NFIB Applauds AG For Joining Legal Challenge to Onerous 'Waters of the U.S.' Rule

Date: July 23, 2015

Jim Brown, state director of the National Federation of Independent Business, released the following statement today in support of Attorney General Herbert Slatery’s decision to join the dozens of other states suing the federal government to block the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers’ new “Waters of the United States” rule:

“The EPA’s radical rule and ongoing power grab of states’ and individual rights must be stopped.

“Earlier this month, the National Federation of Independent Business joined the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business groups in challenging the Waters of the United States rule in federal court, but that isn’t enough.

“On behalf of NFIB’s 8,000 members in Tennessee, we applaud Attorney General Slattery in joining forces with 29 other states because Tennessee shares a keen interest in stopping the EPA’s dramatic overreach before it wreaks havoc on jobs, business operations, and unsuspecting taxpayers and consumers.”

Earlier this year, the EPA finalized regulations, recently approved by the White House, which greatly expand federal authority over private property under the Clean Water Act. The act, passed under the Nixon administration, explicitly confines federal environmental oversight to “navigable waterways,” like rivers and bays. It left it up to the states to set environmental regulatory standards for protection of all other waters.

Under the new “Waters of the U.S.” rule, EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers have boxed out the states, asserting federal oversight over much smaller bodies of water, including farmers’ ponds, irrigation ditches, local creeks and streams and even land that is dry through most of the year.

The EPA says that the rule is necessary to protect local drinking water. However, the EPA already imposes stringent regulatory standards designed to protect drinking water. Moreover, the waters that EPA now seeks to regulate are already heavily regulated at the state and local levels.

“We think that’s a specious rationale,” Brown said. “Basically, the federal government is saying that Washington bureaucrats and environmental activists have a stronger interest in protecting our drinking water than do the people who actually drink it.

“The Waters of the United States rule is a bad idea that needs to be stopped, now.”

Related Content: Small Business News | Tennessee

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