Clean water legislation biggest federal power grab ever

Do Americans want to allow federal regulation over all inland waters? How about granting virtually unlimited regulatory control or all "wet areas" within our state to the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers? That is exactly what will happen if current federal legislation (S787)--masquerading as the Clean Water Restoration Act--is passed by Congress. This Act seeks to expand the jurisdictional sweep of the Clean Water Act, introduced in 1972 by granting the federal government authority over all U.S. waterways, which, in truth, makes it the largest federal water/power grab in U.S. history. Most notably, S787 removes the requirement that regulated waterways be navigable as originally stated in the Clean Water Act. The deletion of that word will allow all inland waters to be subject to federal legislation --i.e., wet areas, including mudflats, sand flats, isolated wetlands, meadows, sloughs, and even lands over which rainwater passes, plus manmade impoundments for water (stock ponds, ditches, water filtration ponds and more). Our federal government has been accused often of overreaching in its regulations, but nothing that has happened in our nation's history can surpass this effort to push the limits of federal powers...read more