EPA chief isn’t cowed by politics or pollution
If there’s a woman Congress likes beating up as much as Hillary Clinton, she’s Gina McCarthy, head of the Environmental Protection Agency.
McCarthy and Jo-Ellen Darcy, assistant secretary for the Army Corps of Engineers, stood side-byside when announcing their agencies’ joint rule to be used to reduce pollution in the nation’s rivers, lakes, streams and wetlands. Darcy and the Corps haven’t made national headlines since; McCarthy and the EPA can’t stay out of them. The rule was immediately: Hailed by environmentalists as “the biggest victory for clean water in a decade” in the words of Margie Alt, executive director of Environment America;
Panned as “a nightmare for farmers” by Don Parrish, senior director of congressional relations for the American Farm Bureau Federation, and allied industry groups that want it withdrawn; and
Denounced by Republican House Speaker John Boehner as “a raw and tyrannical power grab” that will send “landowners, small businesses, farmers and manufacturers on the road to a regulatory and economic hell.”
Being from Ohio, Boehner surely knows a little bit about “hell.” It was Ohio’s oil-laden Cuyahoga River catching fire that spurred Congress to pass the 1972 Clean Water Act. The Cuyahoga is a lot cleaner today with 40 species of fish thriving.
But a “clean water” success story in his own home state doesn’t impress Boehner. Two weeks before the EPA and the Corps finalized and published the rule, Boehner had the House of Representatives voting to block its implementation. Since then, the House Appropriations Committee has unveiled a 2016 budget that whacks $718 million — 9 percent — from EPA’s current $7.4 billion budget.
On the Senate side, Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell took charge of grilling McCarthy. McConnell is from Kentucky, a staunch defender of the coal industry, and focused on killing EPA proposals to address climate change by limiting releases of greenhouse gases from power plants. Warming up for a showdown in August over those rules and the role of coal, he sharply questioned McCarthy about the rule defining “waters of the United States.”
McCarthy gamely and steadfastly stuck to assuring McConnell the rule “will withstand the test of time in courts.”
“You’re going to have to prove it in court,” McConnell snapped.
“As we most often do,” McCarthy shot back.
EPA gets sued a lot — sometimes before it acts. Two weeks ago the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia dismissed as “premature” the lawsuit filed by coal producers and 14 states (Florida is not among them) challenging the legality of the EPA’s proposed –— but not yet final — power-plant rule. With power plants now accounting for 72 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, the economic stakes are high. But just as intriguing the draft rules introduce a new regulatory approach: The EPA proposes setting reduction targets for each state and leaving it to the states to figure out how to meet them.
Compared with drafts of the proposed power-plant rule, the new clean-water rule is simplicity itself. Basically, it extends protection to all navigable waters, tributaries with the physical features — a bed, bank and ordinary high-water mark — of “flowing water” during at least three months per year, and to adjacent wetlands that function as part of the connected system. All of agriculture’s statutory exemptions under previous guidelines were incorporated, as were such “common sense exclusions” as standing water in excavated sand and gravel pits.
Opponents staged a “parade of horribles” that were never part of the rule, but surprisingly were taken seriously by numerous state and local officials.
So, just for the record: The “waters of the U.S.” rule does not assert federal jurisdiction over puddles, ditches, swales, gullies, creeks, rice or other farm fields, municipal storm- or sanitary-sewer systems, constructed ponds or landscape features. It doesn’t propose to regulate groundwater or subsurface drainage systems. It didn’t change private property rights.
Will there be lawsuits challenging the rule? Probably, but McCarthy doesn’t blink. Nor should she. Getting the EPA and the Corps using the same wetlands permitting rule not only reduces confusion and protects the resource, it’s also sensible and efficient. What keeps McCarthy sitting on Congress’ “hot seat” and in the headlines is: She’s not cowed by lawyers or politicians. For the environment, that’s a very good thing.
Martha Musgrove is a veteran journalist, formerly with the Miami Herald and Cox Newspapers. mlmcolumn@gmail.com