ࡱ> FHE bjbjVV 20<< ooo8,3t;;;2222222z47B2o;7;;;242''';L8o2';2''r0hW1Hp6LE12203S1V^7*^71^7o1;;';;;;;22#;;;3;;;;^7;;;;;;;;; : ELECTRONIC DELIVERY: ow-docket@epa.gov [TODAYS DATE - COMMENTS DUE ON/BEFORE JULY 31, 2011] Water Docket U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Mail Code 2822T 1200 Pennsylvania Ave., NW Washington, DC 20460 Attn: Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OW-2011-0409 RE: Comments on the U.S. EPA and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Guidance Regarding Identification of Waters Protected by the Clean Water Act, Docket No. EPA-HQ-OW-2011-0409 To Whom It May Concern: On behalf of [entity] [description, etc.] in [location], I write regarding the U.S. Environmental Protection Agencys (EPA) and the Corps of Engineers (Corps) (collectively, the Agencies) proposed Guidance Regarding Identification of Waters protected by the Clean Water Act, 76 Fed. Reg. 24479 (May 2, 2011) (Guidance). Through this Guidance, the Agencies seek to broaden federal jurisdiction and regulatory control over virtually all waters. As a [description, e.g., construction contractor], this issue is important to my company because this new Guidance provides agency field staff with an expanded menu of options to use to show that federal jurisdiction and control over a given waterbody [on my land/where my operations are located/where I seek to develop] is warranted. As a result, my company would be subject to onerous permitting requirements and potential federal enforcement thereof that would require a substantial expenditure of time and money. Even where jurisdiction is in question, the federal agencies have shifted the burden to landowners and permit applicants to establish that jurisdiction is not appropriate. Unlike the existing Guidance that will be replaced, agency field staff will apply this new Guidance to determine which waters are subject to jurisdiction under all Clean Water Act (CWA) permitting programs, not just the Section 404 program like the earlier guidance documents. As a result, states administering delegated CWA permitting programs may be forced to process thousands of additional permit requests per year. The cost of the regulatory burden on the states will also be borne by my company in terms of the inevitable delay the Guidance will create. EPA and the Corps have not considered any of these additional burdens. Of particular importance to my company is that the newly proposed scope of waters of the United States would apply to the Section 402 National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit program and affect the Construction General Permit (CGP) for regulating stormwater discharges at construction sites. Under the new CGP that EPA recently proposed, site operators must ensure that any discharges flowing through the area between the disturbed portion of the site and waters of the United States (located on or immediately adjacent to the site) are treated by an area of undisturbed natural vegetation that alone or with alternative sediment and erosion controls achieves a reduction in sediment loads equivalent to a 50 foot buffer. The decision to issue Guidance on this topic as opposed to a notice-and-comment rulemaking violates requirements of the Administrative Procedures Act (APA) designed to ensure public input and a full assessment of the economic impacts before making any final agency decisions. Despite repeated claims by the Agencies that they would initiate a rulemaking, they have not. Instead, the Agencies continue to make important changes to their regulations and expand their CWA jurisdiction through this Guidance without affording the regulated community an opportunity to comment formally. The Agencies admit that the extent of waters over which the Agencies assert jurisdiction under the CWA will increase with this Guidance. This expansion of jurisdiction goes beyond what Congress intended with the CWA and beyond the Supreme Courts decisions in Rapanos and SWANCC. The Agencies broaden their CWA jurisdiction in several ways, including: The Guidance expands the scope of the definition of traditional navigable waters. Under the Rivers and Harbors Act, traditional navigable waters are generally those waters capable of transporting interstate commerce among states. The Guidance expands the scope of the term traditional navigable waters beyond the existing definition and case law to cover any waterbody that can support one-time recreational use. The Guidance applies a broadened view of the significant nexus standard. A hydrological connection is not necessary to establish a significant nexus between a wet area and a traditional navigable water, and therefore jurisdiction of that wet area under the CWA. The Guidance defines tributaries to essentially mean any channel that has evidence of flow. The current regulations and previous guidance documents say nothing about ditches, but with this Guidance, the Agencies assert CWA jurisdiction over many roadside and agricultural ditches. The Guidance allows the Agencies to aggregate the contributions of all similar waters within an entire watershed, thus adding potentially hundreds of tributaries, wetlands, and non-wetland waters to the significant analysis and making it easier to find that there is a significant nexus. Furthermore, the Guidance will have material economic impacts on the regulated community. EPA has itself acknowledged the economic impacts of the Guidance, but the Agencies failed to take into consideration the permitting costs, the increased delays associated with expanded federal jurisdiction, and the costs of new land use restrictions. In other words, the economic impact analysis undertaken by the Agencies is woefully inadequate given the broad scope of the changes encompassed in the Guidance. In conclusion, the Guidance is intended to and will have a material impact on CWA permitting and enforcement nation-wide because it broadly expands the scope of the Agencies CWA jurisdiction. As such, the Agencies violated the APA and the express views of the Supreme Court by issuing Guidance on this topic as opposed to a rulemaking. 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