Internal docs said to undermine WOTUS rule

Internal memos that the Army Corps of Engineers turned over to a Senate committee undermines the scientific and legal basis for the new rule that re-defines the jurisdiction of the Clean Water Act, the panel's chairman says. In a letter Monday to the assistant secretary of the Army who oversees the Corps, Jo-Ellen Darcy, Senate Environment and Public Workers Chairman Jim Inhofe said that the documents show the “rule is lacking factual, technical and legal support.” Inhofe's eight-page letter quotes select passages from documents, including two staff memos sent in April and May to the Army's deputy commanding general for civil and emergency operations, Maj. Gen. John Peabody. Darcy asked that the committee not make the documents public. A passage from an April 24 memo asserted that the rule would give federal officials jurisdiction “over many thousands of miles of dry washes and arroyos in the desert Southwest, even though those ephemeral dry wastes, arroyos, etc., carry water infrequently and sometimes in small quantities.” An appendix to the April memo also seems to raise questions about provisions of the rule defining what ditches would be regulated as tributaries of rivers: “How far back in history does the regulator need to go? If it can't be determined definitely, who bears the burden of proof? The landowner or the agency? Need to provide a set of tools/resources that the field can use to make the determination of the history of the ditch.” A May 15 Corps of Engineers memo denies a statement in a technical document that the Corps contributed to a “very thorough analysis” of the interactions between upstream waters, wetlands and downstream rivers “to reach the significant nexus conclusions underlying” the draft final rule. The same memo also is quoted by Inhofe as saying the Corps had no role in performing the analysis or drafting” the technical document...more

 This tells us two things:  1)  The EPA is completely politicized and doing the White House's bidding, and 2)  As we near the end of the Obama administration the Corps is fighting back and doesn't want to take the political hit from a very unpopular rule.