Political Quotes

“today I rise to reintroduce the Silviculture Regulatory Consistency Act with my colleague Senator Crapo. This legislation would end the legal uncertainty facing the timber industry by enacting legislation to preserve the Environmental Protection Agency's 37-year old policy treating forest roads as non- point sources under the Clean Water Act. For 37 years, the EPA has maintained that forest roads are non-point sources. Furthermore, in March of this year, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals' ruling on forest roads, upholding EPA's authority to regulate forest roads as nonpoint sources under the Clean Water Act. Various studies show that if the EPA were to change their decades-long position and require Federal, State, county, tribal and private forest road owners to obtain a point source permit, the cost could reach billions of dollars and cost thousands of jobs. The Pacific Northwest needs more jobs in the woods. The way to do that is to get the timber cut up and to stop litigating questions that have already been answered. In the 112th Congress, Senator Crapo and I introduced similar legislation on forest roads. The legislation we introduce today is different in only two respects. First, the bill includes new language to prevent forest roads from being otherwise regulated by the EPA. This language is needed because in its March 2013 decision, the U.S.…”