Regulation: While we were distracted by the president's birth certificate show-and-tell, his EPA releases its guidelines for expanding federal power under the Clean Water Act. America's economy and freedom are at stake.
President Obama's long-form birth certificate wasn't the only thing released last Wednesday, but it was probably the least important. The Environmental Protection Agency also released its guidelines for expanding federal power over the nation's waterways, ponds and puddles.
These guidelines will take effect after a 60-day comment period and will serve as a reference for environmental agencies in determining their jurisdiction over a particular body of water, large or small. They will eventually morph into binding regulations as damaging to our economy and freedom as the EPA regulation of carbon dioxide emissions.
The 1972 Clean Water Act was originally intended to protect the "navigable waters of the United States" — you know, the kind boats travel down. It was broadly and quickly interpreted to any pool of water in America capable of supporting a bathtub-variety boat.
The word "navigable" was forgotten and ignored, and the act's scope expanded to the point that water that collected after a rainstorm was considered a "wetland" worthy of environmental protection.
A 2006 U.S. Supreme Court case from Michigan produced five different opinions and no clear definition of which waterways were covered. This essentially left the government with a clean slate on which to write its own interpretation — just about everything.
House Agricultural Committee Chairman Frank Lucas, R-Okla., says the expanded EPA guidelines would let the government "regulate essentially any body of water, such as a farm pond or even a ditch." A bipartisan group of 170 congressmen wrote a letter to the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers urging them not to issue the expanded guidelines.
The American Farm Bureau Federation said in a statement that the guidelines "take an overly broad view of 'waters of the U.S.' It would serve as a road map for EPA and the Corps to designate nearly all water bodies, and even some on dry land, as subject to federal regulations that dictate land-use decisions."
Not just agriculture but energy production is affected. The EPA recently revoked the coal mining permit for Arch Coal's Spruce Mine No. 1 in Logan County, W.Va. The permit was issued four years ago and since then Arch Coal, which provides 16% of America's supply, has followed every jot and tittle of the rules it was told to operate under. It didn't matter.
After an investment of $250 million in the mountain-top mining operation, which when fully operational would have employed 215 miners directly and 300 indirect jobs in support services, it was ordered to shut down. These were, no pun intended, "shovel-ready" jobs.
As we have warned, the EPA said it was acting under the authority of the Clean Water Act, saying the mine employed "destructive and unsustainable mining practices that jeopardize the health of Appalachian communities and clean water on which they depend."
The EPA is currently suspending 79 such surface mining permits in West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee. It says these permits could violate the Clean Water Act and warrant "enhanced" review. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson says she's not against coal mining, but wants to see it "done in a way that minimizes impact to water quality."
This is not about clean water any more than cap-and-trade is about climate change. It's about increasing government power over our every aspect of our lives. The power to regulate is the power to destroy, and part of the administration's goal of raising energy prices to the point green energy looks acceptable if not attractive.
President Obama said the whole "birther" controversy was a distraction from other more important things. That's just the way he wanted it.
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