Posted on 06/02/2014 2:34:24 PM PDT by PoloSec
No one wants dirty water, but at a time when our economy is struggling, why is the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) pursuing new rules on water which place greater restrictions and financial penalties on law-abiding Americans? The new rules reclassify the meaning of water and expand government intrusion onto private lands.
According to a report in the Washington Post, at issue is the definition of federally protected waters. In March, the Environmental Protection Agency pitched new rules meant to clarify and expand its regulatory reach under the Clean Water Act to include small streams, riverbanks, wetlands and floodplains.
Gina McCarthy, the agency’s administrator, has defended the proposal, saying that it would not significantly expand the department’s authority to monitor and regulate waters.
However, when these new regulations now give the federal government regulatory control over dry washes that run through private lands, there is something certainly amiss.
You have to wonder, why do we even have a Congress and representatives when a government agency can institute insidious regulations with impunity — and with no regard to the economic impact or intrusion into our private lives?
Small business owners and some lawmakers warn the new rules will subject farmers, ranchers, homebuilders and other entrepreneurs to complicated and potentially costly new regulations that were written with other industries and other purposes in mind.
Rancher Jack Field has a small stream running through his pasture from which his cattle drink. Under the new rules, the stream may qualify as federally protected water, requiring a new permit for use of the land and “opening me and my ranch up to significant liability,” he said during a hearing last week before the House Small Business Committee. Permitting means paperwork and that means money to apply for the permit and fines if found not in compliance. And it seems the financial penalty is substantial, at $30,000 a day
I sat on the House Small Business Committee and can attest that it is a truly one of the few bipartisan committees (the repeal of the Obamacare 1099 form requirement is an example). Rep. Sam Graves (R-Mo.) said the rule “threatens to drown small businesses in unnecessary regulatory requirements,” and called the revision one of the most “expansive and potentially damaging” proposals the panel has examined during his four-year tenure leading the committee. On the other side of the aisle, Rep. Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.) described the rules as an “abomination” and “a power grab for private property.”
So the question for Gina McCarthy and Barack Hussein Obama has to be, why is this necessary?
The Obama administration is in the business of overloading the American people with lawlessness to the point of exhaustion. Our elected officials seem incapable of stemming the tide of all these irresponsible actions by an administration — and a president — hell bent on disregarding and disrespecting the rule of law.
That’s why the midterm elections of November 2014 are vital to the existence of this Constitutional Republic. This administration does not believe in fundamental constitutional principles of coequal branches of government, checks and balances, or the legislative process as opposed to executive and regulatory fiat. But then again, Obama did tell us he would “fundamentally transform” America.
Well, at least the water-confining water-restricting
rules will NOT APPLY to the EXEMPT Congress, or their
families, or their staff, or Moslems (just like ObamaCARE).
how do you redefine water (H2O), as the headline suggests?
Can the citizens redefine the EPA?
Most water samples contain the impurity oxygen dihydride.
Easy. Just redefine molecular oxygen as hydrogen-free water and you can regulate just about anything.
dihydrogen monoxide
Bump
I recall a reading of Congress’ power over navigable waters so expansive one congress-critter was led to protest that, if a dog lifted his leg at a hydrant, it would be a navigable stream, since it would eventually flow into such waters.
I have to believe obama wants the republicans to win. Then he can blame everything on them for the next two years. That makes Hillary the winnder in 2016.
Otherwise, it’s time for congress to simply cut off all funding including AF ONE and the Secret Service.
Who needs all those dirty polluting farmers. If we’re hungry we just go to the supermarket and by our food.
(sarc)
lol
By including dry gulches which contain no water, and giving the EPA power over them.
Water then becomes not only water but non-water.
bump
Small waters ping
EPA is looking into your toilet and new regulations are coming soon.
Humidity? The atmosphere is 0.4 percent water vapor, so everything covered by air counts as “waters”.
EPA “rules” are not laws.
Apparently the idea is that anywhere water flows during a heavy downpour is a navigable stream. This would have made nearly the entirety of the hilly forty acres where I grew up a navigable stream and it would make the entire eight acres where I now live a navigable stream since you can walk out after a really heavy rain and see where bits of leaves and tiny sticks and such have floated on top of the water just about anywhere you look. I have an actual tiny stream running down one side of the property and on the North side what actually IS a navigable stream, a creek large enough to run a large john boat with a motor and when it floods it covers three acres of so of the eight with floodwater. The only places in South Carolina where water does not run on top of the ground during very heavy rains are the areas where the sand is so porous that you cannot make a puddle with a water hose if you try. Surprisingly enough that is the sort of conditions I have in one area that is in the flood plain of the creek on the North side. The creek can be up to the point that the area along that bank is only two feet above the water and you can turn on a water hose and the water will run into the sand as soon as it hits it.
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