“Moving this legislation now is an assault on water quality.”
Washington, D.C. — In case you missed it, Ranking Member of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Rick Larsen (D-WA) and Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment Grace Napolitano (D-CA) took to the House floor to oppose H.R. 7023, the Creating Confidence in Clean Water Permitting Act, which would reduce clean water protections for the nation’s rivers, streams, and wetlands and harm communities that depend on access to clean water. Their floor remarks can be found below.
(Ranking Members Rick Larsen and Grace Napolitano Speaking on the House Floor.)
Ranking Member Larsen:
Mr. Chairman, our predecessors in Congress worked in a bipartisan manner to enact the Clean Water Act—one of the nation’s bedrock environmental laws.
The legislation before us today was not developed in that same bipartisan manner, and it undermines the Clean Water Act. I oppose this bill.
The pro-clean water bipartisan consensus has held firm for decades—allowing communities to enjoy cleaner water and giving businesses the certainty they need to create jobs and spur economic growth.
Thanks to historic investments like the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act, our economy is on the move.
We’ve added nearly 15 million jobs since President Biden took office and unemployment has been under 4 percent for the longest stretch in more than 50 years.
Wages are up, inflation is coming down, we are growing the economy from the middle out and the bottom up.
That is the context in which our GOP colleagues are proposing to shatter the bipartisan consensus around clean water since the passage of the Clean Water Act.
This bill will not improve Clean Water Act project permitting or create certainty; in fact, it does the opposite. According to the Statement of Administration Policy, this bill will “undermine ongoing, bipartisan efforts to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of infrastructure permitting processes.”
The SAP further confirms the bill will “create uncertainty, confusion, and conflict in permitting processes.”
What will this bill achieve? It weakens clean water protections, it provides exemptions and legal shields for permit holders, and it limits oversight for projects that demand higher scrutiny.
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What does this bill do for our communities? It closes the door for local communities seeking review of projects that are running through their neighborhoods and gives private developers the green light to ignore local perspectives on large-scale projects.
This legislation prioritizes the needs of polluters, who want to fast-track questionable projects over the public’s interest and concern.
What does the bill do for the permitting process? In some cases, it slows down the process. The bill adds bureaucratic steps to the process of establishing water quality standards that will slow the implementation of these standards while exposing them to increased litigation.
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What does this do for clean water? Nothing good. The legislation eliminates EPA’s oversight of ecologically devastating projects and makes it easier for industrial polluters to discharge potentially harmful or toxic chemicals into our rivers and streams with no accountability.
For example, my colleagues have criticized EPA’s use of its Clean Water Act review or veto authority.
Yet, the record shows that EPA’s use of this authority has been consistent with Congressional intent, and I see no reason for removing this authority.
Since enactment of the Clean Water Act in 1972, EPA has only exercised this authority 14 times—most recently in relation to large-scale mining proposals in Alaska and West Virginia.
EPA’s use of this authority has in fact been bipartisan—EPA used it two times during Democratic administrations and twelve times during Republican administrations.
Moving this legislation now is an assault on water quality. The adverse impacts of the provisions in this bill will be substantial on their own. However, enacting rollbacks is an extreme choice in the wake of the 2023 Sackett ruling by the Supreme Court that restricted the waters subject to any Clean Water Act protections.
It is estimated that the Sackett ruling removed protection nationwide from at least 50 percent of wetlands and up to 70 percent of streams.
With a much smaller number of waters subject to the Clean Water Act, additional loopholes to the process like those proposed in this bill are the opposite of what Congress needs to be doing to protect our water resources.
Clean water is not an abstract concept. What is at stake under this legislation is whether people have reliable, drinkable, clean water with which to conduct business, recreate, carry out daily tasks and sustain life.
During Committee consideration of H.R. 7023, Democrats sought to lessen the negative impacts of this legislation and require the EPA to verify that the changes in the bill would not have negative impacts on water quality or water availability.
Unfortunately, those amendments were rejected on mostly a party-line vote.
Similarly, several Democrats offered amendments to the Rules Committee to ensure that this bill did not harm local fisheries, rural and disadvantaged communities, multi-state drinking water sources, or infants and children.
Again, those amendments were blocked from consideration on the House floor.
If thoughtful oversight of our nation’s waters—and the permitting process that protects these waters—is still a bipartisan goal, then the House of Representatives can do far better than taking up H.R. 7023.
I oppose H.R. 7023, urge my colleagues to do the same, and yield back the balance of my time.
Ranking Member Napolitano
Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong opposition to HR 7023.
This bill significantly restricts the oversight and regulatory authorities of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Corps of Engineers under the Clean Water Act.
The Clean Water Act, enacted over 50 years ago, is the nation’s bedrock environmental law for “restoring and maintaining the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Nation’s waters” and water resources.
However, the changes in H.R. 7023 defy the Act’s overarching intent and gut the independent authority of both agencies to ensure that projects and activities are carried out with only minimal impacts to water resources.
This partisan bill weakens clean water protections while providing exemptions, legal shields, and limited oversight for special interests, polluters, and large-scale projects that demand higher scrutiny.
The bill disregards Congressional intent in establishing EPA’s independent oversight authority over clean water permits; undermines permitting requirements; eliminates judicial review and public engagement; rolls back oversight of mining companies and industrial polluters; inadvertently slows down permit processing with increased bureaucracy; and complicates state-determined decisions.
Mr. Chairman, this bill would also significantly reduce remaining Clean Water Act protections over critical rivers, streams, lakes, and wetlands that survived last year’s Supreme Court ruling.
Not satisfied with the Court’s Sackett decision that eliminated protections for more than 50 percent of wetlands and up to 70 percent of streams, this package of anti-clean water proposals would further hamstring EPA and the Corps’ ability to operate independently to protect our nation’s waterways.
These proposals go in the wrong direction by giving even more to polluters and sacrificing the needs of communities that depend on clean water.
After Sackett, Congress should be working to restore the protections of the Clean Water Act that worked for over fifty years—and should move H.R. 5983, the Clean Water Act of 2023—a bill that I have cosponsored with over 130 of my colleagues to restore clean water protections over our waters – many of which serve as non-replaceable sources of water for families, our communities, our farms, our businesses and industries, and our quality of life.
We have made too much progress in cleaning up our rivers and streams for Congress to give up now.
Mr. Chairman, that is why I am opposed to the proposed changes in H.R. 7023 that weaken bedrock Clean Water Act protections.
This bill will add additional hurdles to EPA’s ability to issue water quality standards.
It will reduce, if not eliminate, opportunities for the public to seek redress when they are harmed by violations of the Clean Water Act.
It would effectively eliminate the EPA’s ability to oversee and block dangerous projects.
Communities will not benefit from these changes, but mining companies, the oil and gas industry, and other toxic polluters will.
My colleagues would like to approve projects faster, but we need to ensure that projects are built with full consideration of the impacts to human health and the environment. I support the EPA and the Corps working with local communities, Tribes, and states to make these important decisions.
Mr. Chairman, I am enclosing in the Congressional Record a copy of the Minority views to H.R. 7023 that were co-signed by myself, Ranking Member Larsen, and an overwhelming majority of the Democrats on the Committee.
I urge my colleagues on both sides to vote “no” on this bill.
I reserve our time.