Western rivers might be left high and
dry — and polluted — if Bush administration officials
push through a rule change to the Clean Water Act. In November, a
senior government official leaked a draft of the proposed change to
the Los Angeles Times. Under the new rule, the Clean Water Act
would apply only to seas, navigable rivers and their tributary
streams and adjacent wetlands. It would exclude ephemeral rivers
that run less than six months of the year.
For Western
states, the change would be monumental, since more than
three-fourths of the region’s rivers are ephemeral and less
than 2 percent are considered navigable. Steve Malloch of the
Western Water Alliance, a regional water conservation coalition,
says the draft rule would allow the city of Phoenix to dump
untreated urban wastewater from 1.3 million people into the Gila
River without any regulation.
The rule change would also
allow coalbed methane drillers to unload polluted discharge into
seasonally dry washes — and to sidestep an October Supreme
Court ruling that the discharge is wastewater subject to the Clean
Water Act (HCN, 11/10/03: Follow-up).
“This is one
of the most sweeping changes we’ve seen yet,” says Joan
Mulhern, a senior lawyer for Earthjustice. “A lot of
industries — the home builders, the mining industry —
don’t want to have to get Clean Water Act
permits.”
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
and the Army Corps of Engineers — both of which are
responsible for enforcing the Clean Water Act — refuse to
comment on the leaked document, and say it could be a year before
they formally propose a new rule.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Clean water changes could sully Western streambeds.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
