Creating Confidence in Clean Water Permitting Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. LARSEN of Washington. Mr. Chair, 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 have 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; and we are growing the economy from the middle out and the bottom up. That is the context in which our colleagues are proposing to shatter this 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. It limits oversight for projects that demand higher scrutiny.

What does this bill do for 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 this 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.

What does it 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 EPA's use of this authority has been consistent with congressional intent. 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 2 times during Democratic administrations and 12 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 the Clean Water Act protections. It is estimated 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 the bill are the opposite of what Congress needs to do to protect our water resources.

Clean water is not an abstract concept. What is at stake in 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 this bill, Democrats sought to lessen the negative impacts of this legislation and require the EPA to verify that the changes from this bill would not have negative impacts on water quality or availability. Unfortunately, those amendments were rejected on mostly a party-line vote.

Similarly, several Democrats offered amendments to the Rules Committee to ensure the bill did not harm local fisheries, rural and disadvantaged communities, multistate drinking water sources, or infants and children. Again, those amendments were blocked from consideration.

If thoughtful oversight of our Nation's waters and the permitting process that protects these waters is still a bipartisan goal, the House of Representatives can do far better than take up H.R. 7023.

Mr. Chair, I oppose H.R. 7023, and I urge my colleagues to do the same.

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