All water flows downhill. If the EPA can retroactively extend the meaning of the Clean Water Act to include, as Bloomberg’s Amena H. Saiyid phrased it, “all natural and artificial tributary streams, lakes, ponds and wetlands that affect the chemical, physical and biological integrity of larger, downstream navigable waters,” there’s really not a square inch of land open to any use at all without first clearing a new set of hurdles. And, an expansion of EPA jurisdiction could also give environmental groups standing to file lawsuits against any activity of any scope — from barn raising to small-scale organic farming to rock crushing — if it can claim anything on the land falls under Federal protection. In theory, someone who’s been raising a small brood of hens at his hilltop farmhouse could find himself at the defending end of an environmental lawsuit if watchdog groups can find incriminating levels of nitrates anywhere beneath the land.
Posted on: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 05:11:51 +0000