EPA Using Taxpayer Funds to Cheer Horrendous New Water Regs

It’s another day and Americans are waking up to another nightmare of executive overreach by President Obama and the inability of the GOP-led Congress to stop his assault on our liberty.

This week, it was the turn of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to expand government reach by jointly issuing a new clean water regulation.

Known as the “Waters of the U.S. United States,” the new regulation aims to protect drinking water by expanding regulatory control to upstream waterways, such streams and wetlands that drain into larger bodies of water like lakes and rivers.

The larger water bodies serve as a source for drinking water.

According to the EPA, the new rule targets 60% of the smaller bodies of water such as streams that were previously unregulated.

Similar to EPA’s attack on coal-fired power plants where the agency created its Clean Power Plant Rule from manipulation of the Clean Air Act, the EPA has finalized the new water rule by its regulatory twisting of the Clean Water Act.

In both cases, the new regulations are not based on new laws from Congress to address the underlying environmental issues.

In classic style, the EPA adopted the progressive strategy of “you never let a serious crisis go to waste” and seized on Supreme Court decisions regarding the Clean Water Act, including vague language in a 2006 ruling by the Supreme Court that failed to limit agency power allowing the EPA to regulate waters close proximity to navigable water on a case by case basis.

President Obama issued a statement supporting the new rule saying it will remove uncertainty surrounding the water regulation, “This rule will provide the clarity and certainty businesses and industry need about which waters are protected by the Clean Water Act, and it will ensure polluters who knowingly threaten our waters can be held accountable.”

Despite claims about clarity made by Obama and the EPA, the reality is the administration is significantly expanding its power to control “just about anything that’s wet,” as The Wall Street Journal concluded.

In typical fashion, the EPA engaged in propaganda to manipulate the public opinion about the new water regulation.

The New York Times reported that the EPA engaged in a significant public relations campaign that uses social media vehicles including Facebook and Twitter to boost public support for the new regulation.

In a likely violation of federal lobbying laws, the agency led an effort with left-wing environmental and grassroots groups such as the Sierra Club and Organizing for Action to generate supportive comments about the EPA’s proposed regulation during the agency’s public comment period.

The campaign orchestrated by the agency was successfully allowing EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy to smugly tout the overwhelming support of the water regulation during Congressional testimony.

McCarthy said, “We have received over one million comments, and 87.1 percent of those comments we have counted so far — we are only missing 4,000 — are supportive of this rule. Then she added, “Let me repeat: 87.1 percent of those one-plus million are supportive of this rule.”

McCarthy’s use of astroturf to promote the EPA’s agenda undermines the integrity of the public comment period which is intended to measure feedback on regulations by the people that are going to be impacted by the rule.

It’s also clearly outrageous for the EPA to use taxpayer money to sell its own agenda to the American people.

Farmers, developers, and mining groups among others fear the new regulation will give the EPA control of extremely small bodies of water on their land including ditches and puddles.

The regulation is also unpopular in Congress and it was blasted by Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH). Jim Inhofe (R-OK), Senate Environment and Public Works chairman vowed to stop EPA’s land grab saying, “I will not allow it.”

Inhofe is particularly upset because he is working on a bipartisan bill, the Federal Water Quality Protection Act, to prevent the EPA from using water regulations to control land.

EPA’s latest end-run around Congress serves as another example of government bureaucracy gone wild.

The EPA is making a mockery of representative government and Congress must go beyond using words to protest this lawlessness. It must use its power to defund the agency’s arrogant and radical agenda. (See “EPA Using Taxpayer Funds to Cheer Harmful Water Regs”, originally posted HERE)

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