Raúl Grijalva: “I oppose this amendment. While I recognize the amendment's underlying goal is to make it easier to obtain a Clean Water…”

“I oppose this amendment. While I recognize the amendment's underlying goal is to make it easier to obtain a Clean Water Act permit, not all permits have the same potential impacts on water quality. We need to take care to distinguish between those permits that can be expedited because of their minimal impact on the environment and those that need additional attention and scrutiny. The Clean Water Act already authorizes the use of general permits to allow a more expedited process for activities in the wetlands that will cause only minimal adverse environmental effects when performed separately and will have only minimal cumulative adverse effects on the environment. Current EPA regulations also allow the issuance of general permits for point source discharges that involve the same or substantially similar types of operations, such as construction-related activities, urban stormwater, and the western and central Gulf of Mexico offshore oil and gas activities. The amendment attempts to codify existing EPA regulations on general use permits for point source discharges without the safeguard that the activities have only a minimal impact on the environment. The amendment does not prescribe how these new requirements will interact with existing general permit authority. Conflicting standards may have the opposite effect that the Representative intends.…”