Bloomberg reports:
Federal regulators may be able to assert Clean Water Act jurisdiction over more waters and wetlands than are now protected on the basis of a draft scientific study that links all streams and certain wetlands with larger, downstream navigable waters, attorneys and policy analysts say.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s draft study finds that all tributary streams, including perennial and the previously unprotected intermittent and ephemeral streams, are physically, chemically and biologically connected to downstream rivers.
The study, released Sept. 17, also finds that wetlands and open waters in flood plains of rivers and riparian areas also are connected in the same way as streams are to downstream rivers.
every single micro-inch of land, building or other surface would fall under this as any drop rain that falls on it eventually becomes part of a larger body. Talk about a power grab!
I would argue that the EPA or any federal department has jurisdiction over federally owned property and how federal money is spent. They don’t have a constitutional authority on private property or state property.
First the wetlands, then the floodplains. This could be easily extended to the ‘drainage basins’ of all rivers – nearly every piece of dry land from the Jersey shore to the mountain tops of Colorado.