Education, Environment

EPA issues new rules to protect Americans drinking water, streams

THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
By Mary Clare Jalonick, ASSOCIATED PRESS

President Obama said in a statement Wednesday that the rules will provide needed clarity for business and industry and ‘will ensure polluters who knowingly threaten our waters can be held accountable.’

WASHINGTON

EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy speaks in Washington Nov. 19, 2014. The Obama administration issued new rules Wednesday to protect the nation's drinking water and clarify which smaller streams, tributaries, and wetlands are covered by anti-pollution and development provisions of the Clean Water Act. McCarthy said the rule will only affect waters that have a 'direct and significant' connection to larger bodies of water downstream that are already protected.
EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy speaks in Washington Nov. 19, 2014. The Obama administration issued new rules Wednesday to protect the nation’s drinking water and clarify which smaller streams, tributaries, and wetlands are covered by anti-pollution and development provisions of the Clean Water Act. McCarthy said the rule will only affect waters that have a ‘direct and significant’ connection to larger bodies of water downstream that are already protected.

Drinking water for 117 million Americans will be protected under new rules shielding small streams, tributaries and wetlands from pollution and development, the Obama administration said Wednesday.

The White House said the rules would provide much-needed clarity for landowners, but some Republicans and farm groups said they go much too far. House Speaker John Boehner declared they would send “landowners, small businesses, farmers, and manufacturers on the road to a regulatory and economic hell.”

The rules, issued by the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, are designed to clarify which smaller waterways fall under federal protection after two Supreme Court rulings had left the reach of the Clean Water Act uncertain. EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said the waters affected would be those with a “direct and significant” connection to larger bodies of water downstream that are already protected. More…