EPA Clarifies its Clean Water Rule

After a year-long review that included 400 meetings across the United States and feedback from more than a million people – farmers, manufacturers, hunters, and anglers – the Environmental Protection Agency, with the US. Army Corps of Engineers, submitted this month a revised Clean Water Rule to the U.S. Office of Management and Budget.

The EPA, in information it released last week, opted not to detail the plan but rather focus on aspects it has revised in response to nationwide feedback. Gina McCarthy, U.S. EPA administrator, and Jo-Ellen Darcy, assistant secretary of the Army, said the revised act will:

• Preserve Clean Water Act exclusions for agriculture.
• Better describe the process for deciding which connecting points are considered significant because of their downstream impact.
• Eliminate ambiguity in the definition of “tributary.”
• Provide certainty about how far safeguards extend to nearby waters. The rule will protect wetlands situated next to rivers and lakes but clarify which sources of water are considered adjacent.
• Define “other waters.” The new act, the statement says, will be more specific about the waters it aims to protect.

“We may have different opinions on how we best protect water resources,” McCarthy and Darcy wrote, “but we can all agree that clean water matters, and that it deserves our protection.” S