Dems aim to expand water pollution controls

With the deletion of a single word from the Clean Water Act, some leading Democratic lawmakers are angling to greatly expand the federal government's authority to regulate water pollution. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in June quietly approved legislation dropping the adjective "navigable" to describe the bodies of water covered under the 1972 law, vastly expanding its scope and prompting a lobbying campaign from business groups that fear the small editorial change would cost jobs during economic hard times. The federal government regulates lakes and rivers large enough for ship traffic, but if the word "navigable" is deleted, the groups say, the government could have the authority to police everything from wetlands and lakes to backyard ponds and roadside ditches. The law also would open the way to government regulation of 20 million acres of the nation's so-called isolated wetlands and 59 percent of the nation's streams that do not flow year-round. These are two types of water that are now largely exempt from federal oversight...read more