President Obama's shameful attacks on his fellow citizens are piling up: his “War on Coal” (a new EPA “climate” rule to destroy the coal industry) and his “War on Ranching” (a half-million-acre “national monument” smothering New Mexico ranchers), have now been topped by his “War on Everybody Else.”
By that I mean Obama’s outrageous proposed rule titled “Definition of ‘Waters of the United States’ Under the Clean Water Act” which would remove “navigable” from American water law and redefine nearly everything wet as “waters of the United States,” or WOTUS — and potentially subject us all to permits and fines.
That abomination is equivalent to invasion by hostile troops out to seize the jurisdictions of all 50 states. WOTUS gives untrustworthy federal bureaucrats custody of every watershed, creates crushing new power to coerce all who keep America going and offers no benefit to the victimized and demoralized tax-paying public.
If that sounds overly dramatic, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee's Wednesday hearing titled “Potential Impacts of Proposed Changes to the Clean Water Act Jurisdictional Rule” promises to make it seem like an understatement.
Rep. Bob Gibbs, R-Ohio, chairman of the Water Resources and Environment Subcommittee, is set to convene that hearing with witnesses from six affected sectors -- state and county governments, water and flood managers, agriculture and construction -- and two Obama appointees, the Environmental Protection Agency's Robert W. Perciasepe and Assistant Secretary of the Army Jo-Ellen Darcy (for the Corps of Engineers).
I asked Gibbs what effect the Obama administration’s WOTUS proposal would have on the economy and job creation. He told me, “The rule would significantly expand federal jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act to potentially include all waters and wet areas. It would just create additional red tape when states are already capable of fulfilling the role of water management.
“In my view this is a power grab, nothing more,” Gibbs said.
The evidence supports Gibbs. The EPA has been pushing its “any hydrological connection” theory of jurisdiction for more than a decade and getting slapped down by the U.S. Supreme Court -- and keeps grabbing anyway.
In 2001, the Supreme Court in Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers rejected regulation of “isolated waters” because the waters lacked a “significant nexus to navigable waters.” Not to be stopped by a mere Supreme Court decision, the EPA began regulating any water “connected” to navigable waters, including ephemeral streams, ditches, drains, “relatively permanent” waters — and nearby wet areas. Grab, grab, grab.
In 2006, the justices in Rapanos v. United States rejected EPA’s assertion of jurisdiction over those “connected” waters as overly broad. So the EPA’s Office of Research and Development paid some willing scientists to search anything in the scientific literature that might be a “significant nexus,” but couldn’t find enough in the water, so they changed the rules to include “consideration of ecologic factors,” i.e., any living thing on dry ground that needs water. That pretty much covers every acre of the United States. Grab, grab, grab.
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