The Senate bill S.787, otherwise known as the Clean Water Restoration Act (CWRA), would replace language in the regulatory act currently using “navigable waters” with “waters of the United States.”
( www.opencongress.org/bill/111-s787/text )
What this means is that “the government would essentially be able to regulate everything from standing water in floodplains to creeks that run behind business and residences,” according to an Environmental Leader report. ( www.environmentalleader.com/2009/06/17/c...ct-gains-detractors/ )

This represents a complete takeover of private land and waterways by the federal government, a total assault on private property rights and a complete federalization of America’s land and water.

“In a letter to Senate Environment and Public Works Chair Barbara Boxer and ranking member James Inhofe, the American Farm Bureau Federation said that the proposed law would “extend to all water — anywhere from farm ponds, to storm water retention basins, to roadside ditches, to desert washes, to streets and gutters, even to a puddle of rainwater,” stated the letter. “For the first time in the 36-year history of the act, activities that have no impact on actual rivers and lakes would be subject to full federal regulation.”

If this bill becomes law, it will empower the federal government to seize private property on a whim, using similar powers that Communist China employed during Chairman Mao’s “great leap forward,” where landowners had their property violently confiscated and stolen by the government.

If this bill passes the Senate, private property rights in the United States are effectively null and void and the federal government would legally have the power to bulldoze families from their homes as routinely happens in Communist China.


HUMANS HAVE BEEN NAVIGATING WATERWAYS ALMOST THROUGHOUT ALL OF RECORDED HUMAN HISTORY, ARE WE ALL OF A SUDDEN TO DANGEROUS OR IRRESPONSIBLE TO BE TRUSTED WITH THE USE AND CARE OF SOMETHING WE LOVE, REVERE AND RESPECT??? OF COURSE WE AREN'T!!! IF ANYTHING WE ARE MORE CAREFUL ON AND MORE CARING OF OUR RIVERS AND LAKES THAN EVER BEFORE. IF YOU AGREE PLEASE CONTACT YOUR LOCAL, STATE AND/OR FEDERAL ELECTED OFFICIALS AND DEMAND THAT THEY DO SOMETHING TO STOP THIS EGREGIOUS AND FASCIST BILL FROM BEING PASSED.

SEE YA ON THE RIVER...AT LEAST I HOPE I'M ALLOWED TO!!!

That looks like a bit of a partisan screed. The law is about water quality; it's not clear that it would have any impact on access to navigable streams at all.

The first post is nonsense.

The intent of the change in the law is to protect all waters from pollution. Presently, polluters can argue that federal clean water laws do not apply to them if their stream or lake is not considered a "navigable waterway" of the United States.

We are coming to recognize that pollution in even tiny streams and ponds can and does travel into aquifers and into larger streams. We need to take care of our waterways and wetlands no matter where they are.

Whether Senate bill S.787 is a good way to deal with pollution in non navigable waterways is a reasonable question, but it should be looked at rationally.