Dec. 17

Two House committee chairmen have written a letter urging president-elect Barack Obama to beef up enforcement of the Clean Water Act once his administration takes office next month.

Reps Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and James Oberstar, D-Minn., who chair the Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the Infrastructure Committee, respectively, sent Obama a letter detailing the findings of an investigation conducted by their committees.

The investigation concluded enforcement of the Clean Water Act by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers has been lax since a 2006 Supreme Court decision cast some doubt on which waterways are subject to the law. The case of Rapanos v. the United States resulted in five separate opinions by the justices and none received the support of a majority of the court.

However, the federal government looked at opinions that found the Clean Water Act applied only to permanent waters -- such as streams and rivers and adjacent wetlands -- and to waters or wetlands with a "significant nexus" to navigable waters.

Contact Waste News senior reporter Bruce Geiselman at (330) 865-6172 or bgeiselman@crain.com

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