Editorial Writer
The Washington Examiner
10/20/2013
…it appears “EPA intends to expand federal regulatory authority under the Clean Water Act to include even the most isolated wetlands, seasonal drainages and prairie depressions. A sweeping reinterpretation of EPA jurisdiction would give the agency unprecedented control over private property across the nation.” In other words, as ambitious bureaucrats typically do, McCarthy – an unaccountable appointee who answers to no one except Obama – wants the power to tell everybody else what they can and cannot do with their private property.
An indication of McCarthy’s determination to acquire this unprecedented regulatory power is seen in her manipulation of the rule-making process required by federal law. The Environmental Research, Development and Demonstration Authorization Act requires that, whenever the EPA head asks other federal agencies to review any proposed regulation under the Clean Water Act, it must also provide the Science Advisory Board all “relevant scientific and technical information … on which the proposed action is based.”
The SAB is in turn empowered under the law to provide an independent assessment of the quality and relevance of the science underlying the proposal. But McCarthy has circulated her proposed expansion of EPA land-control power to other agencies via the White House Office of Management and Budget without providing the required material to the SAB…
Read the entire editorial at The Washington Examiner.
Related: EPA’s ‘unprecedented’ power grab for private property
…The EPA has defined “wetlands” so broadly that some farmers who have been socked with fines for supposedly damaging or disturbing their own property were astonished to discover that they were violating any laws. Now the EPA wants to expand their power to violate private property rights in the name of environmental protection…
