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WASHINGTON — The Biden administration took action Thursday to restore federal protections for hundreds of thousands of small streams, wetlands and other waterways, undoing a Trump-era rule that was considered one of that administration’s hallmark environmental rollbacks. At issue is a regulation sometimes referred to as “waters of the United States,” or WOTUS, that defines the types of waterways qualifying for federal protection under the Clean Water Act. The regulation has long been a point of contention among environmental groups, farmers, homebuilders, lawmakers and the courts. The announcement by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army reinstates a rule in...

California’s beaches, rivers, and streams have become contaminated with alarming levels of dangerous fecal bacteria thanks to the liberal state’s escalating homelessness crisis. President Trump recently spotlighted the terrifying epidemic on Twitter, when he wrote: “We should all work together to clean up these hazardous waste and homeless sites before the whole city rots away. Very bad and dangerous conditions, also severely impacting the Pacific Ocean and water supply. Pelosi must work on this mess and turn her district around!” Predictably, the Left mocked Trump, saying he was wrong. A San Francisco official even disputed his allegations. However, experts say Trump is...

Local residents in Venezuela staged further protests on Monday as the failed socialist country now appears to be running out of clean water. Multiple groups of demonstrators blocked highways around the capital of Caracas to protest the lack of clean water supplies. On the Avenida Baralt in central Caracas, protesters complained that they had not received water for two days and, as a result, were forced to use stagnant water, exposing them to infectious diseases. “At 7:05 am we are in Santa Teresa area of Glorieta protesting for water. #CaracasWantsWater,” wrote local councilor Jesús Armas on Twitter. “The residents of...

Emphasizing the need for congressional action, farm groups renewed their call for reform of Clean Water Act enforcement, following release of a report documenting how federal agencies overreach their authority to regulate farmland. The report, issued last week by the majority staff of the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, describes numerous incidents in which the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Environmental Protection Agency have tried to expand their authority to regulate what crops farmers grow and how they grow them, based on the agencies' interpretation of the act.

MISSOULA – U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy ... Putnam said he’s attended several Oath Keepers rallies in the past, including three in Portland, Oregon and several at a memorial on the highway outside Burns, Oregon where LaVoy Finicum was killed by law enforcement in a standoff following the armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife refuge. ... Jason Van Tatenhove, a Eureka-area man who serves as the national media director for the Oath Keepers, said he had doubts about the performance of Robertson’s federal public defense attorney, Michael Donahoe, saying he had refused, for example, to push to get an...

The President vetoed S.J.Res. 22, a joint resolution that would have voided a rule extending EPA regulatory authority over certain bodies of water. The Senate voted to override the veto, but only managed 52 of the 60 necessary votes to avoid a filibuster. On June 29, 2015 the EPA and Department of Defense published a rule called the Clean Water Rule. The rule elaborated the definition of the term “waters of the United States” to include certain bodies of water under the regulatory authority of the EPA through the 1972 Clean Water Act. It was put into effect two months...

To the Senate of the United States: I am returning herewith without my approval S.J. Res. 22, a resolution that would nullify a rule issued by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of the Army to clarify the jurisdictional boundaries of the Clean Water Act. The rule, which is a product of extensive public involvement and years of work, is critical to our efforts to protect the Nation's waters and keep them clean; is responsive to calls for rulemaking from the Congress, industry, and community stakeholders; and is consistent with decisions of the United States Supreme Court. We must...

...The orders do tremendous harm to the economy as well as to people’s lives by preventing them from using their property the way they had intended. This is one reason that the Physical Property Rights ranking by the International Property Rights Index (IPRI) has shown a decline in recent years for the United States. The great harm that each and everyone one of these “administrative compliance orders” causes has recently been brought home by a couple from Idaho. Mike and Chantell Sackett purchased .63 acres of land for $23,000 in 2005 to build their dream home. Despite being 500 feet...

The federal government may have staved off the imminent threat of default Tuesday when President Barack Obama signed a bitterly fought budget deal, but the woes and uncertainty for states have just begun. In California, some of the most likely cuts include nutritional programs for low-income women and children, the federal portion of the controversial high-speed rail project, clean drinking water programs, and subsidies for farmers. Also potentially at risk are federally funded university research projects and military bases, policy-watchers said Tuesday after hastily reviewing the plan to cut national spending by $2.1 trillion over 10 years. None of the...

Keeping America’s waterways and water supply clean is a crucial goal. So is guarding against federal micromanagement of our lives and property. Unfortunately, a push is on to use the cause of clean water as an excuse to unbalance our federal system and undermine our liberties by concentrating regulation of land use in Washington, D.C. The proposed Clean Water Restoration Act was the first legislative salvo in this campaign. Unveiled in 2007, the CWRA was reintroduced in the Senate last year by Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis. With a simple semantic change, it would usher in unprecedented centralization by giving federal...

