Last Week EPA Released Rules Regarding Our Water – Updated

Last week President Obama’s birth certificate was the big news. Today it’s the death of Osama Bin Laden. Which means you probably haven’t heard about the EPA’s latest power grab under President Obama. Last Wednesday the agency released proposed rules, with a sixty day comment period. Seeing that nobody’s hearing much about this, don’t expect them to get many comments. Timing is everything, isn’t it?

While we were distracted by the president’s birth certificate show-and-tell, his EPA releases its guidelines for expanding federal power under the Clean Water Act. America’s economy and freedom are at stake.

President Obama’s long-form birth certificate wasn’t the only thing released last Wednesday, but it was probably the least important. The Environmental Protection Agency also released its guidelines for expanding federal power over the nation’s waterways, ponds and puddles.

These guidelines will take effect after a 60-day comment period and will serve as a reference for environmental agencies in determining their jurisdiction over a particular body of water, large or small. They will eventually morph into binding regulations as damaging to our economy and freedom as the EPA regulation of carbon dioxide emissions.

The 1972 Clean Water Act was originally intended to protect the “navigable waters of the United States” — you know, the kind boats travel down. It was broadly and quickly interpreted to any pool of water in America capable of supporting a bathtub-variety boat.

The word “navigable” was forgotten and ignored, and the act’s scope expanded to the point that water that collected after a rainstorm was considered a “wetland” worthy of environmental protection.

That could be a pond, a ditch, or a large puddle. Maggie’s Notebook adds:

The EPA badly wants governance of your backyard pond, and they shall have it through regulation, not law. America, this administration wants all of this country’s water, – that’s ALL OF THIS COUNTRY’S WATER,  and it isn’t a small thing. The last time I wrote about this I cited a fact about Israel that made a great impression upon me, and it bears repeating. One of the reasons for the 1967 War was the Arab nations’ cutting off irrigation water to Israel. No crops no food. Throughout history, tyrants have taken the people’s water and restricted its use. It is a technique that brings a people to their knees or their graves. We can live without electricity but we cannot live without useful water. Our water is a matter of Liberty.

Be sure to follow the link above for more information.

Via The Other McCain.

Update: Linked by Pundit Press (thanks) with information on how they’ll use this against hydrofracking. Because we can’t be energy independent, now, can we?

Tags: comment period, distractions, epa, obama, rules, water