CARSON CITY, Nev. Oct. 2, 2014—The representative association for Nevada’s small-business owners today loudly applauded a rare Obama administration disagreement over an environmental matter concerning the expansion of the Clean Water Act.
Dr. Winslow Sergeant, chief counsel for the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy, yesterday sent a letter to officials at the Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers, warning of the “direct, significant effects on small businesses” that a proposed rule for greatly expanding the Clean Water Act to include even puddles would have. “Advocacy recommends that the agencies withdraw the rule and that the EPA conduct a Small Business Advocacy Review panel before proceeding any further with this rule making.”
“This is huge for a state like ours,” said Randi Thompson, Nevada state director for the National Federation of Independent Business. “For a western state rich in natural resources and constantly subjected to the federal government’s all-too-frequent regulatory groping, the SBA’s standing up to two other agencies is delightfully welcomed.”
The expansion can be found in 86 pages of regulations the EPA and the Corps want to add to the Clean Water Act, the nation’s primary law governing water pollution. Passed in 1972, the Clean Water Act was a major expansion on a 1948 law and was significantly broadened in 1977 and 1987.
“It’s inconceivable that Congress intended for every accumulation of water, no matter how incidental, to be regulated by the EPA when it passed the Clean Water Act,” said Dan Bosch, NFIB Manger of Regulatory Policy. “And the Office of Advocacy is exactly correct in pointing out that the economic impact on small business will be significant and direct. Small businesses like farmers and developers who own land on which there is even occasional water could be subject to enormous new compliance costs and an even bigger threat of litigation.
“The EPA’s analysis is conspicuously limited and it certainly doesn’t satisfy the Regulatory Flexibility Act, which Congress adopted expressly for the purpose of stopping regulatory agencies from imposing costly new rules without regard for the majority of employers and the larger economy.”
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For more than 70 years, the National Federation of Independent Business has been the Voice of Small Business, taking the message from Main Street to the halls of Congress and all 50 state legislatures. NFIB annually surveys its members on state and federal issues vital to their survival as America’s economic engine and biggest creator of jobs. NFIB’s educational mission is to remind policymakers that small businesses are not smaller versions of bigger businesses; they have very different challenges and priorities.
National Federation of Independent Business/Nevada
140 Washington St. #150
Reno, NV 89503
775-830-8407
