluding many streams, rivers, wetlands
and other waters from pollution limits under the Clean Water Act. The amendment would exclude numerous waters
that are not “navigable-in-fact” from
the Clean Water Act, including waters that have been protected by federal law since
the 19th century. Under
Senator Paul’s proposal, waters that are not “navigable-in-fact” would only be
covered under limited circumstances.
That throwback to the 1800s ignores the passage of the Clean Water Act
completely. It is actually worse than the pre-Clean Water Act law, which covered
tributaries from which pollution flowed into other waters, because the Paul
amendment would even leave intermittent streams and other seasonal tributaries
without protection. The 1972 law,
enacted by overwhelming bipartisan support in the Congress, changed the
nation’s water laws in order to curb water
pollution broadly and at its
source in the watershed. The Clean Water
Act does so by protecting all “waters of the United States.” Senator Paul’s attempt to turn back the clock
on our water and public health gains in the last century must be rejected.
Senators
Hagan and Crapo are proposing an amendment that will result in more toxic
waterways across the country. Senator
Johanns has also introduced virtually the same amendment. These amendments remove all Clean Water Act
protections for pesticides that are sprayed directly into streams, rivers,
lakes, and other waters that are point source discharges. Under current law, pesticides can be used in waterways,
only it must be done safely. Supporters of these amendments want to eliminate
the Clean Water Act safety review and allow pesticides to be sprayed as direct
point source discharges in ways that could kill fish, destroy the quality of
the water, and harm public health without limits. Many agricultural discharges
are already exempt from the Clean Water Act, and health departments are already
allowed to spray for mosquitoes to protect the public from West Nile and other
outbreaks. These amendments only serve
to protect big pesticide companies who want to sell more of their toxic products.
These amendments mean more poisons going into the very waters in which we swim,
from which we fish, and from which we get our drinking water. Already, more than 1000 waterways in the U.S.
are impaired with pesticides. These
proposals from Senators Hagan and Crapo and Senator Johanns could add thousands
more to that list.
These
are not the only attacks on water offered as amendments to the Clean Water
Act. Senator Rubio just introduced an
amendment to undo numeric limits of the discharge of manure, fertilizer, and
sewage into Florida’s waters. These
waste discharges are responsible for toxic algae outbreaks that are destroying
waters across the state with toxic slime.
Senator Inhofe (R-OK) introduced an amendment to prevent the EPA from
updating its stormwater programs to better manage runoff, which can pollute our water with
pathogens, excess nutrients, heavy metals and other contaminants that put
people’s health at risk. Other amendments to block anti-water
pollution rules or to create new special interest loopholes in the Clean Water
Act have also been proposed.
When
you consider the Farm Bill and the good it could do for the American public,
please do not undermine that goal by destroying the nation’s most important
safeguard for clean water and public health.
The people of this country want and deserve better for the health of
their families and safety of their communities.
Please oppose all anti-Clean Water amendments to the Farm bill. Thank you.