Upwards of 40 percent of all land in the United States is already under some form of government control or ownership -- 800 million to 900 million acres out of America's total 2.2 billion acres. The government now appears poised to wield greater control over private property on a number of fronts. The battle over private property rights has intensified since 2005, when the Supreme Court ruled in the Kelo v. City of New London case that the government could take property from one group of private landowners and give it to another. Outraged over that ruling and a series...

BAGHDAD — “I am very happy for the 2 million people of Sadr City,” said Iraqi Engineer Aqeel Lami of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. “I have been working here at the R-3 Water Treatment Plant for more than three years, since the start of the project. It’s the first in Iraq, fully automatic and with American standards of best quality,” Lami continued. “We meet the people in the streets of Sadr City and they are very happy. They feel that we are interested in them and their health. We are very proud of the success of this project.”...

Lori Mitrick is the wife of a doctor and a practicing Catholic. Back in the 1980's her involvement in a crisis pregnancy service of her church was known in the community. She was the kind of person you might consider to be a candidate in an election. But what launched her political career was not the pro-life issue, but opposition to a shopping mall near her wooded and seculuded neighborhood in the suburbs of York, Pennsylvania. Around 20 years ago the York Galleria Mall was constructed amid her persistent and vocal opposition to the plan. Her leadership in opposing the...

NEW JERSEY FLOATS DEVELOPMENT SCHEMES ON CLEAN WATER FUNDS — Golf Courses, Transit Villages and Transferable Building Rights Are Eligible Projects Trenton —The State of New Jersey is using its Clean Water State Revolving Fund to subsidize an array of developer schemes, according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) which is asking the federal government to intervene. At the same time, the state claims it has lacked the resources to enforce toxic landfill standards that would force cleanup of the most dangerous sites, according to correspondence released today by PEER. Although New Jersey faces more than $12 billion in...

Does a bear leave its waste in the woods? Of course. So do geese, deer, muskrats, raccoons and other wild animals. And now, such states as Virginia and Maryland have determined that this plays a significant role in water pollution. Scientists have run high-tech tests on harmful bacteria in local rivers and streams and found that many of the germs -- and in the Potomac and Anacostia rivers, a majority of them-- come from wildlife dung. The strange proposition that nature is apparently polluting itself has created a serious conundrum for government officials charged with cleaning up the rivers. Part...

Though much has been done to clean up our waters, much work remains. Sewer overflows and runoff from farms and city streets threaten the life-sustaining properties of our waters, endanger human health and wildlife, and result in thousands of beach closings each year. NRDC works to continue reductions in industrial water pollution while pressing for effective pollution controls on agriculture, logging and other sources previously exempt from them. We help develop and promote strong federal laws and regulations to address polluted runoff, raw sewage discharges, and factory farm wastes and we sue polluters when they violate the Clean Water Act.

Albuquerque's Altela Inc. has been granted exclusive rights to use Arizona State University-developed water purification technology worldwide. The deal with Arizona Technology Enterprises LLC means that Altela can use it to remediate industrial waste-water and seawater and for a wealth of other water purification needs, said Altela CEO Ned Godshall. The company previously had rights only to sell such services and products to the oil and gas industry for cleanup of brackish "produced" water at well sites. The license "will now accelerate our plans to commercialize this exciting and elegant technology for all water applications," Godshall said in a news...

Disturb a frog's vernal pool habitat: Pay $300. Alter a marsh, meadow, bog, bank, or pond of any size: See you in court. The potential fine and enforcement actions are some of the teeth in a proposed wetlands protection bylaw that would give the Belmont Conservation Commission greater authority over what happens in or around wetlands. The proposal, which voters will decide at Town Meeting on April 24, would reinforce a state law that more than half of the communities in Massachusetts have found lacking in some way. Belmont would join at least 180 others with a new wetlands bylaw,...

Products based on NASA Earth observations and a new Internet-based decision tool are providing information to help land and water managers combat tamarisk (saltcedar), an invasive plant species damaging precious water supplies in the western United States. This decision tool, called the Invasive Species Forecasting System (ISFS), is being used at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Institute of Invasive Species Science in Fort Collins, Colo. It is the result of combining USGS science and NASA Earth observations, software engineering and high- performance computing expertise. "The ISFS combines NASA satellite data with tens of thousands of field sampling measurements, which...

...In 1981, there were 325 refineries in the U.S. with a capacity of 18.6 million barrels per day. Today, there are 148, with a capacity of about 17 million barrels -- though U.S. demand for gasoline has increased more than 20%.... One explanation for this performance is the historically low gas prices over much of the past 20 years; there has often been little incentive to build new capacity. But just as big a problem are onerous and costly regulatory burdens that have sucked profits from the industry. This includes a permitting process that is subject to endless bureaucratic delay...